DVD Snap - Take Screen Shots of Playing DVDs on Your Mac

If you've ever wanted to take a screen shot from a DVD playing in Apple's DVD Player, then you've seen the pop-up window that appeared, informing you that "Screen Grabs are Unavailable During DVD Playback," and requesting that you shut down DVD Player before attempting more screen shots.

Of course, what you wanted in the first place was a screen shot of the movie you were playing, so you're out of luck.

What, then, to do?

Fortunately for those disinclined to use the Terminal (because there are ways to grab a screen shot of a playing DVD without using the program I'm about to review), a shareware application called DVD Snap will suit your needs.

DVD Snap is currently listed at $19.99 for a full license, although you can at the moment purchase a license from MacUpdate Promo for only $9.99, although there are no guarantees on how long the promo sale will last for DVD Snap.

What does DVD Snap do? Simple. It enables you, with only a couple mouse clicks (or none at all if you want to set some keyboard combinations), take a picture of a playing DVD in Apple's DVD Player!

DVD Snap is pretty easy to use. You can set it up to take either single screen shots, or a series of screen shots. If you want, DVD Snap will put up a timer, informing you of how long before your timed screen shot is taken. And unlike the Finder, which takes screen shots only in PNG format (although this behavior can also be changed via the Terminal or a couple other utilities), DVD Snap allows you take screen shots in multiple formats. Which formats? These: TIFF (with or without compression), PNG, PDF, JPEG (with or without compression), JPEG-2000 (with or without compression), GIF and BMP. All these formats are Apple-supported formats, but unlike Apple, DVD Snap makes them easy to change.

Another interesting feature DVD Snap offers is that it takes full-screen images of your playing DVD, even if you have shrunk the size of the window. This makes it a bit more convenient to take screen shots, since it's far easier to shrink the DVD Player window and have it sitting side by side the DVD Snap window.

The first screen you'll see when starting up DVD Snap.

Credit: Eric Fleming

Copyright: Eric Fleming