How to take a screenshot of a game or Full Screen
running program inside GNOME or KDE desktop environment on GNU /
Linux and FreeBSD
I'm writting some game reviews and movie reviews, every now and
then and therefore being able to capture a fullscreen running
program like let's say
mplayer or
vlc or some full
screen running game is something I really need.
The usual
PrtScr button which normally works to prepare
screenshots in
GNOME or
KDE, however is not working
if the root window handler is being passed to a different program
than the Window Manager and pressing it while inside of many older
programs or applicationsdoes not produce a print screen of the
current screen.
Anyways I found a hack to this using the good old
ImageMagick -
import command line screenshotting
program.
To take a screenshot of a certain program run from
gnome-terminal or
konsole using
import cmd its
possible to use a quick one liner which will take a snapshot of the
root Window the started program will use.
Let's say you want to make a screenshot of the entry screen of the
FreeDOOM (DooM 3d shooter classical game arcade free
Software Alternative).
Launch
gnome-terminal or
konsole ,
xterm ,
depending on the GUI environment you use and issue the
commands:
debian:~$ ( sleep 15; import -window root
my_desired_screenshot_name.png ) &
debian:~$ freedoom
The first command will launch
import after a sleep of 15
secs and therefore will screenshot the active window which will be
at focus after 15 seconds, where the
& sign will
background it and the second one will launch
FreeDooM . You
will have to wait for a certain secs and switch to the exact screen
you will want to screenshot.
If you want to screenshot some game scene that will appear in 20
minutes change above
sleep 15 cmd to be to something like
sleep 180
That method can be used for screenshotting any other program
running on fullscreen, the method is a bit inflexible as you will
have to adjust a timing but it works fine ;)