How do I take screenshots of great multimedia player TCPMP (or, any other decent video player) playing videos on my Dell Axim x5

Now, after publishing my roundup of capturing the screen of Pocket PC’s where I’ve also elaborated on the chances of capturing the screen of HTC Camera, I’ve received a question regarding doing the same with the great multimedia / video player TCPMP on Dell Axim x50v/x51v devices.

On these devices, by default, TCPMP playing videos can not be captured – the active video area shows the same symptoms as that of HTC Camera (that is, nothing can be seen on the capture, let it be captured on the PDA itself or through a Pocket PC controller application). An example screenshot of this situation is here.

Fortunately, as opposed to HTC Camera, there is a very simple solution to this problem: go to Options/Video and select anything but the default Intel 2700G Decoder (and Intel 2700G); that is, DirectDraw, Raw Framebuffer and GDI will all work. (Of course, after you've made the screenshots, switch back for optimal performance if you watch a lot of videos on your device.)

After this setting, the video playback can be captured as can be seen in here.

What about other devices?

All of them can be captured in all modes. A breakdown and a lot of examples (packed with screenshots so that you can see they do work) follows, separating Pocket PC’s on the ground of the default (most optimal) play mode TCPMP defaults to on them:

1. Intel XScale: for example, the Pocket Loox 720
2. ATI ImageOn (GPU): for example, the HP iPAQ hx4700 (here with WM5)
3. Direct (screen access): for example, the Compaq iPAQ 36xx/37xx series
4. DirectDraw: for example, the HTC Universal
5. Raw Framebuffer: for example, the HTC Wizard
6. GAPI: for example, the HP iPAQ 2210 and the Pocket PC 2000 Casio Cassiopeia E-125.