Video Player Capture Tutorial

If you want to grab an image from a movie (for example, to use as wallpaper) this feature can do it for you. It works essentially like the feature for capturing DirectX games.

Limitations to video capture.

The video capture will work or not, depending on which video player software you're are using, and if it uses DirectX or not.

Enable Special Capture in HyperSnap-DX 5's Capture menu or as described in the DirectX tutorial.

Click on that item and make sure that DirectX Primary and Overlay surfaces are turned on. Then click the OK button.

Run your video playback software, pause the movie where you want to capture it, click the video player window title bar to make sure it's the front window, then press the Scroll Lock key. (That's the default HyperSnap-DX 5 Special capture hot key. If you've changed the hot keys, use the keystroke you've set for this function instead.)

Click on the HyperSnap-DX window and see what was captured. If you don't see the picture there, most probably your video player software doesn't use DirectX.

If you do see a picture within HyperSnap-DX 5's window, but it has incorrect proportions, or is repeated several times, use the Crop & Scale tab functions under the Capture settings tabs. These tools will let you auto-crop each image you capture (so that only one image remains) and it'll scale it to the correct proportions, too. Experiment a bit to find the settings that work best.

If video capture still doesn't work (for example, you still get a full screen capture with some solid color where the movie was because your player program does not use DirectX), you'll have to choose another video player package. HyperSnap-DX 5 won't be able to capture images from your existing package. For example, for capturing DVDs you should get a player that uses DirectX, such as PowerDVDÖ, SoftDVDÖ or another DirectX-enabled package.

Unsupported pixel formats.

Sometimes you may see a message within the HyperSnap-DX window that complains about an "Unsupported Pixel Format." This means that HyperSnap doesn't know how to decode the picture from the DirectX overlay buffer. If this happens, check the settings and options in your DVD player. See if you can find a setting that disables a function that's often called Hardware Acceleration or sometimes Optimized Video, or something very similar to these. Re-try your capture, it should now work.

Be sure to restore this setting again after you've finished with your captures. Acceleration usually smooths playback during regular "non-capture" play.

If your DVD player doesn't have such a setting, just as in the other examples above, try another DVD player program. A good one is PowerDVDÖ from Cyberlink. PowerDVD does have this setting, which can be turned off and on, and several of HyperSnap-DX 5 users have confirmed that they're able to reliably capture good images from DVDs after disabling PowerDVD's Hardware Acceleration feature.

We like it but...

We don't warranty that you will like PowerDVD, nor do we have an arrangement with them whereby we suggest that our users go and buy it and they give us "kickbacks." We mention it here only because our users have freely mentioned to us that they've been able to successfully capture from it. And many have not been able to capture from other popular DVD players. We've looked at PowerDVD, it does a great job overall, and has many terrific options.

It produces great image quality and solid frame rate performance given fast-enough hardware. But if you download it because of our suggestion and then have problems, please remember this disclaimer: we don't warranty it in any way, shape, or fashion. If you have problems contact the vendor, Cyberlink, not us.

Thanks.