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How To Take a Screenshot From Quicktime
05.26.10
Many of our clients are involved in television production, or in the case of PlaySportsTV, are a complete online video network. When it comes to putting video on the web, you've got a ton of options to choose from: YouTube, Vimeo, premium video services, and then locally on your site.
Sometimes, however, the thumbnail created by most video services may sometimes not always be the one you want - or in the case of the "local" solution, you need to generate a thumbnail yourself anyway.
So you need to make your own screenshot. In most cases your video will be a Quicktime movie, or mp4 (as this has become very popular - particularly since many mp4 files can be played on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad).
Here are some simple instructions on how to grab the right screenshot from your Quicktime movie in three easy steps:
1. Open the video in Quicktime player and scroll to the desired frame.
Once the video has been opened. just click-and-drag the arrow on the timeline to the desired spot. You may also want to play the video until you find the right moment and stop it then. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to shift back and forth in the timeline, frame by frame. Find the right image and move on to step 2.
2. Copy the image.
Simply go to your menu and select Edit > Copy. Move on to step 3.
3. Paste the image into an editing program and save as a JPG.
Open your favorite image editing program (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, etc), create a new document and then save the image as a JPG file. Note for Photoshop users: Save for Web and Devices is a great way to assure the image you're saving is safe to use on a website.
Don't have an image editing program? Windows users: open your image in MS Paint (go to the start menu's run command and type "mspaint"). Mac users: open Preview and click on File > New from Clipboard.
It's that simple! Now, once you're in those editing programs you can resize the image, tweak the colors, etc. But this gets you through the basics.
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Filed under Video Production
7 comments for "How To Take a Screenshot From Quicktime"
Bien says:
January 04, 2011 at 09:02 PM
Juan - a new method which might be easier, would be to hold the SHIFT, COMMAND and number 4 keys together. This will bring up crosshair cursors which you can then use to click and drag an area of the video window. Once you release the mouse, a PNG file will be saved to your desktop. I hope that helps...
Eric says:
January 29, 2011 at 10:32 AM
If you're using Snow Leopard you're right, the copy option isn't available in that version of Quicktime, and the problem with a screencap is you're going to be limited to the resolution of your screen which may not be the resolution of the movie you're grabbing the screenshot from. To make the edit / copy option work, download and install QT7 from http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ . Right click your movie and choose "open with" then "QT Player 7". Now your copy option is not greyed out, even in the non-pro version. As an easier alternative, consider opening your movie in VLC and selecting video then snapshot. This will send a .png straight to your desktop.
Meg says:
April 14, 2011 at 11:03 PM
Thanks. This worked great for me.
VV says:
June 23, 2011 at 04:20 PM
You're a Genius! Thanks a ton!!
Angelo says:
July 03, 2011 at 06:37 AM
Thanks SO MUCH for the tips!!!!
al says:
January 22, 2012 at 06:11 PM
Thank you so much.
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Concepcion Design focuses on the design and development of a broad range of media and applications focused on Web 2.0 strategies and online video networks. We serve clients of all sizes - individuals, non-profit organizations, mid-sized companies and major television networks.
Juan says:
January 04, 2011 at 08:49 PM
I'm assuming that you need the QuickTime PRO in order to do that, as I have the standard version and the "Cut/Copy/Paste" features are grayed out