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ymir23 · Jan 3, 2001, 05:29 PM

I switched to the Mac side a few years ago and I'm wondering why something I took for granted with a PC seems to be impossible on a Mac. I'm talking about screen grabs.

There are any number of PC progs, such as PowerDVD, which make
grabs at the touch of a button. It also does frame-by-frame, forward and backward and everything else a regular DVD player does.

The Mac player still doesn't even have basics like a numeric keypad for easy chapter access. It's nice looking but ridiculously dated in functionality.

I have no idea what other additions have been made to PC DVD programs lately, but I'd imagine there are more than a few. So, where are the feature-rich, third-party DVD players for Mac? Year after year, nothing? From Apple or third-party sources? No demand for them while more and more spring up for the PC? Is it part of the same
"one mouse button is fine for me and I don't need to delete to the left" wishy-washy status quo mentality that I get from the friends who turned me on to the benefits of the Mac platform in the first place?

What is it about the Mac DVD hardware that makes screen grabs impossible? Is there such a limitation? Or is there just a lack of
interest or initiative for this stuff by Mac users? I don't think that's the
case since this is purportedly "the graphics platform." PC's have
the same "alpha channel" thing that makes taking a snapshot of a DVD image impossible, yet PC DVD players take screen grabs. But a Mac can't?

I really need to be able to do screen grabs for projects and training. VPC can't read a DVD drive. I work in the DVD biz and it would
be nice to be able to work on things at home. What to do?

An aside: Why the hell has the frame-by-frame button panel, a very useful editing tool, been removed from QT 5?

bmedina · Jan 3, 2001, 05:45 PM

Why can't you take a screenshot of the DVD player running just like any other program?

And Quicktime 5's frame-by-frame advance is mapped to the left and right arrow keys.

ymir23 · Jan 3, 2001, 07:10 PM

Originally posted by bmedina:
Why can't you take a screenshot of the DVD player running just like any other program?

Try it. Play a DVD. Take a snapshot. Close the DVD player. Open the snapped pic. There's black where the screen grab should be. That's the "alpha channel" thing I referred to (does the same thing on a PC). Some PC DVD players like PowerDVD clearly have a workaround for this. No one has done this for the Mac.

And Quicktime 5's frame-by-frame advance is mapped to the left and right arrow keys.

Dang, it works! Thanks for the tip. Very helpful.

StefMan · Jan 4, 2001, 05:43 AM

My DVD screenshots are empty ! (black)

How did you succeed in making them ?

ymir23 · Jan 4, 2001, 06:45 PM

>My DVD screenshots are empty ! (black)

>How did you succeed in making them ?

To clear up from my previous post which was incorrectly formatted and confusing:

I _can_ now do frame-by-frame in QT5.

No one can take DVD screen grabs with a Mac. From the lack of replies, no one using "the graphics platform" gives a damn.

anothermacguy · Jan 5, 2001, 02:57 PM

Yeah. Everyone using Macs are actually didn't know that it is a crappy graphics platform. We're retards.

Oh wait, maybe a retard is someone who doesn't know how to find the information he's looking for, and instead waits for people to give it to him.

Take the hint and do some searches in this forum.

[This message has been edited by anothermacguy (edited 01-05-2001).]