How to take screenshots in Mac OS X’s DVD Player application¶

Usually when we watch a DVD copy movie for Mac and there are always some moments we want to retain, but we are prevented from taking screenshots while DVD Player is running. You've probably seen the error before: "Screen grabs are unavailable during DVD playback. Please quit DVD Player first". What a pity! Is there a method to solve the problem? The answer is yes. The following is what we can do.

If you just make a DVD copy for Mac and you want to take a screenshot of your favorite scene of the DVD, then start the DVD Player first. Play the movie you want and go to the exact frame you want to capture and then playback. Open Terminal (Application > Utility) and copy & paste the following command: screencapture —i ~/ Desktop/ DVDGrab . png When you hit Enter/Return on your keyboard, the mouse cursor will change from an arrow to crosshairs. Press Command+Tab to switch back to DVD Player without making any click. Then press spacebar and hover over the DVD Player window. The entire frame that you want should be highlighted, and you just need to click on it. After this, a new image file will appear on your window. This is not over and if you want a perfect image you have to open your screenshot in Preview to cut off the top and bottom parts of the window.

Of course, there is another way to solve the problem. This needs you to have another media player—VLC, which is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac...) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. Since movies playing in VLC are not locked down quite like they are in DVD Player, taking screen grabs is a breeze. Just go to Video > Snapshot in the menu bar and the image will pop up right on the Desktop! It can save you much trouble. Meanwhile, with this you can enjoy your DVD copy for Mac. Isn't that good?

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How to take screenshots in Mac OS X’s DVD Player application¶