Screen shots disabled while DVD player is running...

--On 2/1/2008 11:46 AM -0800 George Wade wrote:

> During a break in watching an instructional DVD, for which I have
> written permission to make 100 copies for any friends I might have:
> I decided to make a Cmd-Opt-3 from a relevant window in a Java
> application to send to a friend.
>
> A cheeky message came up saying that 'Screen Shots are DISABLED
> while running DVD Player.' We all know why,[...]

You're lucky, though, to have gotten the message. A few weeks ago I was
doing remote troubleshooting for my brother, who was trying to get a screen
grab. Cmd-Shift-3 and Cmd-Shift-4 were simply not working at all, and we
couldn't figure out why.

Finally I suggested that he try starting up Grab.app; it refused to start
and gave him the message about DVD Player. That solved it--but until
starting Grab, he was getting no indication of the nature of the problem.

(And he was attempting to take a screen shot of a web browser window; he
had the DVD Player application running, but in the background and not
playing. He never would have guessed that it had any relationship to his
inability to take a screen shot of Safari.)

Dave Scocca

> A cheeky message came up saying that 'Screen Shots are DISABLED
> while running DVD Player.'

Ambrosia's Snapz Pro X is not crippled/limited in this regard: it
can take snapshots of the DVD player window without a hitch. It will
even grab the video, although, for some reason, it appears to be
inable to capture the DVD's audio, so you may want to use Handbreak
for this, instead.



<http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/>


Regards,

Jochen.


--
Jochen Wolters
jochenpolytropia.com | http://polytropia.com | jochenwolters (Skype)

--On February 1, 2008 11:46:31 AM -0800 George Wade <georgewadeshaw.ca>
wrote:

> During a break in watching an instructional DVD, for which I have
> written permission to make 100 copies for any friends I might have:
> I decided to make a Cmd-Opt-3 from a relevant window in a Java
> application to send to a friend.
>
> A cheeky message came up saying that 'Screen Shots are DISABLED
> while running DVD Player.'

FYI, VLC can play DVD's and you can take screenshots while it is playing.

<http://www.videolan.org/vlc/>

Kevin

On 1-Feb-2008, at 12:46, George Wade wrote:
> A cheeky message came up saying that 'Screen Shots are DISABLED
> while running DVD Player.' We all know why, but find it inconvenient
> and insulting when we are on the legal side of the fence.

As far as the content cartel is concerned there is NO legal side of
the fence.

> Would a world wide sub-prime disaster bring anybody to their senses
> over all
> these silly laws & regulations that cripple an overdeveloped
> industrial state ?

What senses?

Sense of Greed? Sense of Entitlement?

--On 2/4/2008 6:52 AM -0800 LewisGmail wrote:

> On 1-Feb-2008, at 12:46, George Wade wrote:
>> A cheeky message came up saying that 'Screen Shots are DISABLED
>> while running DVD Player.' We all know why, but find it inconvenient
>> and insulting when we are on the legal side of the fence.
>
> As far as the content cartel is concerned there is NO legal side of
> the fence.

I don't know that that is entirely true. One assumes that if you shoot
some video and use iMovie and iDVD to put your video on DVD, even the
content cartel would consider it legal to take screenshots of or duplicate
that DVD.

As long as you weren't shooting the original video in front of a building
whose architect claims copyright protection for the design, or whose owner
has trademarked its appearance.


In WWW,
Dave Scocca
* Wewingtonheet davescocca.org *
* Nentico Lodge #12 http://tegularius.org/ *
* "I bent the bow, I let the arrow fly..." *

On 4-Feb-2008, at 08:58, Dave Scocca wrote:
> --On 2/4/2008 6:52 AM -0800 LewisGmail wrote:
>> On 1-Feb-2008, at 12:46, George Wade wrote:
>>> A cheeky message came up saying that 'Screen Shots are DISABLED
>>> while running DVD Player.' We all know why, but find it
>>> inconvenient
>>> and insulting when we are on the legal side of the fence.
>>
>> As far as the content cartel is concerned there is NO legal side of
>> the fence.
>
> I don't know that that is entirely true. One assumes that if you
> shoot some video and use iMovie and iDVD to put your video on DVD,
> even the content cartel would consider it legal to take screenshots
> of or duplicate that DVD.

Obviously not, since they insisted that the screen shot be disabled
ENTIRELY if the dvd player is running. That is, it doesn't even have
to have a window open.

--
You try to shape the world to what you want the world to be. Carving
your name a thousand times won't bring you back to me. Oh no, no I
might as well go and tell it to the trees. Go and tell it to the
trees, yeah.

Some time ago I read somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that Apple consider it a matter of being 'responsible' to disable screen shots during DVD playback. My thought upon reading that, was, responsible to who? Certainly not to their customers... quite clearly the allegiance is to the media barons who have already done so much to pervert copyright law - and impinge on our rights when they can - in order to maximize their profits. Granted, in a post-DRM-iTunes-store world, there's less to complain about than there was, but still, is Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field so strong that consumers appreciate this intentional crippleware built into the OS as some sort of supposed benefit?

I was having the same problem a while ago and knew there was a way around this by using the commandline. I found the following site:

http://highschoolblows.blogspot.com/2005/11/take-screenshot-of-dvd-player-in-os-x.html

On 06/02/2008 3:02 AM, "kupietz" <emperordottidbitsdotcomkupietz.com> spake
thus:

> is Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field so strong that consumers appreciate
> this intentional crippleware built into the OS as some sort of supposed
> benefit?

I suspect most don't know about it at all, so the RDF is moot. I certainly
hadn't heard of it until this thread popped up.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

On 06/02/2008 3:02 AM, "LewisGmail" <gkremegmail.com> spake thus:

> Obviously not, since they insisted that the screen shot be disabled
> ENTIRELY if the dvd player is running. That is, it doesn't even have
> to have a window open.

But you do presumably have to have a DVD inserted. I say "presumably"
because I don't have a DVD handy to test it, but I can very definitely take
screen shots with DVD Player running, but, critically, *without* a DVD
inserted.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://xri.net/=nigel.stanger

At 5:34 AM -0800 2/7/08, Nigel Stanger wrote:
>I suspect most don't know about it at all, so the RDF is moot. I certainly
>hadn't heard of it until this thread popped up.

I knew about it as recently as two years ago. A manager here had
been mailed a DVD copy of his high school's video yearbook. (Said
yearbook was taken in Israel in the mid-80s when such things were
exotic.) He wanted to get a screencap of himself at 18, and send it
to his mom. He couldn't.

At the time I vaguely recalled hearing something along these lines
and offered that perhaps Apple had disabled screencaps in DVD Player,
and perhaps it was contingent on their DVD playback license.

His response: "I didn't know Apple had joined the Evil Empire."



--
Andrew Laurence atlaurenes.nacs.uci.edu
Network & Academic Computing Svcs. http://www.nacs.uci.edu/~atlauren/
UC Irvine

One approach to taking snapshots from DVD's is to play them with VLC rather than DVD player. <http://www.videolan.org/vlc/> The video menu has "snapshot" which does exactly what it says. In order to make this easier, I went to the system preference pane, CDs & DVDs and changed "When you insert a video DVD" to "ignore".

On 10-Feb-2008, at 14:08, mgessex wrote:
> One approach to taking snapshots from DVD's is to play them with VLC
> rather than DVD player. <http://www.videolan.org/vlc/> The video
> menu has "snapshot" which does exactly what it says. In order to
> make this easier, I went to the system preference pane, CDs & DVDs
> and changed "When you insert a video DVD" to "ignore".

I went further. I archived the DVD Player.app and delete it. Then I
set the insert behavior to open VLC.


--
'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice
'You must be' said the Cat 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

kupietz wrote:
> Some time ago I read somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that
> Apple consider it a matter of being 'responsible' to disable screen
> shots during DVD playback. My thought upon reading that, was,
> responsible to who? Certainly not to their customers... quite clearly
> the allegiance is to the media barons who have already done so much
> to pervert copyright law - and impinge on our rights when they can -
> in order to maximize their profits. Granted, in a
> post-DRM-iTunes-store world, there's less to complain about than
> there was, but still, is Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field so
> strong that consumers appreciate this intentional crippleware built
> into the OS as some sort of supposed benefit?

If you want to play by the rules of the various legal systems of the world you have to get a license to use various "technology" to create a device that can play DVDs. As a part of your contract and license to use said technology you have to agree to certain limits on your "device". Region limitations. No captures. Etc.

Now as to VLC either they are running on the edge of patent use or (and I think more likely) have written software that uses APIs that allow them to play DVDs by accessing the content after it is decoded. The reason I think this later choice is the way is that the licensing terms for HD and BlueRay have very explicit rules about how you must make the data paths for play back hidden, hard to access, encrypted while in ram, etc... This is to hinder people from writing VLC type programs that circumvent their idea of how a legal "device" should work.

Here's a link discussing some of this:
<http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/2006/12/31/windows_vista_drm_nonsense>

This is also why HDMI cables are needed for most new high definition devices. It can extend DRM from one device to another.

Whether Apple and SJ agrees with any of this or not doesn't mater. If you want Macs to have "legal" DVD playback from Apple then Apple has to play by the rules of the license.

David Ross

My late response on this subject ...

I've been using the following AppleScrpt to capture the DVD screen
shot. I think it was published in one of the computer magazines a
while back. Although Grab does not work, this script works. It
captures the screen, then displays it using Preview.

do shell script "DATE=`date '+%Y%d%m-%H%M%S'`;
FILE=~/Desktop/screenshot-${DATE}.png;
screencapture -i -x $FILE;
if [ -e $FILE ]; then
open /Applications/Preview.app $FILE;
fi"

--
____________________
Ryoichi Morita
Coarsegold, CA
http://www.rjmorita.com