# Taking screenshots of TwitchTV's live player?

**URL:** <https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/t/taking-screenshots-of-twitchtvs-live-player/1010>\
**Category:** API\
**Created:** [July 20, 2014, 11:20am UTC](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/t/taking-screenshots-of-twitchtvs-live-player/1010 "2014-07-20T11:20:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Fiskan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fiskan](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/u/Fiskan)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2014, 11:20am UTC](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/t/taking-screenshots-of-twitchtvs-live-player/1010/1 "2014-07-20T11:20:23Z")

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Hi, I was wondering if it’s possible to programmatically take a screenshot of an embedded active live stream. For example, if I embed a live player on my website and I press a button, a screenshot of the current frame is taken and saved temporarily.

I did some research on the topic but it seems that most plugins involving Javascript does not support screen capture involving Flash objects. One suggestion I received was to ‘embed’ the live player in a SWF (?) so that it can be accessed with existing libraries but I have no idea how that works.

Thanks

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**Author:** ![Fugiman](https://d3ovvz0v2ajtpu.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/discuss.dev.twitch.com/fugiman/32/108_2.png) [@Fugiman](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/u/Fugiman)\
**Post date:** [July 21, 2014, 7:31pm UTC](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/t/taking-screenshots-of-twitchtvs-live-player/1010/2 "2014-07-21T19:31:55Z")

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Embedding the live player in a swf isn’t supported by Twitch, so it’s unlikely you’ll get support by going that route. If this isn’t meant to be a widely used tool, could you use the HTML5 player instead? It’s easy to take a screenshot of a video tag using javascript.

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**Author:** ![Fiskan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fiskan](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/u/Fiskan)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2014, 1:06pm UTC](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/t/taking-screenshots-of-twitchtvs-live-player/1010/3 "2014-07-22T13:06:49Z")

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I tried to find out more about the HTML5 player but it appears that it’s only available for mobile platforms? Is there a way to access the HTML5 player on a non-mobile platform?

I tried the method [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/2aduux/new_live_player_embed_help_us_test/) but it seems that the player is still running on Flash.

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**Author:** ![george](https://d3ovvz0v2ajtpu.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/discuss.dev.twitch.com/george/32/120_2.png) [@george](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/u/george)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 12:16am UTC](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/t/taking-screenshots-of-twitchtvs-live-player/1010/4 "2014-07-23T00:16:20Z")

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Safari on Mac is just about the only desktop browser that supports H.264 over HLS.

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**Author:** ![Fiskan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fiskan](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/u/Fiskan)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 12:21am UTC](https://discuss.dev.twitch.com/t/taking-screenshots-of-twitchtvs-live-player/1010/5 "2014-08-06T00:21:23Z")

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After a few weeks of researching, it seems that I’m at a dead end finding a solution for Flash player and I might just have to make do with HTML5.

I was wondering one thing; how does Twitch grab screenshots of streamers for the Live Channels pages?