How to make Screenshots

From DocuWiki

This guide will explain the process of extracting screenshots from the video files to use them in visually appealing pages.

Contents 1 A quick note about imagesize 2 Media Player Classic 2.1 Capturing 1:1 screenshots 2.2 Capturing multiple screenshots 3 VLC Player 4 Image Grabber 4.1 Saving multiple thumbnails into one image 4.2 Saving multiple screenshots into separate files

[edit] A quick note about imagesize

Don't upload oversized images. On a normal rip it's fine to use full-size screenshots, as they are normally no larger than 720 pixels wide.

For HD rips/caps, if you upload full-size screenshots you are going to cause a lot of pain for people to view. Therefore resize images to be no larger than 720 pixels wide

If you don't have Photoshop, you can use the freeware IrfanViewor you can resizes online, using resizer.

[edit] Media Player Classic

You need: media player classic

[edit] Capturing 1:1 screenshots

1. Play video with media player classic.
2. Press pause if you want take the screenshot of that exact time. Otherwise just go to step 3 directly.
3. Click the File menu
4. Select Save image from the menu
5. Save the image as a .jpg file wherever you want

[edit] Capturing multiple screenshots

This will capture multiple screenshots at regular intervals.

1. Play video with media player classic.
2. Pause the video, click the File menu, click save thumbnails.
3. Decide on the number of rows and columns you want.
4. Save as .jpg to your preferred location

You get something like this:

If you wish, you can crop the image to exclude the file info (using irfanview, for example)

For both these methods, make sure that the Playback is either VMR7 or VMR9 (both renderless): 
View > Option > Playback > Output

[edit] VLC Player

You need the VLC player from VideoLan.

Open VLC and click Settings > Preferences > Video

1. Change the video snapshot directory setting so that it goes to your preferred directory.
2. Also change the video snapshot format setting to .jpg.
3. Save it.
4. Open the file using the vlc player
5. Click the mouse's right button and select snapshot

Note: One thing though, if your file is encoded with x264 codec (generally they come with .mkv extension) then VLC doesn't provide the exact color balance as it is not using your x264 decoder (be it ffdshow, coreavc, or cyberlink, etc) while playing the file. Also if the bitrate is too high and you're running a slower machine VLC can't seek the file properly (i.e., video slows down). Therefore, you should use media player classic (MPC) or any other directshowsource player (e.g., mplayer, coreplayer etc).

[edit] Image Grabber

You need the Image Grabber II for .NET

There is also a standard version without .NET available. It works pretty much the same way, although it is slightly less flexible.

1. Open IG and open the file you want to get screenshots from.
2. Now click on the right most button on the bottom. It will ask you, how many screenshots you'd like to extract. (30 is good)
3. After hitting OK it will extract that number of screenshots and list them on the left. You can now browse through that list and eliminate all bad shots, keeping the meaningful ones.

[edit] Saving multiple thumbnails into one image

1. When done, go to File->Save File...
2. This will open a new window with a preview of the thumbnail image. You can change the layout by clicking on the Options button
3. Another menu will open to let you select some parameters for the thumbnails. Changing these parameters will instantly change the preview.
4. You can play around with these until the result is to your liking. If you want to keep these settings for images to come, you can set the default parameters in File->Options

Result:

[edit] Saving multiple screenshots into separate files

When done selecting the screenshots you like, go to File->Save Individual Files... It will then ask you for the folder where to save all screenshots as full size jpgs