HOWTO defeat Apple's anti-DVD-screenshot DRM

My geeky tip comes from Boing Boing. If you ever wanted to share a certain image or scene from a DVD, here's how.


Apple disables the OS X screenshot capability while a DVD is playing (this is a giant pain in the ass if you've got a little DVD playing in the corner of the screen while blogging and you have to quit the player when you want to take a screenshot of your browser). There's a work-around, though, for those times when you want to make a (generally speaking, perfectly lawful) screenshot of your DVD player:

1) Put your DVD in your computer and open DVD Player (Applications -> DVD Player) if it does not open automatically. Go to Video -> Maximum Size, or hit Command-3. Fast forward to the frame you want to capture, or select the scene to start at.

2) Open the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal). Type this, or copy / paste it right in the Terminal:

screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.jpg

Your mouse should turn into crosshairs. Now hit the space bar. Your mouse should now be a camera. Click the window the DVD is playing in. A file called "dvd.jpg" will appear on your desktop.">Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things: "HOWTO defeat Apple's anti-DVD-screenshot DRM
Apple disables the OS X screenshot capability while a DVD is playing (this is a giant pain in the ass if you've got a little DVD playing in the corner of the screen while blogging and you have to quit the player when you want to take a screenshot of your browser). There's a work-around, though, for those times when you want to make a (generally speaking, perfectly lawful) screenshot of your DVD player:

1) Put your DVD in your computer and open DVD Player (Applications -> DVD Player) if it does not open automatically. Go to Video -> Maximum Size, or hit Command-3. Fast forward to the frame you want to capture, or select the scene to start at.

2) Open the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal). Type this, or copy / paste it right in the Terminal:

screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.jpg

Your mouse should turn into crosshairs. Now hit the space bar. Your mouse should now be a camera. Click the window the DVD is playing in. A file called 'dvd.jpg' will appear on your desktop."