How can I take a screenshot of a DVD?

[MartinB]

Sounds simple enough, but I'm really stuck on this one. Whenever I try to take a screenshot of a DVD, I always end up with a blue square where the DVD is supposed to be. I've tried doing this in KSnapshot and GIMP's "Aquire Screenshot", and I've tried playing the DVD in various programs such as Ogle, MPlayer and Xine, but I can't seem to figure out how to get a screenshot from the DVD.

Anyone have any ideas on how I can do with?

Cheers,
Martin

[Modorf]

Xine has a screen shot feature.
I don't know the key combo for screen shot, but I know it has it (it is one of the buttons on the Xine-GUI).

Also, you can use MPlayer to output the video to PNG or JPEG files (some image file).

mplayer -vo png
or
mplayer -vo jpeg


Hope this helps.
Nathan.

[bwkaz]

Or if you're using mplayer, it might help to not use the XVideo output plugin. If you just use -vo x11, it'll be a bit slower, but normal X programs should be able to read the pixel data when taking their screenshot.

[MartinB]

Thanks, all of those worked great!