Black Screen or Box when taking Screenshots of Videos in Windows Media Player

Many video players like WMP will show a black box when trying to take a video capture. Here’s the fix for that problem.

The hardware acceleration and screen overlays that video cards and software use to show videos can prevent screenshots from being easily taken. By temporily disabling this features, you can take the screenshot without it appearing to be just a black box. No more black boxes on your vidcaps.

Two main changes work on most systems. Besides making the screenshot possible, both of them will impact your video performance. Therefore you might want to try each one seperately.

No more black box on your video capture:

1. Open Windows Media Player (WMP)
2. Click the Tools menu
3. Click Options
4. Click the Performance tab
5. Slide the video acceleration to none.
6. Click OK
7. Start your video and try to take a screenshot

If you still have problems, do the following…

4. Click the Performance tab
5. Click the Advanced button
6. Uncheck Use Overlays
7. Click OK twice
8. Try your screenshot

After you take your screenshots, return everything back to normal by clicking the Restore Defaults button under the Performance tab. You may also wish to try to turn off overlays first before your reduce your video acceleration. Whatever works for you is whatever works. This is just a temporary fix to allow you to take some screenshots of your movie anyway.

Editor Note:

Here is related information on taking video captures with other video players such as real player and winamp.

Enjoy!