How do I take screen shots on DVD movies and protected content?

Question

I saw this awesome movie that I watched on DVD and wanted to take a screen shot of it, but when I did, it was transparent. I could only see my desktop taken but not the movie. Is there a specific program or hack that could let me take a screen shot of that content? I tried every screen shot software, but still leaves it transparent.

Answer 1

This is deliberate from Apple and you will not be able to take screen shots using DVD player.

You can either use VLC and then a screen shot program (Cmd-3 and Cmd-4 works for me), or transcode your DVD to a QuickTime movie using Handbrake (which may take too long for you to find it interesting). The latter will allow you to use QuickTime player which can do quite a bit.

Answer 2

If you go to control & click 'use current frame as jacket picture'. Then click stop, your selected frame should come up - no matter where you stop the film from now on this still is what will show, that's what 'jacket picture' means.

Take a screenshot of the Jacket Picture & it should come up on your desktop like normal!

Answer 3

You should be able to capture screen shots by playing the movie in VLC and pressing alt+cmd+S. This is a more detailed guide for the windows version of VLC, but it should apply for the mac version as well!