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Open Source Video Capture from a Win32 Window?
Phleg asks; "A professor of mine has been using TechSmith's Camtasia Studio software in order to take movies of what's going on on his screen. However, it's buggy, expensive, and a hassle. I've looked around the web for something that's GPL'd that can accomplish the same thing, and come up with nothing useful. The final stipulation is that it has to work under Windows, as much of the software he uses (Scientific Workplace, for one) is Windows-only. Has anyone found a (free) way to capture what's displayed on screen into a video, as well as grabbing inputs from a mic? Any codec would be fine." Those interested in a similar solution for Linux might be interested in this
discussion.
Whoops!
I thought you meant video from a camera. Sorry. Next time I'll read it better.
I do know that you can still use Virtualdub for this application - you just need a capture card and a video card with TV-out.
Also consider Windows Media Encoder. Not GPL, but still free (as in beer).
If I recall the VFW API right, it's very easy to write.
As someone who is trying his best to move away from any and all Windows-related software, I make what may be a stupid suggestion. If you can find a GPL'ed piece of software that runs on Linux, go ahead and use it. Just use it while capturing what's happening on screen - and using VNC to get at a window of a Windows-based desktop running the vital application.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
Lotus ScreenCam is something you should check out. Also, Microsoft Camcorder is a blatant rip-off of Lotus ScreenCam and came free with Office 97, but I don't recall it capturing audio.
Both of these apps are old enough that they may even run under Wine reliably.
http://math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html
It's not GPL'd, but I can't think of a better and smaller program. It's well worth 40 $ IMHO.
It can capture video at any quality/codec and have many useful options.
It can also do simple screenshots of anything (entire screen, a region, a window, the active window, a button, etc. etc.)
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Your best bet is to encode the videos at the highest quality (assuming your machine can keep up), then edit/cut quality later on. There's no way you will be able to encode DiVX or any of the more complex codecs in realtime, so just make unencoded AVIs and worry about the codecs later with VirtualDub.
The question was about a utility to make full-motion screen captures of the desktop/computer screen. Windows Media Encoder is just an encoder, it can't capture video of the desktop/computer screen, you need an application for that. Then if you wanted to you could encode the capture with WME, but that's irrelevant because the question was about the app to make the capture, not an encoder.
Anyway, I've made low-res screencaps before by taking the video-out port of an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 (several newer versions are available) and feeding it back into the video-in port while using VirtualDub to encode it into an AVI file. Again, low-res, but I've only used it for capturing protected full-screen streaming content that wouldn't download using standard hacks, so it worked OK for that.
However, for higher quality, one might set up an external capture box using any decent S-Video capture card and VirtualDub, and have the main box run a video card with an S-Video Out. That would be the best quality I can think of because I don't know of any video capture cards that have a VGA-in capture port.
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about 3 minutes on google gives :
.avi
http://www.atomixbuttons.com/vsc/index1.html
Runs on windows
captures to
and it looks to be open source
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maken
There's a program to capture a VNC stream to a playable file. Search freshmeat.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
A professor of mine has been using TechSmith's Camtasia Studio software in order to take movies of what's going on on his screen. However, it's buggy, expensive, and a hassle. I've looked around the web for something that's GPL'd that can accomplish the same thing, and come up with nothing useful. The final stipulation is that it has to work under Windows, as much of the software he uses (Scientific Workplace, for one) is Windows-only. Has anyone found a (free) way to capture what's displayed on screen into a video, as well as grabbing inputs from a mic?
Get a graphics card with TV-out, and just use a regular video recorder (or plug it into the back of another PC with vidcap). Something capturing your display to video in software is going to hurt your performance and may be incompatible with other software.
VNC seems to be the way ahead as screen capture is generally a very different problem to standard video capture/encoding. so using VirtualDub with Huffy, DivX, etc. would all be pretty useless for this application, as they're not designed for screen capping.
I'd check out the mailing lists at the real VNC website and maybe ask the question there. Trolling through the above archives I found a link to this, which seems like it may well be ideal (though very rough round the edges from the looks of things, I haven't had time to check it out yet).
It's basically a VNC session recorder/replayer
Linux/UNIX but as the guy says should work with CygWin. Don't think it's GPL, but an e-mail to the man may clarify what you can do with it.
You can of course get VNC for windows at the above site, or TightVNC over at SourceForge(which may/may not work with the above, I'd stick to straight VNC until you've tested the above).
Hope that helps,
I use it all the time for screen capture videos. From http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/wm7/ encoder.asp: "Enables Screen Capture to File and Real-Time Broadcast. Includes an easy process for creating screen capture and training demos using the Windows Media screen capture codec."
The dogma is running rampant!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
but hopefully this gets it past the retarded filter.
s tudio.asp
camstudio found on codeproject
http://www.codeproject.com/tools/cam
free, with source.
Considering that the article uses Scientific Workplace as an example of the software that's going to be run, this is highly unlikely.
To some extent, I mirror the feelings of the 'troll'. I've been noticing a lot of people comming into the open source looking for free beer and if they can't find it, expecting others to buy them a beer. They feel that they are entitled to have the community serve them.
What's even worse are those people that hear about this 'free software' thing, and want drop in replacements for expensive proprietary software that interfaces into the lowest levels of windows. There's reasons people don't write free versions of this stuff.
Most of the problems that are solved by going into the plumbing of windows (the win32 API is ugly, awkward, and when you get to the lower levels, very poorly documented) are either non-issues under Linux (such as the firewall post the other day) or have trivial solutions under Linux.
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