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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Topic started by: SysAdmin on January 11, 2012, 05:56:14 AM

Title: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: SysAdmin on January 11, 2012, 05:56:14 AM
News from vox via amigaworld.net


Bounty Link (http://www.amigabounty.net/index.php?function=viewproject&projectid=93)

New suggested bounty open, please donate

AmigaOS is crying out for software that allows the user to record what is going-on on their screen.

With YouTube popular as ever - many AmigaOS users want to show off their operating system, and the applications and software available. At present AmigaOS users are expected to point a camera at the screen - this results in making AmigaOS look very un-professional and less appealing to potential customers. This is unacceptable.

This bounty is to produce a screen capturing tool that sets to achieve much higher recording speeds as well as recording audio than current implementations. The software should take complete advantage of new features found in AmigaOS 4.1 and AmigaOS 4.2 (when available) to record the display at the optimum speed.

The developer who accepts this bounty may choose to exploit the capabilities of the Radeon HD graphics card series as found (optionally) in the AmigaOne 500 and (as standard) in the AmigaOne X1000.
The developer should also aim to fully exploit Gallium/Mesa when it becomes available - again to make sure the Screen Capturing Application is realising its full potential.

Proposed features:

Save stream as AVI, MOV and/or other common formats
User can select any screen
User can mark any square of the screen
Software must record sound via AHI
Must record the movement of the mouse pointer
User can choose whether the screen capture is scaled or is record as-is
User can toggle a 'Follow my mouse' mode
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: takemehomegrandma on January 11, 2012, 06:37:37 AM
Quote from: Transition;675310
News from vox via amigaworld.net


Bounty Link (http://www.amigabounty.net/index.php?function=viewproject&projectid=93)

New suggested bounty open, please donate

AmigaOS is crying out for software that allows the user to record what is going-on on their screen.

With YouTube popular as ever - many AmigaOS users want to show off their operating system, and the applications and software available. At present AmigaOS users are expected to point a camera at the screen - this results in making AmigaOS look very un-professional and less appealing to potential customers. This is unacceptable.

This bounty is to produce a screen capturing tool that sets to achieve much higher recording speeds as well as recording audio than current implementations. The software should take complete advantage of new features found in AmigaOS 4.1 and AmigaOS 4.2 (when available) to record the display at the optimum speed.

The developer who accepts this bounty may choose to exploit the capabilities of the Radeon HD graphics card series as found (optionally) in the AmigaOne 500 and (as standard) in the AmigaOne X1000.
The developer should also aim to fully exploit Gallium/Mesa when it becomes available - again to make sure the Screen Capturing Application is realising its full potential.

Proposed features:

Save stream as AVI, MOV and/or other common formats
User can select any screen
User can mark any square of the screen
Software must record sound via AHI
Must record the movement of the mouse pointer
User can choose whether the screen capture is scaled or is record as-is
User can toggle a 'Follow my mouse' mode


Isn't there one over at Aminet already? I'm pretty sure I used one once...
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: prowler on January 11, 2012, 07:03:50 AM
I have never used it but is srec (http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=video/record/srec.lha) that bad?

Would it not be worthwhile and save time by updating this software rather than reinvent the wheel by coding a new piece of software from scratch?
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: itix on January 11, 2012, 08:11:06 AM
Screen capturing is slow because ReadPixelArray() is slow. Applications can't accelerate it.
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: Duce on January 11, 2012, 08:52:37 AM
I just use FRAPS over VNC client/server.

I'm crying out for a web browser that don't completely crap the bed when I go to check GMail and other Google services on my OS4 machine.
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: Dandy on January 11, 2012, 09:10:16 AM
Quote from: Transition;675310
News from vox via amigaworld.net


Bounty Link (http://www.amigabounty.net/index.php?function=viewproject&projectid=93)

New suggested bounty open, please donate

AmigaOS is crying out for software that allows the user to record what is going-on on their screen.
...



Already tried SnapShoter (http://www.xabierpayet.com/)?
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: Crumb on January 11, 2012, 10:16:09 AM
Quote from: itix;675319
Screen capturing is slow because ReadPixelArray() is slow. Applications can't accelerate it.

Very true although if you plan to reduce resolution you can do it before calling ReadPixelArray(), I did some blitter-zoom tests with my PicassoIV 10 years ago. I guess it could be slightly accelerated if resolution is quarter size before calling that function, e.g.:
-you reserve memory for 2 bitmaps: one half the vertical size and the second a quarter of the size of the original screen
-you use the blitter to copy the screen odd lines to the 1st bitmap (the half size one)
-you use blitter to copy the odd columns from the 1st bitmap (the half size one) to the 2nd bitmap (the quarter size one)
-you use the slow ReadPixelArray() to read the small bitmap

Since RTG blitter is quite fast and you only have to move 1/4 of the pixels it should help to gain some speed when resolution is reduced.
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: itix on January 11, 2012, 10:38:06 AM
@Crumb

I can't remember if ScreenRecorder scaled it down (using blitter) before ReadPixelArray() (havent touched it lately...) but you hardly see anything if FullHD is scaled down to 320x200...
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: Crumb on January 11, 2012, 12:22:57 PM
Quote from: itix;675337
@Crumb

I can't remember if ScreenRecorder scaled it down (using blitter) before ReadPixelArray() (havent touched it lately...) but you hardly see anything if FullHD is scaled down to 320x200...


Quarter of screen size of 1920x1080 pixels would be 960x540 pixels and using 16bits instead of 32bits may help a little. It's still 1MB per frame so not fast to read and later encode.
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: itix on January 11, 2012, 02:04:24 PM
Quote from: Crumb;675344
Quarter of screen size of 1920x1080 pixels would be 960x540 pixels and using 16bits instead of 32bits may help a little. It's still 1MB per frame so not fast to read and later encode.


16-bit screens look so crappy it is an insult... but it would help if Screen Recorder just dumped screen to HD and encoded it later. At 15/30 fps you could get acceptable results.

Screen Recorder also allows recording smaller area under mouse pointer. This should produce interesting videos, too.
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: XDelusion on January 13, 2012, 11:50:33 PM
I tried using one in MorphOS once, but my eMac seemed to slow to handle the task...

Better have a beefy machine.
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: Minuous on January 15, 2012, 10:45:09 PM
Surely the fastest way would be to just get a pointer to the relevant bitmap and grab the data directly from memory.
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: Piru on January 15, 2012, 11:11:56 PM
Quote from: Minuous;675995
Surely the fastest way would be to just get a pointer to the relevant bitmap and grab the data directly from memory.

That's exactly what ReadPixelArray does. You won't get any performance boost from doing it manually by yourself.
Title: Re: Screen Capturing Application Bounty
Post by: kickstart on January 16, 2012, 12:14:36 AM
After read that isnt possible to make a good application for record the screen, why people ask for money without knowledge about it?