In Windows Cntrl + PrtScn copies what's on the display to the clipboard. It works well, but not with Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player.

I've also tried using the capture program XnView. Same problem. The media player image is black, but the rest of the desktop is captured properly.

I know that VLC has a Snapshot feature, but it detinterlaces the image--which is exactly what I don't need, LOL, since I want to post an example of a very jagged .m2t frame.

Have any of you found a way to do a screen print from a paused frame in WMP, VLC or another .m2t friendly media player?

Thanks VERY much.

Unless you are using Vista in Aero mode, you won't be able to capture the video overlay. Video overlay is not a bitmap layer plotting pixel for the video to the 2D desktop mode. So if you tried to capture, you might have a pink block where the video should be.

There are several ways,

(1) Load the video to Premiere and do Export Frame
(2) Load the video to NLE such as Premiere, VirtualDub, or some other programs to do PrintScreen within the program.
(3) Install KMPlayer. it allows me to extract individual frames or sequence of the video clips. very useful. Just google KMPlayer.

that is normal behavior.
all what is using directX acceleration (mainly games and video) is writing directly to the video card, so it is not really present in the memory, but just keyed into the display memory. when you print-screen, you captured just the color place holder (can be black, magenta or green).
A well known trick is to disable video acceleration (go into display properties, Settings,Advanced and into Troubleshooting menu, you got a slider that allows several level of disabled acceleration.)
Do not forget to restore full acceleration after you are done.
The drawabck of doing this is if your machine is slow, you could get jerky video.
Some capture utilities (like camtasia) allow to disable graphic acceleration when you capture et restore it automatically.

Thanks guys very much. I tried disabling the overlay and it seems to work.

In windows media player:

Tools... Options... Performance... Video Acceleration... Advanced... Use Overlays... uncheck

But is there a downside to leaving the player this way?

Thanks much!

But is there a downside to leaving the player this way?

Thanks much!

Yeah, playback performance

Is there a similar work around to do screen captures for VLC? Their snapshot feature doesn't capture exactly what's on the screen.

For example, the frame I want to capture has a lot of edge jaggedness when viewed in VLC, but when I take a snapshot of it, the edge is not jagged but rather blurry (it looks like two fields overlayed).

Thanks again.

I use a neat program called Hyper Snap 6 to do screen captures. I just tried a capture of the Windows Media Player, and it worked fine. I also tried a capture of the VLC Player, but the screen was just black. Hope this helps.