Author Topic: Scrolling capture is not working (Read 41028 times)

mouser · « **Reply #25 on:** October 04, 2011, 10:14 AM »

One thing people could do to help me is see if scrolling capture works AFTER you go into your windows display settings and turn off Aero Glass theme (select something like Windows Basic theme).

cranioscopical · « **Reply #26 on:** October 04, 2011, 11:58 AM »

One thing people could do to help me is see if scrolling capture works AFTER you go into your windows display settings and turn off Aero Glass theme (select something like Windows Basic theme).

On W7-64 it's even more disturbing under Classic. The window just sits there flashing. Great if you want to induce an epileptic episode but otherwise...

mouser · « **Reply #27 on:** October 04, 2011, 12:07 PM »

cranio, what application were you trying to scrolling capture? notepad?

cranioscopical · « **Reply #28 on:** October 04, 2011, 01:09 PM »

Firefox 7

I'll try with notepad...

cranioscopical · « **Reply #29 on:** October 04, 2011, 01:29 PM »

Doesn't work with notepad.
Just captures what appears in the window, minus the last line

Scrolling capture is not working

mouser · « **Reply #30 on:** October 04, 2011, 01:34 PM »

ok no more tests needed, im going to have to rewrite scrolling capture from scratch. stay tuned.

J-Mac · « **Reply #31 on:** October 04, 2011, 04:22 PM »

That is exactly what always happens to me when I try to capture a scrolling window in the browser - any browser. Notepad was the first time it didn't flash like that, though it messed up the numbers.

Thanks!

Jim

mouser · « **Reply #32 on:** October 04, 2011, 08:44 PM »

Ok i'm about 50% done with the rewrite of scrolling capture.

mouser · « **Reply #33 on:** October 05, 2011, 08:17 PM »

Ok so let me talk a little bit about my scrolling capture plans.

I have rewritten the scrolling capture code from scratch, and i currently have a FRAGILE version of it working with the new method.

I would appreciate those especially on windows 7 who tried the notepad test and it failed, to give this new alpha version a try:
https://www.donation...ScreenshotCaptor.zip

NOTE: This zip contains a replacement exe that you need to copy into your existing SC folder over your existing exe file -- it will not work if you just try to run it on its own because it lacks the other files SC needs to run..

Now, do *not* expect this to work on all kinds of advanced windows like firefox, etc. I'm more interested if it works on notepad and when/why not.

The old method used a windows api drawing trick to figure out where to stitch images; the new method uses what i believe most modern scrolling capture tools now use -- which is basically to align images based on overlapping content.

The current code does a reasonable job in lots of cases, but is not perfect.

So here is what I plan:

Rather than stitching on the fly with hard-to-configure options, I propose to add a serious best-in-class scrolling capture function to Screenshot Captor.

Basically when you select that you want to do a scrolling capture, a dialog will come up with some (remembered per application) options that will let you tweak various aspects of the scrolling capture attempt -- necessary since different programs need different techniques. This will also allow user to customize some other options for the capture -- region area, max # of pages,

SC will then capture a large number of images to disk, and then stitch them together AFTER THE FACT, rather than on the fly. This should enable one to do a much better job of automatic stitching, as well as allow post-capture tweaking of the stitching settings, which should let you tweak up any misalignment, etc. and choose to break up the stitched image into multiple images if it's too large, etc.

So anyway, i'm going to play with this new on-the-fly stiching for a bit, and then return to write the deluxe scrolling capture later.

mouser · « **Reply #34 on:** October 05, 2011, 08:46 PM »

Note:
The current code scrolls by pages when capturing -- which is very fast but can make alignment more difficult; i will probably be messing with this in upcoming test versions to try to balance speed vs accuracy.

CraigInDallas · « **Reply #35 on:** October 05, 2011, 09:09 PM »

I'm a brand new user who downloaded Screenshot Captor on the strength of the recommendation by Gizmo's TechSupportAlert website. I need the scrolling capability in order to capture application screens. The first thing after completing the download (and donation) was a scrolling capture of Firefox. The first time it was bad with duplicate images that didn't match up. The second time it was worse -- it got hung and never stopped capturing.

After reading the forum comments suggesting that scrolling was not a high priority, I was discouraged. I'm glad to see that you're going to focus on this feature and I'd like to offer my encouragement to you in hopes that you'll get the scrolling working soon. Good luck!

Craig

tomos · « **Reply #36 on:** October 06, 2011, 05:37 AM »

(it's just a new exe, not a full setup).
-mouser (October 05, 2011, 08:17 PM)

so, should we simply replace the exe in a current install?
Or does this work on it's own? OK it works on it's own I think:

I tried to follow instructions on previous page
https://www.donation....msg260751#msg260751

With an Aero glass theme (win7 x64):

When I Ctrl+Shit+Click within the notepad window, I get no reaction from SC - depending on where I click, some of the text gets selected.
I also now cant get rid of the red-boxes. Escape doesnt seem to work - I even successfully did a regular screenshot (Ctrl+PrtScr) and they still showing.
None of the other shortcuts displayed in the red-box frame work either - in Notepad, FF, or Dopus.

Restart SC.
Classic theme:
exactly same results

mouser · « **Reply #37 on:** October 06, 2011, 06:38 AM »

so, should we simply replace the exe in a current install?
Or does this work on it's own? OK it works on it's own I think:

no, it is a replacement exe -- it willonly work properly ifyou copy it over your existing installed version of screenshot captor.

tomos · « **Reply #38 on:** October 06, 2011, 07:18 AM »

well then - I'm a great beta tester - if it can be done wrong, I'll do it wrong ;-)

here's the notepad test with a custom aero glass theme - looks good

Scrolling capture is not working

Here's how it looked in Notepad2

Scrolling capture is not working

and scrolling capture:

Scrolling capture is not working

the numbers are perfect at least

(not sure why it got doubled up)

mouser · « **Reply #39 on:** October 06, 2011, 07:26 AM »

Why it got doubled up:

Screenshot captor thinks the horizontal scrollbar is telling it that the image is multiple windows wide, so it's trying to scroll sideways and stitch horizontally as well as vertically.

But the line numbers are messing it up since those don't scroll.

The way to handle that is by giving the user more control to specify the region containing scrollable content.

That will come in the final Deluxe scrolling capture solution.

tomos · « **Reply #40 on:** October 06, 2011, 07:33 AM »

^ yeah, not sure why horizontal scrollbar is there

But scrolling is looking good

mouser · « **Reply #41 on:** October 06, 2011, 07:34 AM »

This is just the tip of the iceberg proof of concept.. The final scrolling capture will be top of class.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #42 on:** October 07, 2011, 09:56 AM »

Bad news from me.
Non Aero - notepad - loses the bottom line.

Sorry for delayed response, my ISP vanished for >24hrs — charming!

J-Mac · « **Reply #43 on:** October 07, 2011, 10:08 AM »

....my ISP vanished for >24hrs — charming!
-cranioscopical (October 07, 2011, 09:56 AM)

The scrolling capture ate them?!?!

Jim

mouser · « **Reply #44 on:** October 07, 2011, 10:14 AM »

Non Aero - notepad - loses the bottom line.

do you mean it loses the bottom line from every page, or it does a successful scrolling capture but fails to grab the very last line in the file?

cranioscopical · « **Reply #45 on:** October 07, 2011, 12:13 PM »

Non Aero - notepad - loses the bottom line.

do you mean it loses the bottom line from every page, or it does a successful scrolling capture but fails to grab the very last line in the file?
-mouser (October 07, 2011, 10:14 AM)

Actually, it's worse than I thought.
From a file of 534 lines I get this

Scrolling capture is not working and only this, i.e. no other pages at all.

mouser · « **Reply #46 on:** October 07, 2011, 12:14 PM »

right -- well it's clear from the window borders that it's incorrectly identifying the client region.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #47 on:** October 07, 2011, 01:13 PM »

I'm beginning to see why you had deferred this

I tried keeping SSC locked in place and moving the monitor up and down but that didn't work either.

cathie28 · « **Reply #48 on:** October 24, 2011, 05:40 PM »

Maybe Screeshot Captor is a fine program for many of its features. By now, seems everyone knows scrolling capture doesn't work in browsers - esp. Firefox. I'm using latest SC 2.102.01 in Vista x64.

Something has changed in late versions of browsers (FF), where screen capture prgms (even old last free ver of FastStone) that handled scrolling capture perfectly in FF v3.6x & maybe v4 , no longer can - even updated prgms that claim to. Then FastStone stopped scrolling capture (so did other similar prgms), then w/ another FF release, FastStone scroll capture worked again, then quit for good w/ another FF release.

Re: current SC - please don't say that it supports scrolling screen function- it doesn't. List it as a beta feature, or something - up front, before users jump thru all hoops to use it. I understand it may be difficult to write the code so it will handle scrolling browser screens, but as a matter of being up front on "features," don't advertise it will when it won't. Scrolling capture in FF 7, it flickers, flashes, stands still, scrolls down a bit, flashes / flickers some more, then after ~ 1 min captures only the viewable screen.

I'm perfectly fine w/ having to get a license - eventually - to use SC. But, the effort one must go through to install, sign up, get the license only to discover it doesn't handle some advertised features at all, that I often need is, uh, disappointing.

Other dedicated FF plugins "more suited to scrolling screen captures" have been mentioned. Didn't see names, but assume one may be FireShot. Maybe others I don't know of. FireShot will do scrolling capture. But in some respects, the free ver is a PIA to use. I guess you get what you pay for, so can't complain too much. I may have to pay for a prgm to handle scrolling capture.

Thanks.

mouser · « **Reply #49 on:** October 27, 2011, 09:53 AM »

please don't say that it supports scrolling screen function- it doesn't. List it as a beta feature, or something - up front, before users jump thru all hoops to use it.

i hear ya.. for a while it was a reliable feature.. then ff versions and win7 broke all that and it's been pretty unreliable for a while now.

i done much of the work for a completely new wonderful scrolling capture -- it's coming soon.