thegreatbeyond

Phred · Pez-Guru Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 890

You're talking about 2 cars in a head on collision?

Zornak · Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 12:34 am�� Post subject:

chewi... you put 5 thoughts into one sentence >_>

Pez-Man · Pez-Man Joined: 18 May 2002 Posts: 3443

Chewi did? Where?

chromus · Pez-Ruler Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 1703

First of all, as much as I don't mind answering questions for the TGB community, I ask that basic rules of writing, such as punctuation and grammar, be followed so everyone can understand what you mean. The question I think you're trying to ask is "will a person, hit by a car moving at an aveage speed, go over or under the car?"

Second of all, this question has no correct answer. A shorter person may have a larger chance of going under while a taller person may have a larger chance of going over. Is the person moving towards the car, away from the car, or in some other direction? Weight, of the person and the car, may also be a factor. In short, it depends.

Pez-Man · Pez-Man Joined: 18 May 2002 Posts: 3443

What makes it such that PrintScreen and posting it in MSPaint on while running videos and DVDs doesn't work?

Chewi · Pez-Eater Joined: 12 Jun 2003 Posts: 151

I did something?

chromus · Pez-Ruler Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 1703

Taking screen shots with the Print Screen key doesn't work for applications that use DirectX. Unfortunetly, this includes all Windows DVD playing programs. The reason for this is very technical, but if you want to know, check http://www.codepedia.com/2/FAQ-DIRECTX-PrintScreen-Key-No-Screenshot.

In short, DirectX programs use a different buffer (section of memory) to store what's on the screen than Windows expects, so when Windows tries to copy the screen to the clipboard, it only copies what's in the main buffer.

Phred, don't you mean G Byrd was the one who had 5 thoughts in one sentence?

Chewi · Pez-Eater Joined: 12 Jun 2003 Posts: 151

What happened to 99.1 HFS?

Phred · Pez-Guru Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 890

Aya told me if your using windows media player, just reduce the acceleration by half under options
worked for me :O

chromus · Pez-Ruler Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 1703

In short, the company that owned HFS 99.1 decided to switch a low-ratings radio station to try and attract the Spanish listening crowd. The Washington Post has a much more detailed story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7886-2005Jan13.html

Well, if you read the source I linked to, it says that screenshots made with the Print Screen key will still copy something, but not the frame you want. Most of the time, it will capture the last frame of the current "animation". If you decrease the acceleration used by Windows Media Player, it must decrease the length of each animation so that, when you hit Print Screen, you get a frame that's pretty close to the one you were looking for. Experiment with acceleration rates and get back to me if this is the case. I'd like to know if the acceleration rate has anything to do with animation length.

Zornak · Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 11:56 pm�� Post subject:

Even when i set the acceletation speed to half, it still plays at basically the same speed (length) and allows me to copy frames
((here are some I did screen shots of. http://zornak.thegreatbeyond.net/FMA/ ))

chromus · Pez-Ruler Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 1703

The acceleration level shouldn't have anything to do with speed of playback since acceleration refers to how much your computer is using the video card instead of the main CPU to decode frames. It may also be possible that WMP is specially programmed to detect when the Print Screen key is hit and puts the current frame into the clipboard, which overrides Windows default behavior.

Zornak · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 2:38 am�� Post subject:

when playing a dvd in WMP, it dosent allow me to screenshot it, though. The screenshots i take are from a .avi format file already on my computer :O

chromus · Pez-Ruler Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 1703

Before I continue this thread, I want everyone to note something: not every program does things the same way. When a DVD player is written, it can be as simple as connecting a stream of data from the DVD to a Windows function or as complicated as manually reading bytes of data from the DVD and decrypting and painting the picture and etc... The same rule applies to a single player that plays multiple types of media (DVD, WMV, MOV, MPG, etc..)

DirectX, the set of media tools available for Windows programmers, has built-in functionality for playing DVDs. From what I know, almost every DVD player made for Windows uses it, since it's faster and easier than doing it manually. DirectX has a few drawbacks, one being the inability to take screenshots of running animations. I don't know if WMP uses DirectX to play WMV or AVI files, which may explain being able to take screenshots.

I suggest experimenting with various DVD players (if you can) to see what kind of built-in screenshot features each offers, as well as seeing if the PrintScreen key will work.

beyonder · Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 12:14 pm�� Post subject:

In Windows, there are two basic methods used for decoding video. One is DirectShow and does NOT allow you to take screenshots of the video overlay. The other, VFW interface, allows screenshots to be taken... DirectShow is faster, however may cause some problems so MS allowed for a way to disable it. Basically what you're doing by setting the acceleration to half is disabling video overlay, forcing the codec to either use VFW(very slow) or DirectShow but not in overlay mode(slower than overlay).
The video overlay is produced by your video card. Windows doesn't know what's there. How does this work? Well, windows has your CPU decompress the video, but then it sends it to your video card for color space conversion(MPEG2/4, including XviD/DivX is all done in the YV12 colorspace, but you need RGB16/24 or RGBA32 to display it!). When your video card is done with this it just slaps it up on the screen. If you set it to no acceleration it may disable DShow entirely...I haven't checked into that. Of course the video will play back at the same speed, as long as your computer is fast enough to still decode it, otherwise you'll get a big choppy mess. For taking shots of a video, I recommend using VirtualDub which has a function to save a frame of video. And you don't have to crop it.... as for DVD screenshots, I'd just decrypt the VOB files to my harddrive and take the shots from there... again in VirtualDub. Note that you may need an MPEG2 VFW codec, as VDub does not use DShow. If you have installed any software DVD player, you probably already have one...

The reason for DVDs is *basically* the same as the reason for AVIs except that some video cards (and add-on cards. example: hollywood2) can actually help in decompressing the MPEG2 stream from the DVD as well, meaning the video is sent to the card for processing even BEFORE the videocard does colorspace conversion!