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Taking pictures from a movie? (strangest computer problem ever, please help)
I have probably the weirdest computer problem I have ever had. My friend and I took a trip together, and we took lots of pictures with his camera. At the end, we made a slideshow using a program I can't remember, which created it as a .wmv file (so it is technichally a movie). Anyway, I want some of these pictures, so I emailed him for it. I think he is away from his computer though because he hasn't responded, but I still need the pictures soon. So, I played the video, and at the spots where I wanted pictures, I pressed 'print screen' and pasted the image into notepad. I then saved it as a .bmp (when I saved it as a .jpeg, it showed the whole screen, with the menu bars and everything, but not the picture, it was black where it should have been).
So, things were weird when I noticed that when I didn't get a full view of the picture (ie the window it was opened in wasn't big enough to show the whole thing, which was most of the time considering it is a full screen image), it did not act normally. When I scrolled across the image and looked at it as it goes from left to right, the part around the picture of me (ie the black surrounding it, the menu above it, and the video controls below it, all scrolled from the left to the right except for the picture. It seemed to stay stationary. When I scrolled down to the bottom, the video controls at the bottom of the image would come up and block the bottom part of the picture. When I scrolled right, the black part on the right would block the right part of my picture. When I was at the top, the menu bar at the top blocked the top part of the picture. And making the image smaller would make all of it smaller except the picture, it wouldn't resize, it would just cut off a lot of it.
The other problem is that even if the image is saved, as soon as I close out of the Windows Media Player Window where I got it from, the picture of me is no longer in the image, it is just black where I am supposed to be. So when I sent the saved picture as an attachment to myself, all I got was black, because I didn't have the windows media player open. Whenever I start playing the video, the picture is the movie playing (even though it is saved), and when I pause it at another picture, that will be the picture that shows up in my saved image. This makes the image useless becase no one can look at it unless the movie is open and paused at the right part. And BTW, all of the problems in this post aren't computer specific, they happen on other computers too. Same goes for photo editors, I've tried it with multiple photo editors.
But here's the big problem even if this last problem didn't exist. I can't crop the picture of me out of the image. I can get rid of the top (with the menu bars), but when I cut out the bottom, I can cut it out but it will get rid of a good deal of the bottom part as well. The same things also apply when the image is cropped though. The picture still looks like it is stationary while I scroll through it, and the rest of the screen (be it black space or menu or controls) moves to cover it. And I absolutely can't get rid of the black part to the left of the picture. It is always there. When I try to crop just the picture out of the image (and not include the black on the left), it just cuts off the right part of the picture and leaves the black on the left untouched.
This is such a strange problem, and I have such a simple objective. I have a movie, and I want a picture from it. How can I do this? And when you press 'print screen,' it should take a snapshot of the screen, dammit. Why does it (or should it, for that matter) treat the video as a separate part of the picture that is still a video? The whole thing just doesn't make any sense to me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Edit: and I forgot to add, the thumbnails act the same. Usually as I scroll down the folder where the pictures are in, it will either show the image with black instead of the picture, or, it will show a miniature version of the screen around the picture, and then a not zoomed in or out, unresized, slice of the picture. When I scroll up or down, it will move where on the picture the slice is of.
So, things were weird when I noticed that when I didn't get a full view of the picture (ie the window it was opened in wasn't big enough to show the whole thing, which was most of the time considering it is a full screen image), it did not act normally. When I scrolled across the image and looked at it as it goes from left to right, the part around the picture of me (ie the black surrounding it, the menu above it, and the video controls below it, all scrolled from the left to the right except for the picture. It seemed to stay stationary. When I scrolled down to the bottom, the video controls at the bottom of the image would come up and block the bottom part of the picture. When I scrolled right, the black part on the right would block the right part of my picture. When I was at the top, the menu bar at the top blocked the top part of the picture. And making the image smaller would make all of it smaller except the picture, it wouldn't resize, it would just cut off a lot of it.
The other problem is that even if the image is saved, as soon as I close out of the Windows Media Player Window where I got it from, the picture of me is no longer in the image, it is just black where I am supposed to be. So when I sent the saved picture as an attachment to myself, all I got was black, because I didn't have the windows media player open. Whenever I start playing the video, the picture is the movie playing (even though it is saved), and when I pause it at another picture, that will be the picture that shows up in my saved image. This makes the image useless becase no one can look at it unless the movie is open and paused at the right part. And BTW, all of the problems in this post aren't computer specific, they happen on other computers too. Same goes for photo editors, I've tried it with multiple photo editors.
But here's the big problem even if this last problem didn't exist. I can't crop the picture of me out of the image. I can get rid of the top (with the menu bars), but when I cut out the bottom, I can cut it out but it will get rid of a good deal of the bottom part as well. The same things also apply when the image is cropped though. The picture still looks like it is stationary while I scroll through it, and the rest of the screen (be it black space or menu or controls) moves to cover it. And I absolutely can't get rid of the black part to the left of the picture. It is always there. When I try to crop just the picture out of the image (and not include the black on the left), it just cuts off the right part of the picture and leaves the black on the left untouched.
This is such a strange problem, and I have such a simple objective. I have a movie, and I want a picture from it. How can I do this? And when you press 'print screen,' it should take a snapshot of the screen, dammit. Why does it (or should it, for that matter) treat the video as a separate part of the picture that is still a video? The whole thing just doesn't make any sense to me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Edit: and I forgot to add, the thumbnails act the same. Usually as I scroll down the folder where the pictures are in, it will either show the image with black instead of the picture, or, it will show a miniature version of the screen around the picture, and then a not zoomed in or out, unresized, slice of the picture. When I scroll up or down, it will move where on the picture the slice is of.
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