Screenshot from DVD (mplayer)

I tried to make some screenshots from a movie played by MPlayer, but everytime I try it I get an all blue image. I was using 'import -window root my.png' and also 'import my.png' but it is always the same. I also tried it full screen mode (MPlayer is maximazed) and in normal windowed mode and it still doesn't work. What's the trick to do this?

You need to find a player that supports taking snapsnots of DVD screens. That is, there has to be a command WITHIN the player to take snapshots. I know Xine used to allow it, once upon a time. Others probably did and do, too.

You are probably using the xv output driver, this displays the video with hardware acceleration and the X server never sees it. Use an output driver that paints the video images somewhere X can see it (e.g. mplayer -vo x11).

I try Xine. I guess that import doesn't work because mplayer seems to use a hardware overlay window. This is quite fine speedwise, but it not really great for taking snapshots. On the other hand I tried to use -vo x11. When I use this then I can take screenshots but the resolution of the movie is suddenly something like 712x532 (or somesuch). I tried to use -screenh and -screenw but that doesn't do the trick. How can I tell mplayer to resize to a customsize?

The problem is, then when I use x11 mplayer always uses 720x576 for replay. When I try to scale it the windows is created bigger, but the actual movie always stays the same. Possibly a bug?

No, the x11 output driver doesn't do automatic scaling. You can explicitly scale it with apropriate -vop parameters.