How to take a Screenshot??

You were going through your DVD collection when you stumbled upon a game of a movie that you wanted…

NONO…you HAD to share with the rest of the enthusiastic online world.

Filled with enthusiasm you post the torrent or rapidshare link without the ss (screenshots). Then you realize…

“SH!T…you don’t know, how to capture a ss”. BUT…you don’t need to worry, after reading this tutorial you should be able to do it with your eyes closed.

But I suggest you keep them open for now anyways…

Note: Capturing SS doesn’t take much time. These guides seem long because we’re going to explain it step by step.

Note#2: You can use any media player to capture ss, most of them have that feature built-in. We’ll show you how to capture ss using WMP (Windows Media Player), VLC and Nero Showtime.

There are many other players like PowerDVD, BS player etc… you can ofcourse use those to capture ss as well but I suggest you stick to one of the players named above.

Capture SS – using WMP??

Many may wonder,how come that when we print screen the wmp-window that its ss remains black??

Read on…and we’ll show you how to avoid that problem.

1. Run WMP (Windows Media Player).

2. Go to “Tools” and then select “Options”…

3. In the options Menu, Click on “Performance” tab & decrease the “Vedeo Acceleration” from Full to None…

this will ensure that your ss isn’t pitch black anymore.

Then Click OK.

4. Open the file/movie you want…

5. Move the slider to any particular scene & pause it.

6. Now on your Keyboard, press the PartSc (Print Screen) key…

7. Open Windows PaintBrush (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Paint ).

8. Click Paste or Press Ctrl+V on the keyboard…save the file in any format (.jpg or  .bmp) in any location you want.

9. Then upload the file in Manage Attachment option when you open a new thread.

Capture SS – using VLC??

First you need to change default screenshot extension from .png to .jpg, because many sites doesn’t allow PNG to be attached.

1. Click on Settings > Preferences.

2. In the “Preferences” menu, click on Video > Output modules > Image file.

Then at your right hand side, click on “Image format” , you’ll see a drop down menu now, select JPEG instead of PNG.

Now click Save.

3. Click on File > Open File.

4. In the Open File window, click on Browse..

5. After clicking on Browse, locate your file & open it.

6. After the Video opens, pause it & move the slider to any scene in the movie,  where you want to capture the Screenshot.

7. Click on Video in the menu &then click on Snapshot.

8. The Screenshot is saved in My Documents > My Pictures.

9. Upload the Screenshots in Manage Attachment when you are creating a new thread.

Capture SS -  using Nero Showtime??

1. Open Nero Show Time.

2. Rightclick anywhere in the player and click on “Select Source”…then on “play From Folder” or “File” depending upon your source media.

3. Select the File you want to open

4. Move the slider to any desired position, pause the video.

Click on the Left Menu arrow to activate left menu…click on “Cam Button”.

OR

you can also capture the screen shot by pressing ‘C’ on ur keboard.

OR

by Rightclicking on the player & clicking on “Capture Frame”.

5. Open Windows PaintBrush (Start > All Programs > Accessories >Paint).

6. Click Paste or Press Ctrl+V on the keyboard…save the file in any format ( .jpg or .bmp) in any location you want.

7. Then upload the file in Manage Attachment option when you a new thread.

That’s it folks!! Now you should be able to capture screenshots with ease…

There are many different ways of taking a screenshot, all depending on the program you choose…

In the tutorial, I’ll show you how to take screenshots using Media player Classic. It is one of the most popular and easy ways screenshot.

There are two diff type of screenshots that you can take…single image or multiple thumbs.

Option 1: Single Image

-    Open a video file using MPC.

-     Click the File menu.

ff

-     Press “Save Image”.

-    Save the Image on your computer.

-    result…

Option 2: Capture multiple  thumbs.

-    open a video file using MPC.

-      click the File menu.

-       Press the “Save Thumbnails” button.

-       Save the image on your computer.

-        Here you have some additional settings too…

you can choose the amount of thumbnails and the amount of columns.

You can also change the image width if needed …choose as you see fit…

-        Here’s the result…

That was it folks!!

If you paid close attention…taking a screenshot with MPC should be a piece  of cake from now on .

Have fun snapping…and make sure that you have screenshots for all your video releases!!

Screenshots are a MUST!! No screenshots in your post will get your release deleted and you could get warned or banned too… it only takes few minutes to capture screenshots.

Better plat safe!!

Happy DT’ing…

The first question that rises is…

Well, there are various reasons for that:

- Ownership: The person wants to show that the media belongs to him,      and  to prevent stealing; simply put,  Intellectual Property Protection.

- Advertising: Someone wants others to know about a product/website/software etc…

- Trial Software: A media editing software might add a watermark if the software is a trial version, and has not yet been purchased

This is what I think of it...Blah, blah,blah…

The reasons are galore.                                                                                                         But, just one statement outweighs them all, and that is…                               

You can always crop the media, be it  video or image, to edit out the watermark, but that doesn’t exactly give you   wonderful results now, does it? Also, sometimes the watermark is placed in vital positions such that it’s impossible to crop the media to remove them.

We, being used to ~perfection, can  simply not accept something that has been chopped off at the borders. What we need is the same video  sans the watermark.For us nothing should change, be it quality or size or whatever parameters you keep. That is exactly what this tutorial will you here.

Now the tools we would require are:

- VirtualDub (version 1.6.18)  is what I’ve used.

- De-logo Filter (Install by copying the delogo.vdf file to your VirtualDub plugins directory, typically C:program FilesVirtualDubplugins)

- MS Paint or similar photo editing program like photo shop, paint  Shop Pro, etc…

Now let us begin…

“How do we remove these  Watermarks?”

Start up VirtualDub and load the video file to be edited by clicking on “File > Open video File” …

The video file formats supported are {avi, divx, mpg, mpeg, mpv, m1v, dat, anim}. Once the file is loaded, click on “File > File Information”… Note down the size of the video, and click “OK”. UImthge given  example it is (352*256).

The next step is to create three images vital for the watermark removal process.

1.) The first image is a simple blank one of the same size as of the video (i.e., 352*256 in the given example).

Note: I used MS Paint for this. You can very well utilize any image editing software…

Open a new instance of MS Paint, and click on “Image > Attributes” (Ctrl+E)…

Enter the dimensions noted for the video, in pixels, and press “OK”. Name the file as frame 1 and save it as a bitmap image (.BMP file).

2.) For the second image, go to VitualDub window, move the slider to get a good clean hot of the watermark on a dark background. Once obtained, click on “Video > Copy source frame to clipboard”.

Now in MS Paint click Edit and Paste (ctrl+V)

Save the image as a bitmap (.BMP file) at the same place as frame 1, and name it as frame 2.

3.) The final image needed to remove the logo, is created by colouring the logo RED. Open frame 2. bmp in MS Paint, and zoom onto the watermark as much as possible.

Now replace the logo pixels with Red colour. If you are not sure whether you have selected the right colour, click on “Colors > Edit Colors”…and select a custom color with the following properties (shown ion Red box), click on “Add to Custom Colors” and click “OK”. It is important that the colour selected is Red, as the de-logo filter will not accept the image otherwise.

Now colour the logo pixels with Red colour as shown in the image below.

When zoomed out, the final image will look like as shown below. Name this file as analysisframe and save it as a bitmap (.BMP file), at the same location as frame 1 and frame 2.

Now get back to VirtualDub, click “File > Close Video File”…

Now click “File > then Open Video File … Now browse to the location where you’ve saved frame 1. bmp. Select the file, and Click “OK”.

Now click “Video > Filters”…

This will open the Filters box.

There click on “Add” (Red box), to open the Add Filter box. Now click on “Load”… button to browse and select the de-logo filtr that you’ve downloaded. Once selected, the filter will show up in your Add Filter box, as shown in the blue selection band below. Select it, and click on “OK” twice to close the filter boxes.

Now the filter has been loaded. The filter configuration box will open, as shown in Image below. Now load the analysisframe. bmp file created earlier, in the Analyse box (Red box) by clicking on the “Load” button and browsing to select the file. Now click on “show Preview” button at the bottom (Blue box) to show a preview of the frame being edited. Next click on “Sample frame button (green box). Now click on the “forward” button in the preview frame (orange box), and again click on the “Sample frame”button.

After finishing the previous step, save the mask properties, highlighted below in the red box, by clicking the “Save as”… buttons. Next move the “Alpha to repair slider” (blue box) to  the left, until it says 0 (zero). Now, with the preview window still showing, adjust the “DeBlend shift” and “DeBlend falloff” sliders,until the logo disappears. (I kept the DeBlend shift slider at 0 (zero), and adjusted the falloff slider to achieve my result). Now click on the “close” button below (orange box).

Now that the sample frame has been de-watermarked, we now have do the same to the complete video,Click on “File > Open video File”… and open the video file to be de-watermarked. Now by moving the slider, see in what frames the watermark exists.In my case the logo starts at frame 0 and ends at frames 12529.Now,click on “Video > Filters”… Click on “Delogo” and on “Configure”… (red box) to open the filter settings window.

In the Delogo configuration window, set the frames you want to remove the logo from, (i.e., 0 -12529), as shon in Image below, and click on the “close” button (blue box).

Now if the logo appears and disappears from the video at certain frames, just note down where it appears and disappears. So, if the logo is present only in the frame ranges 50-1000,and then from 2000-3500, then enter both these ranges in the red box in the Image above, i.e., (50-1000, 2000 3500).Now without altering any other settings, click the “Close” button (blue box). Press “OK” in the next  window, and you have the logo-less video.

The next step is to save your new video onto your hard drive.Click on “Video > Compression”…

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