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.

Comments

Workaround

[Dunkirk]

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.

huffyuv 2.1.1

[Anonymous Coward]

http://math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html

Hypercam!

[Enry]

It's not GPL'd, but Hypercam rocks. I used it for creating two computer-based-training CDs. Accepts mic input, can caputre the entire screen, a window, or a measured part of the screen, can add a starburst and click for mouse events, and uses the codecs built into Windows. The cost is $30, so while it's not free as in beer or speech, it's the best thing I found.

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.

That doesn't answer the question.

[Chasing Amy]

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.

about 3 minutes on google.....

[maken]

about 3 minutes on google gives :

http://www.atomixbuttons.com/vsc/index1.html

Runs on windows
captures to .avi
and it looks to be open source

just email your billing address
Ill send you a bill.
cash, check, visa, m/c, paypal accepted

maken

Re:about 3 minutes on google.....

[shyster]

Linkified. I'll take 15% of the billing rate for data analysis and report generation.

Look for a VNC framebuffer recorder

[ManxStef]

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,

Windows Media Encoder DOES do screen caps

[chocolatetrumpet]

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!