Comments on: Snagit And The Curse Of The Black Screen

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:47:00 +0000

I have a GREAT solution! I literally spent HOURS using Google and restating my search. I tried to update the driver for my video card and then, I tried to figure out why it wouldn’t update properly. I spend countless hours messing with settings, reading, throwing stuff, and just plain loosing my marbles! Well, FINALLY, I found something about Zone Alarm (A security suite) and I transposed the idea and went into my Webroot settings and chose the correct option to allow access to Snagit. EUREKA! There was also an option for the other capture programs I tried. It works just fine! Ok, first I will explain. Webroot, Zone Alarm, and I’m sure Kaspersky, Norton, and other anti-virus programs block the use of Snagit and other capture program that try to take screenshot of website with vital info on them. For instance, anything you typed like email, bank account, google searches, or any site in general where you entered anything, will be unable to be captured. The reason for this, is to stop hackers from remotely taking a screen shot of lets say your Chase account information. If the hacker can take screenshots without your knowledge, they can get important info to do bad things with your account. So you have to find the setting to allow Snagit.exe or which ever program you use to allow the captures. Once done, you will be able to take screenshots again. YAY! I will explain how to do this in Webroot Secure Anywhere Complete. Keep in mind no matter which antivirus you use, there should be a way to do this. If you can’t google search how, contact your manufacturer. Ok, here goes:
Steps:
1. Open Webroot Secure Anywhere Complete. (Use the desktop shortcut if that’s easy or use Start>All Programs>Webroot SecureAnywhere folder>Webroot SecureAnywhere icon.)
2. Click the Identity and Privacy tab on left.
3. Click on the “View/Edit Applications” link.
4. Scroll until you see the name of your screen capture program. In my case its under “snagit32.exe in C:\program files (86)\techsmith\snagit 10″.
5. In the three columns there are buttons you can choose. They are: “Protect” “Allow” or “Deny”. In my case all my programs were selected as “Deny”. Click on the bubble in the “Protect” column. Not sure what the difference between this column and “Allow” are, but I chose “Protect.
6. Click close when done.
7. Close Webroot, since you are done.
8. Check to see if it worked by trying the same page that went black before.
This should work. It sure did for me! I decided to share this post so I can save you all the hours of net digging I had to endure. Good Luck!

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:08:00 +0000

Sometimes when I’m using Snagit, the page goes blank (white) when I click on the red ‘capture’ button.

This is just grabbing a still image screen-shot and not using video.

Anyone know how to overcome this?

By: Nima

Nima — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 09:49:38 +0000

Hi,

I have problem capturing screenshot of video games with my snag it v9.0.
when I try to capture it turns out a black screen. & since I want to capture a video game & with hardware acceleration u can not play games (as peter said) , This guide didn’t work for me.
Has anyone got the solution? Thanks in advance.

By: niceget

niceget — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:05:02 +0000

That’s all well and good for XP and 2000 but Hardware Acceleration cannot be disabled in Windows Vista or 7 with Nvidia and ATI Video Drivers. This question has been posed to many forums and no one has the anwer yet. If anyone has the answer for disable hardware acceleration in Windows 7 32 Bit, please post it here.

Thanks.

By: David

David — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:49:18 +0000

THANK YOU, thank you, thank you… Tom Turner. A couple of hours into searching the web for a solution to this problem, and chasing wild geese about hardware acceleration and all sorts of outdated information, I stumbled across your comment. And I was surprisingly disappointed when it didn’t work for me.

But, after a reboot, all was well with the world again. According to Check Point (http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/forcefield_x/help/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm -> Troubleshooting and Customizing) the settings don’t take effect right away: “Your new settings take effect in your next ZoneAlarm browser security session, so restart ZoneAlarm browser security if you want to see them immediately.” Incidentally, if someone is using the standalone Forcefield product (if it’s still out there), they may also find that this applies, though the instructions for resolution are likely different.

So, to clarify, ZoneAlarm Extreme Security users:
- Right-click the ZoneAlarm icon in the system tray and choose “Show ZoneAlarm Extreme Security Control Center”
- Click “Browser Security” then “Settings” (or, alternatively just click “off”).
> – Click “Advanced”
> – Uncheck “Block programs that secretly record your keystrokes” (which could also say “…while simultaneously preventing the ability to do certain screen capture and record operations”)
> – Click “OK”
- Right-click the ZoneAlarm icon in the system tray and choose “Shutdown ZoneAlarm Extreme Security” (consider disconnecting from the internet or the network for these two steps)
- Once it’s unloaded, restart ZoneAlarm Extreme Security from the start menu.

It would be nice if Check Point would put a toggle for this on the context menu for ZoneAlarm and make it activate immediately, because that’s a lot of steps to go through to toggle this feature on-and-off. I’m leaving mine off in the meantime.

Good luck!

David

P.S. By the way, Tom, right now I’m using ZAES v9.3.037.000 with Browser Security v1.5.152.14

By: Ahmed

Ahmed — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:08:54 +0000

I have found another much easier solution for the Image-capture-video. when you want to capture an image from a video, just go to setting for the program used for displaying your video, and cancel accelerated video output “overlay” from the video setting. Like vlc video setting.

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:54:31 +0000

Hi there!
That is fantastic! Thank you so much! I live away from my home country, but I teach online. I needed to record a video of the screen with my voice commentary and I was trying to crack it for the past 3 weeks. Finally, I got the new snagit and I had the black screen curse! Imagine my frustration.

The guide is so easy and helpful! Thank you once again!

By: Chaz

Chaz — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:43:31 +0000

I too had been getting just black when I tried on Win7 to capture w SnagIt 9, 10 or several other programjs that were supposed to work with Win 7 (XP & Vista never was a problem!).

I was led to the fix by pondering Mr. Turner’s Nov. 15 post above about Zone Alarm Extreme’s Force Field disabling key logging (includes screen captures I guess).

I have Zone Alarm free and seemingly it does not have Forcefield.

It did occur to me when wondering what else might be doing it…to disable Prevxx (15 min off mode for games). Sure enuf it worked! I will experiment with other settings in Prevxx (require PC restarts to implement) to see if I can avoid turning it off entirely (I also have Avast Free Antivirus [wasn't the culprit]).

I have struggled with this issue for 4 months & could not figure out why the Snagit Forums at Techsmith (as well as Google search results) weren’t loaded with this complaint. I guess no one else is running Prevxx.

I found this ‘black screen’ page [the page you’re reading this on) via Google. I also found rhis page re ZA on Hyperion’s Capture tool website:
http://www.hyperionics.com/hsdx/hs4faq.asp#ZAForceField

By: chrisb

chrisb — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:21:14 +0000

There is one major issue which no one seems to have mentioned as yet. If you have Windows 7 and a modern Nvidia graphics card, it is not possible to disable hardware acceleration – period. As such there are a number of video player applications that will be nigh on impossible to grab. I have work with CCTV for the Police and get hundreds of different players etc through the door. We use snagit and camtasia studio, and both of them have difficulty capturing, we have to keep an old Win XP machine with an ati card in it for such things. Snagit and camtasia really need to work on capturing from the hardware GPU overlay.

By: peter

peter — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:02:08 +0000

Hello Tom Turner,

I would advice that you contact ZoneAlarm about this problem and see if they perhaps have a solution. I have tested Snagit 10 with 3 different security solutions, BitDefender, Adaware and Vipre and none of these creates any problems.

BitDefender:
http://www.softwarecasa.com/bitdefender-antivirus.html

Adaware:
http://www.softwarecasa.com/adaware.html

Vipre:
http://www.softwarecasa.com/vipre-antivirus-antispyware.html