Sometimes we might want to take a screenshot of a video or movie for whatever reason. Maybe you want to take a shot from a movie and make it your background. Or print up a set of instructions displayed on the screen. I use VLC as my media player and it has a built in option for taking a screenshot from a video.
Using VLC, first go up to the View menu and in the menu that drops down, check Advanced Controls.
Then, usually towards the bottom you will see a new toolbar added on top of the one that is there and one of the icons looks like a camera. Pause the video click on that camera icon and you have your screenshot.
Another way is to just right-click on the video and in the menu that appears click on Video and in the sub-menu, right at the bottom, is Take Snapshot.
My problem arose after upgrading to the latest version. On some videos clicking on the camera icon or trying any other way to create a screenshot would cause VLC to crash.
So the solution, go to Tools and then Preferences or press Ctrl+P.
Click on the Input / codecs symbol at the top. If you don't see it there, go to the lower left hand corner and under Show Settings click on the Simple button.
Then in the first section called Codecs the line that says Hardware-accelerated decoding, it's probably set to Automatic, click on it, I set it to Disable. Click on Save on the bottom right. That worked for me.