Author Topic: Screenshot aliases using MiniCap (Read 64,329 times)

TucknDar · « **on:** July 24, 2008, 03:54 PM »

mouser's excellent Screenshot Captor does pretty much everything you need for screenshot capturing (and more) but isn't exactly a tiny lightweight app. But it's baby brother MiniCap is a command line based screenshot capture app. This makes it ideal for the quick screenshot capturing tasks, and also ideal for FARR aliases!

You'll find MiniCap here: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/MiniCap/index.html

I've put together a package that includes some aliases as well as a fresh build of MiniCap itself. These aliases should cover a range of screenshot options but adding or editing should be easy enough.

Quote from: mouser

to install this you would put the minicap directory in your FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\Installed directory. That alias subdirectory is marked as Read-only from within FARR so that it can be easily updated.

To use, type 'mcap' which will present you with the following commands

Command	Description
Screen capture	Captures current screen
Last active window capture	Captures the last active window (i.e. active before launching FARR )
Select region capture	Interactive capture of region (traditional style mode -- locked to current screen of multimonitor)
Object capture	Interactive capture of object (red box mode)
Red box region capture	Interactive capture of region (red box mode)
Capture to clipboard	Copy the interactively selected image to clipboard
Border shadow capture	Add a nice border and shadow to interactively selected image
DC Review capture	Autosaves to "%MYDOCUMENTS%\reviews\$appname$\$windowtitle$_$uniquenum$.png" I found this was quite helpful when working on a minireview
Multimon capture	Capture entire desktop workspace (all multimonitors if more than one exists)
Delayed screen capture (4 secs)	Wait 4 seconds before engaging capture of current screen
Help with MiniCap	Launches the MiniCap helpfile

Thanks goes to mouser for both a lot of help and suggestions while making the aliases and for updating MiniCap and adding several new features. Looking at several other aliases was also very helpful, so if you've released a pack of aliases I've probably looked at it in awe

Latest version, 1.3, can be downloaded from my dcmembers webspace!

screenshot:

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** July 24, 2008, 04:34 PM »

really great.. I'll bet at lot of people find this useful.

here's a cool thing you could do -- for the items that auto capture into a directory, you could add the command to browse that directory onto the alias result. you would do it by adding something like ";;; restartsearch %MYDOCUMENTS%\crashinfo\" to the alias result before the icon.

mouser · « **Reply #2 on:** July 24, 2008, 04:37 PM »

Another note to users, to install this you would put the minicap directory in your FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\Installed directory. That alias subdirectory is marked as Read-only from within FARR so that it can be easily updated.

If you wanted to customize some of the results, you could instead put it in your FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\MyCustom directory, which makes it editable from within FARR.

TucknDar · « **Reply #3 on:** July 24, 2008, 04:43 PM »

Quote from: mouser on July 24, 2008, 04:37 PM

Another note to users, to install this you would put the minicap directory in your FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\Installed directory. That alias subdirectory is marked as Read-only from within FARR so that it can be easily updated.

If you wanted to customize some of the results, you could instead put it in your FindAndRunRobot\AliasGroups\MyCustom directory, which makes it editable from within FARR.

Yes, that's true, I actually put that in a readme within the archive, but forgot to write it here. Thanks

herojoker · « **Reply #4 on:** July 24, 2008, 06:08 PM »

Mmh, I just put it in plugins and it works!

mouser · « **Reply #5 on:** July 24, 2008, 06:10 PM »

plugin directory is scanned for alias files as well.

herojoker · « **Reply #6 on:** July 24, 2008, 06:13 PM »

Ah

To have a clean installation I moved the directory to the proposed directory (surprise: it still works

)

tomos · « **Reply #7 on:** July 24, 2008, 07:59 PM »

that looks great TucknDar

kartal · « **Reply #8 on:** July 24, 2008, 08:54 PM »

Is it possible to create folders with minicap as well? I just hate when all the screenshots are delivered to the same folder. I was hoping that I could deliver them to dated folders daily.

TucknDar · « **Reply #9 on:** July 24, 2008, 10:02 PM »

Yes, that's possible. Use something like 'minicap.exe -capturescreen -save "c:\existing\folder\$date$\capture$uniquenum$.png" -exit

kartal · « **Reply #10 on:** July 24, 2008, 11:54 PM »

Actually it does not work.
I used this one
-capturescreen -save "C:\temp\EkranYakala\$date$\$appname$$uniquenum$_$date$$time$.png" -exit

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** July 25, 2008, 12:13 AM »

MiniCap is supposed to autocreate the directory for you.

It may be the spaces or presence of illegal directory caharacters that could cause it to fail?

kartal · « **Reply #12 on:** July 25, 2008, 12:44 AM »

Mouser I posted the commandline, do you see any anomaly?

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** July 25, 2008, 12:58 AM »

im guessing its the "7/24/2008 "

im adding some date/time replacements to minicap to make it easier to specify custom paths based on dates.

kartal · « **Reply #14 on:** July 25, 2008, 01:08 AM »

So I am guessing that it is not possible to do what I want in the current version?

Btw it has very nice command line options, nice job on that one.

mouser · « **Reply #15 on:** July 25, 2008, 01:13 AM »

It is possible to do what you want its just easier in the new version because you can specifically put in fields for month, day, year so its easier to format date stuff properly.

kartal · « **Reply #16 on:** July 25, 2008, 01:17 AM »

So what is the solution to what I am trying to achieve?

mouser · « **Reply #17 on:** July 25, 2008, 01:34 AM »

grab the latest minicap just uploaded:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/MiniCap/downloads/MiniCapSetup.exe

replace the minicap.exe in the farr alias with this new one once you extract it.

then you should be able to do something like this:

-capturescreen -save "C:\temp\EkranYakala\$dt:Y$\$dt:m$\$dt:H$\$appname$$uniquenum$.png" -exit

kartal · « **Reply #18 on:** July 25, 2008, 02:05 AM »

Thanks Mouser. I was looking for such feature for so long I have tried so many applications. Minicap+Powerpro=real gem

Only problem I am having is that none of these name titles work. Everything works except window or app titles. I am under 64bit.

Here is my command line

-capturescreen -save "C:\temp\EkranYakala\$dt:m$_$dt:Y$\$appname$_$uniquenum$_$date-time$.png" -exit

$appdir$ - application directory (useful if you want to save snapshot in same directory)

· $appname$ - application exe name (without path)

· $nicename$ - nice name of application exe (taken from exe resource)

· $windowtitle$ - window caption

kartal · « **Reply #19 on:** July 25, 2008, 02:11 AM »

And the second problem I have is that capturing by the window does not stay open at all. It opens and closes very quickly and does nto leave any time to select any window.

-captureobjselect -save "C:\temp\EkranYakala\$dt:m$_$dt:Y$\$appname$_$uniquenum$_$date-time$.png" -exit

-captureredregselect is not working either.

mouser · « **Reply #20 on:** July 25, 2008, 02:24 AM »

use: -sleep #
to sleep for a few seconds (specified in #) to give you chance to select the window.

TucknDar · « **Reply #21 on:** July 29, 2008, 10:42 AM »

updated first post with link to download.

edit: Download is at http://tuckndar.dcmembers.com/download.php?view.2

The alias pack now includes latest version of MiniCap (1.11.01)

TucknDar · « **Reply #22 on:** July 31, 2008, 09:33 AM »

new version includes latest MiniCap (v1.12.01), with support for -promptsave command. I've only added this to the Bordershadow capture, but should be easily added to other aliases as well.

Border shadow capture with promptsave:

Code

minicap.exe -captureregselect -bordershadow -promptsave -clipimagepath -exit

This command will now let you select what to capture, then add a nice shadow and open a save dialog. Once you've saved your screenshot, the full path to the file is copied to clipboard and minicap is exited. Now you can easily use your screenshot in a forum post

"Example" while making this post:
[attachimg=#]
(Yes I realize that doesn't prove anything, but take my word for it, it took about 3 seconds including typing, to have that screenshot attached

)

The MiniCap alias now also comes with DCUpdater support! You don't need to miss even a minor upgrade

Download is at the same place: http://tuckndar.dcmembers.com/download.php?view.2

tomos · « **Reply #23 on:** July 31, 2008, 12:29 PM »

Quote from: TucknDar on July 31, 2008, 09:33 AM

"Example" while making this post: (see attachment in previous post)(Yes I realize that doesn't prove anything, but take my word for it, it took about 3 seconds including typing, to have that screenshot attached )

very impressive TucknDar - that will be a great help -
we'll probably start to see a huge increase in screenshots attatched to posts now

TucknDar · « **Reply #24 on:** August 23, 2008, 06:31 AM »

Bit of a shameless bump this, but are there any requests? It's pretty easy adding stuff yourself, but if you've made new minicap-aliases why not share them here and I'll include them in my "official" minicap alias!

I'm also going to do a bit of work on the icons, so they will all be different and hopefully even more relevant to the commands.