Presently if you need a screenshot of your application on Windows Phone 7 you will need to use the emulator. Recently I came across a developer that found this would not work for him. He needed a screenshot of his application playing video and the video looks lower quality in the emulator. For this scenario you'll need to simulate the screen playing video. It only took me a few minutes to figure out how to do this. I'll start off showing the finished product:
To make this I started off recording a video in the emulator. Since there is no real camera in the emulator you get a video of a black square going around the screen. That was fine for my purposes.
Using the image editor of your choice (I used Paint.Net, which is free!) erase the white area in the top of the image. The rest of the image needs to be divided into three layers.
The top layer is going to be made of the transparent part of the image. Using the Magic Wand tool hold down the CONTROL button and click on the transparent overlay above and below the progress bar. Also select the parts of it that are in the play/rewind/forward buttons. Of the time indicator on your screenshot has any numbers with closed shapes (0,4,6,8, or 9) then you will also need to select the inside of the closed area. Once everything is selected go to the edit menu and select "cut." Create a new layer and paste the transparent part into it. You may need to move it around on the screen to get it back into it's original position.
Right now the transparent isn't really transparent. If you edit the layer properties you can change the transparency. I set the transparency to 196/255. I also changed the color of the overlay to be slightly lighter.
The opaque parts of the image will still be on the original layer. Create a third layer and in this layer place the image that you want to represent the video. You may need to reorder your layers but after that you are done, just save the image.
When I did the above I saved my work. So you can download the Paint.Net file and just change the image. If Paint.Net isn't your image editor of choice I also exported the layers into PNG file. You can download them from Skydrive.
Tags: Windows Phone