Take a screen capture in either the JPG or PNG format when watching a video with the VLC multimedia player

You may want to take a few screen captures from streaming video so that you can add these to a power point presentation for example, or simply just to share these with your friends. Here is how it can be done with the VLC multimedia player.

Firstly, why does this tip apply to the VLC program? Our choice of VLC is explained by the fact that it is free, open source and multiplatform. Simply, you can use it on Windows, Macintosh or Linux operating systems, so that everyone can use this method.

Firstly launch the VLC player. You will then need to configure the capture settings. To do this, click on the “Settings” menu and select “Preferences”.

In the new window that is displayed, select the “Video” part from the left hand menu. From here, it will be possible to choose a name for the captured pictures, their location and the format you want to use – either JPG or PNG. Once the settings have been made, click on the “Apply” button.

Start the video that you want to capture and use the slide bar to place it at the picture you want to take by pressing the pause button. Next, right click on the video and select the “Capture screen” option. The operation can be done as many times  as you like, and it is then just  up to you to view the files, sort them, rename then and touch them up for final use.

As you see in the above capture, the print screen key doesn’t work with video streams, which is where this tip comes in handy.