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I want to assign Print Screen to take video snapshots within VLC only (not as a global hotkey). Unfortunately I can’t assign Print Screen within VLC’s dialogs since it just takes a capture of the dialog, it’s not sending the key.

So I’ve found the appropriate line in vlcrc, but I’m not sure how to write Print Screen:

# Take video snapshot (string)
key-snapshot=

I tried Print Screen, PrintScreen, PrntScrn, PrtSc… When I open up VLC and check the hotkey dialog, the new key does appear in the list, however pressing Print Screen on my keyboard does not work—it will not take a video snapshot. I tried assigning another key, like so:

# Take video snapshot (string)
key-snapshot=F1

… and it did work, F1 did take a video snapshot, so I just need to get the right word for Print Screen.

Is there a list of how to type special keys into vlcrc so that VLC recognizes them? I searched the forums and the FAQs, but I haven’t found anything.

Print Screen is one of the keys that cannot be used as a hotkey.

How did you find this out? Is there a list somewhere?

Thank you for the information.

At first I tried to assign hotkeys in VLC GUI preferences. Caps Lock, Num Lock, Scroll Lock, Pause Break, Print Screen, Tab, Win, standalone Ctrl, Shift, Alt cannot be assigned as a hotkey.

Manual editing of "vlcrc" configuration file does not help, too.
From VLC source code http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=bl ... bf;hb=HEAD
the "Print" could be the magic word, but it does not work either.

Perhaps some VLC developer could explain something about it.

Print Screen is not recognized by the VLC core. It was deemed useless since practically all operating systems grab that key such that application cannot use it in a normal fashion.

O.K.

I want to assign Print Screen to take video snapshots within VLC only (not as a global hotkey)

legacy RegisterHotKey?

Following AutoHotkey script sends Shift+s to active VLC media player window when Print Screen key is pressed:

Yeah, I eventually wound up writing a similar script to get around the limitation; was hoping for a VLC-only solution, though.

By the way, have you had any luck getting a consistent ahk_class for VLC? Depending on the video, window spy tells me it’s “ahk_class VLC MSW randomalphanumericstring” which basically renders ahk_class useless. I resorted to doing a title match like you did which is not ideal since it’ll match anything with VLC in the title: a browser window, a document, whatever.