is there a REALLY, REALLY simple way to capture mpeg images

[danny_galaga]

if i play a dvd in my new dvd plaer and i want to capture an image, i click the 'capture image' button and an image is captured! my god! is it suppoed to be that simple? hence my new avatar. i have a 'young ones' dvd. captured image. voila!

BUT,

try and do that with an mpeg on my hard drive? fat chance! if i had a spare dvd i could try and burn the mpeg onto a dvd and play it but i suspect that wouldnt work anyway.

SO,

the question is, is there a way (a simple, no trojan or spyware piece of software maybe) to click a button and capture an image of an mpeg? this should be so easy...

[jhanson]

Try VLC.  I use it to do just that on my Mac, and they have a Windows version.

[DrewKaree]

Whatever the heck Nero thingamabob my PC uses to view video has that same ability.  I don't know if it's the space bar you hit or what, but it's a simple one-button press for me.

*edit*
It seems as if I don't have the thingamabob installed.  I believe it was Nero Recode that it was using, but I'm not certain.  It was one of those "automagically handle this type of video" things that I lost track of what was actually doing the playback.  I'll see if I can find it again to be sure.

[JCL]

if i play a dvd in my new dvd plaer and i want to capture an image, i click the 'capture image' button and an image is captured! my god! is it suppoed to be that simple? hence my new avatar. i have a 'young ones' dvd. captured image. voila!

BUT,

try and do that with an mpeg on my hard drive? fat chance! if i had a spare dvd i could try and burn the mpeg onto a dvd and play it but i suspect that wouldnt work anyway.

SO,

the question is, is there a way (a simple, no trojan or spyware piece of software maybe) to click a button and capture an image of an mpeg? this should be so easy...

hit pause on the movie, then shift printscreen, then paste to an image editing program and crop as needed. Or does that not work for videos?

[danny_galaga]

if i play a dvd in my new dvd plaer and i want to capture an image, i click the 'capture image' button and an image is captured! my god! is it suppoed to be that simple? hence my new avatar. i have a 'young ones' dvd. captured image. voila!

BUT,

try and do that with an mpeg on my hard drive? fat chance! if i had a spare dvd i could try and burn the mpeg onto a dvd and play it but i suspect that wouldnt work anyway.

SO,

the question is, is there a way (a simple, no trojan or spyware piece of software maybe) to click a button and capture an image of an mpeg? this should be so easy...

hit pause on the movie, then shift printscreen, then paste to an image editing program and crop as needed. Or does that not work for videos?

nope. all it does is point the editor to the player. in fact if you do it in windows media player you can then watch the rest of the video in the editor! but not really what im after...

[nostrebor]

 

[jhanson]

Have you tried VLC yet?  It works like a champ, and the price is right (free).

[Buddabing]

I use command-line MPlayer. It's free and open source. I believe there are GUIs available for it that support image capture.