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Author Topic: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots  (Read 8871 times)

wheathe

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Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« on: February 02, 2012, 01:30 PM »
Hi,

I am new to post here so please bear with me.

Both my brother and I are fans of Screenshot Captor, and have successfully used it with Windows XP Pro and the X-Plane flight sim.

We have switched to new computers and are using Windows 7, SP1 64bit. Since switching computers, we have not been able to capture screen shots with the X-Plane program.

What we both get are blank black pics. Screenshot Captor works ok with other software.

X-Plane is a standalone flight simulator with no installation, just like a portable exe file.

Thanks in advance for your help.

William


mouser

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2012, 03:21 PM »
Hi wheathe!

This may be a directX issue.. Capture from accelerated direct3d windows does not work as normal screenshot capturing..  Are you sure there isnt a screen grab function within x-plane?

wheathe

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2012, 06:35 PM »
Hi,

Thanks for the response.

As far as I can determine, the only difference between Screenshot Captor working with X-Plane and not working is Windows 7 64bit.

With X-Plane and XP Pro, Screenshot Captor worked normally.

And yes, X-Plane has a full screen capture mode. It does not have Grab a Selected Region mode.

X-Plane uses Open GL.

Regards,

wheathe


Ath

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2012, 01:57 AM »
working with X-Plane and not working is Windows 7 64bit.

With X-Plane and XP Pro, Screenshot Captor worked normally.
Windows XP and Windows 7 video subsystem & drivers are further away from each other than 32 bit and 64 bit Windows. Most graphics tools/games using either DirectX or OpenGL need specific features to allow capturing.

You can always grab/save a full screen using the game's built-in features, then open the image using ScreenShot Capture and do any editing/markup.

wheathe

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #4 on: February 06, 2012, 09:53 AM »
Well that's not very encouraging.

Loosing the convenience of capturing a specific area of the screen is a real bummer!

So if I read you correctly, you are saying that we are out of luck with ScreenShot Capture.

Hopefully we will find another application that doesn't have this limitation.

IainB

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #5 on: February 06, 2012, 04:16 PM »
Both my brother and I are fans of Screenshot Captor, and have successfully used it with Windows XP Pro and the X-Plane flight sim.
We have switched to new computers and are using Windows 7, SP1 64bit. Since switching computers, we have not been able to capture screen shots with the X-Plane program.
What we both get are blank black pics. Screenshot Captor works ok with other software.

This may be a directX issue.. Capture from accelerated direct3d windows does not work as normal screenshot capturing..  Are you sure there isnt a screen grab function within x-plane?

...X-Plane has a full screen capture mode. It does not have Grab a Selected Region mode.

You can always grab/save a full screen using the game's built-in features, then open the image using ScreenShot Capture and do any editing/markup.

Hopefully we will find another application that doesn't have this limitation.

The issue would appear to be that the introduction of a new OS (Win7-64) - and its accompanying technology - has apparently defeated some functionality of SSC that used to work OK in the earlier/previous OS (XP).

If that is the case, then it would seem to be incorrect to call this defeated functionality a "limitation" of SSC - especially if it is in fact a directX issue (which is a proprietary Microsoft technology).

Are you unable to employ the workaround suggested by @Ath?
You can always grab/save a full screen using the game's built-in features, then open the image using ScreenShot Capture and do any editing/markup.
Sheesh.         :(

mouser

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2012, 04:21 PM »
I could try to add some directx capturing code to screenshot captor.. I may do that.. But my understanding is that it's a messy area where lots can go wrong.

mouser

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #7 on: February 06, 2012, 10:05 PM »
regarding this comment:

You can always grab/save a full screen using the game's built-in features, then open the image using ScreenShot Capture and do any editing/markup.

i just wanted to make a related point:

If any program ever puts a screenshot image file into Screenshot Captor's directory, it will be automatically detected by Screenshot Captor and you will be able to use it just as if it was taken by Screenshot Captor itself.

wheathe

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #8 on: February 07, 2012, 10:57 AM »
Gadwin Printscreen 4.6 does work, and it is free! It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Screenshot Captor's UI does, but functionality is the all important issue.

Thanks for your interest.   :-[

wheathe

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #9 on: February 09, 2012, 08:51 PM »
Something is very odd -- I've tried Gadwin Printscreen and found absolutely no improvement of it in terms of capturing directx full screen stuff.  So something else must be going on.

Can you explain how you are capturing the image of x-plane in the case where it fails with screenshot captor but works with the other tool?

wheathe

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #10 on: February 10, 2012, 09:42 AM »
"Can you explain how you are capturing the image of x-plane in the case where it fails with screenshot captor but works with the other tool?"

Both scenarios are:

I start X-Plane, which runs full screen and not in a window. I then proceed to fly a selected aircraft in a locale of my choice. i.e. KSEA Seattle.

When I move out side the aircraft to visually examine the aircraft in flight, I select a view point and then click Shift Print Scrn to initiates a screen capture. This pauses the simulator momentarily.

With Screenshot Captor, the select a rectangular area is initiated, but when the rectangle is outlined, the area goes blank, and becomes an empty black area which is what is saved.

With Gadwin Screen capture,  Shift Print Scrn initiates the rectangular area selection process, and one selects the starting point, and then moves the mouse to select the end point of the rectangle. Clicking the mouse LB then anchors the end point. One can then move or re-size the rectangle. Clicking Enter then captures the selected rectangle, and depending on preselects causes the screen capture to be saved. Control is then returned to the sim.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

wheathe

mouser

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #11 on: February 10, 2012, 09:47 AM »
In Screenshot Captor, if you just hit prtscr, instead of trying to do a region capture -- does it work?

wheathe

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #12 on: February 10, 2012, 10:08 AM »
Yes

mouser

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Re: Screenshot Captor Fails to capture X-Plane screenshots
« Reply #13 on: February 10, 2012, 10:14 AM »
Ah well ok, thats something a lot simpler then..
Must be a small bug in region capture mode for a full screen app, rather than a directx capturing thing as i initially thought.

I will fix.