DirectX Frame Grab/Screen Capture

I’d been frus­trat­ed try­ing to cap­ture par­tic­u­lar images from the films I’m watch­ing in The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion list. Direc­tX tech­nol­o­gy makes it hard to do a sim­ple screen cap­ture and paste into Pho­to­Shop. But some­one final­ly direct­ed me to a way that works and does­n’t involve down­loaded spy-and-adware full pro­grams. And damn if it isn’t easy.

My lap­top runs Win­dows XP, so this should work for any com­put­er run­ning that OS.

1. Open Dis­play Prop­er­ties
2. Select the Set­tings Tab
3. Select the Advanced but­ton
4. Select the Trou­bleshoot­ing Tab
5. Drag the Hard­ware Accel­er­a­tion bar to “none”
6. Select Apply

Now paus­ing a DVD in WMP or what­ev­er DVD pro­gram you use and doing a screen cap­ture [ALT-PrintScreen] should result in a still image that can be saved. Just remem­ber to turn hard­ware accel­er­a­tion back on after you’re done.