Author Topic: Automatic Screenshotter v1.17.01 - Jan 3, 2020 (Read 51084 times)

mouser · « **on:** June 24, 2018, 04:33 AM »

Automatic Screenshotter is a tool that lives down in your system tray and takes regular screenshots of your desk or the active window. The intention is to be a fairly lightweight primitive "backup" tool, like an airplane black box, so that in a case of last resort (app or system crash) you can go back and see what was on your screen at a certain time in the past.

Features:

It's made to run in the background, taking screenshots of either the currently active foreground window, or the entire desktop.
You can configure how often the screenshots are taken, and how they are named. The naming can include putting them into subdirectories and can be based on the data,time, and application name.
It will automatically prune older screenshots based on limits you set regarding screenshot age, # screenshots to keep, and total file space you want to use.
It will also try to be smart about avoiding saving multiple screenshots when the window (desktop) contents don't actually change, with some configurable tolerances, to minimize disk space used.
It can also be told about certain applications to never capture, or alternatively a small list of applications that it should only ever capture.
It can be configured to ignore capture when your pc has been idle for a certain amount of time, or when screensaver is running, or when full-screen games are running.
You can also manually trigger a capture with a hotkey.
You can also toggle capturing on-and-off easily from system tray menu.
Screenshots are saved as standard png files.
In summary, the focus is on an automated system of recording recent activity on the screen, and trying to be well behaved regarding disk space usage. You should be able to set it and forget it, until you need to go back and see what was on the screen at a certain time in the near past.

Official web page: https://www.donation...omatic-screenshotter

Original thread: https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=42090

Screenshot - 5_8_2019 , 10_36_47 PM.png

v1.17.1 - Jan 3, 2020

[Improvement] Better catching and display of errors (main screen will show last error if any)

v1.16.1 - Dec 30, 2019

[BugFix] Specification of maximum folder size for autodeletion could get confused with large values over several gb.
[Improvement] New options to individually enable/disable different autodeletion criteria.
[BugFix] Setting image quality to 1 in options resulted in error.
[MinorFeature] Double-clicking on image thumbnail in main window will open the image in default image viewer.
[Improvement] Improved logging and display of pruning delete events.
[Improvement] Improved bundled version of Mouser's Media Browser.
[BugFix] Screenshot save directory was not being listed in options tab.
[BugFix] Compression level option was inverted.

v1.12.1 - May 8, 2019

[BugFix] Capturing active window on older versions of windows could result in unusual screen corruption.
[Feature] New preview of last capture shown on main window (see options on Misc tab).

v1.11.1 - Feb 23, 2019

[BugFix] Region capture mode would not accepted negative coordinates, which are needed for some multimonitor setups.
[Feature] You can now select the region to capture graphically.
[MinorFeature] New menu item to open last screenshot.
[BugFix] Automatic Screenshotter would sometimes store duplicate screenshots if the active window/process name was changed, even if screen contents had not.

v1.09.1 - June 24, 2018

[Feature] Added option to disable auto-deletion of older screenshots (and disabled this feature by default)
[Improvement] Updated the Internal Media Browser tool.

@v1.08.1 - Aug 5, 2017

[Feature] Added option to enable (default) automatic renaming of files if a file exists with the same name already. This was always done in previous versions, now it can be disabled.
[Feature] Added option to save a LastCapture.EXT file in current settings directory after each capture; useful with other tools if you want to react to the latest capture.

@v1.07.1 - May 9, 2017

[BugFix] Capturing of active windows could result in partial capture on high-dpi systems.
[Feature] You can now specify custom DPI for saved images (default is now 96dpi).
[BugFix] Start with windows option was not working.

@v1.06.1 - May 3, 2017

[BugFix] Fixed GDI leak that could cause app to hang after thousands of captures.

@v1.05.1 - Mar 21, 2017

Support for High-DPI displays (where text magnification setting is over 100%).
Improved default sound.
New option for capturing a specific region by coordinates.

@v1.01.01 - Jan 1, 2016

[Info] First release

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** June 24, 2018, 04:35 AM »

I have uploaded a new beta (v1.09.01). Although it is a minor update in most ways, the update of the internal media browser tool is non-trivial.

I would appreciate feedback on its functionality.

Note: The automatic pruning (deletion) of old screenshots is now disabled by default), and there is a new easy option for enabling/disabling this function.

KodeZwerg · « **Reply #2 on:** June 24, 2018, 06:11 AM »

I would appreciate feedback on its functionality.
-mouser (June 24, 2018, 04:35 AM)

micro-review:
The MousersMediaBrowser.exe could work a bit better with positioning and sizing.
Screenshot - 24_06.jpg

as more i play with options as smaller both frames get.
Small bug: double click caption will confuse Windows 10, many own windows react very strange when i doubleclicked caption.
Can it be that you try to have some kind of own taskbar-thingy? (limit screen with your app running)
Caption itself is missing in maximized mode:

Automatic Screenshotter v1.17.01 - Jan 3, 2020 (This is my Windows start position @ 0,0) i cannot access any menu anymore.

In Setup/Hotkey, i cannot define any "SHIFT"+Key combination. (example: SHIFT+A result in A)

Hope it helps.

TucknDar · « **Reply #3 on:** June 25, 2018, 07:43 AM »

@v1.09.1 - Aug 24, 2018
-mouser (June 24, 2018, 04:33 AM)

Can I borrow your time machine?

mouser · « **Reply #4 on:** June 25, 2018, 04:47 PM »

Can I borrow your time machine?

Oops

fixed.

Deozaan · « **Reply #5 on:** June 25, 2018, 05:18 PM »

Can I borrow your time machine?

Oops fixed.
-mouser (June 25, 2018, 04:47 PM)

Check the thread's title.

mouser · « **Reply #6 on:** June 25, 2018, 05:28 PM »

Fixed.

mouser · « **Reply #7 on:** June 25, 2018, 05:29 PM »

A reminder for any users of Automatic Screenshotter:

Note: The automatic pruning (deletion) of old screenshots is now disabled by default), and there is a new easy option for enabling/disabling this function.

So if you used the automatic deletion/pruning options in the past, you will have to enable this in the new version, as it defaults to being disabled now, and in the prior version it was enabled by default.

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** June 25, 2018, 05:30 PM »

I will soon be adding a manual pruning/deletion function that you can trigger that will help you remove old/unwanted captures.

mouser · « **Reply #9 on:** July 13, 2018, 05:30 AM »

Pushed beta to official.

desiree101 · « **Reply #10 on:** November 27, 2018, 09:19 AM »

I really like the idea of this software, although I'm not sure how useful it will be to me lol. I'm going to install it anyway

Thank you for sharing your apps, their great!

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** February 23, 2019, 04:14 PM »

v1.11.1 - Feb 23, 2019

[BugFix] Region capture mode would not accepted negative coordinates, which are needed for some multimonitor setups.
[Feature] You can now select the region to capture graphically.
[MinorFeature] New menu item to open last screenshot.
[BugFix] Automatic Screenshotter would sometimes store duplicate screenshots if the active window/process name was changed, even if screen contents had not.

mouser · « **Reply #12 on:** May 08, 2019, 10:34 PM »

v1.12.1 - May 8, 2019

[BugFix] Capturing active window on older versions of windows could result in unusual screen corruption.
[Feature] New preview of last capture shown on main window (see options on Misc tab).

I'd appreciate some feedback and feature requests.
If you were using Windows 7, this version should fix some screen corruption issues you may have suffered if you were asking Win7 (or earlier) to monitor the active window.

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** May 10, 2019, 02:33 AM »

Anyone?

lawrence567 · « **Reply #14 on:** June 28, 2019, 02:11 AM »

Just signed up to say Thanks for providing this useful tool Automatic Screenshotter, especially in portable format. THANK YOU !

mouser · « **Reply #15 on:** June 28, 2019, 06:37 AM »

Glad you like it! Thanks for taking the time to post.. I don't get much feedback on it, so it's always nice to hear when someone likes it.

tomos · « **Reply #16 on:** June 28, 2019, 07:35 AM »

I've been trying it (beta) for about two weeks.
Is working well (on windows 7) but I didnt feel qualified to comment about changes made as I hadnt used it prior to that in a long time.

justW3 · « **Reply #17 on:** July 13, 2019, 03:21 PM »

Features:

It's made to run in the background, taking screenshots of either the currently active foreground window, or the entire desktop.
You can configure how often the screenshots are taken, and how they are named. The naming can include putting them into subdirectories and can be based on the data,time, and application name.
-mouser (June 24, 2018, 04:33 AM)

Um, I can't seem to get this to work in Firefox. If there something blindingly obvious that I may be doing wrong? For instance, I wish to take screenshots of a particular area of a particular website, so under Options, U selected > Capture Options > What should be captured? > Specific region > Select region with cursor

But the problem is, the cross-hair cursor only becomes visible when it is not in Firefox. The Automatic Screenshotter Options pane remains the selected focus all the while, so it refuses to see / allow any selection within Firefox (presumably because it's not the focus?) . Am I missing something basic? Apologies in advance if I am!

BTW, I love Screenshot Capture, and was hoping this would be a more automated version of that.
Thanks.

mouser · « **Reply #18 on:** July 13, 2019, 03:51 PM »

It's possible that Firefox is running in some accelerated graphics mode that is preventing the region selection to work. Can you try minimizing Firefox and selecting the approximate region on the screen, and then seeing if the capture works as expected when Firefox is visible after that.

justW3 · « **Reply #19 on:** July 16, 2019, 08:36 AM »

Thanks for advice. However, I now find I cannot open Automatic Screenshotter at all! Must be something clashing with it on my machine. Icon is still in the system tray ok, and I can right-click to select various options - but no sign of the UI that was available previously. I was going to try it out with Chrome, in order to test whether the problem previously reported is unique to Firefox. But unfortunately there is no longer a UI, so now I cannot even access the cursor! Hey-ho. Never mind. I'll leave it for now.

For the future, any chance you might consider adding access controls of the sort Screenshot Captor has - ie a drop-down ribbon?
Also, a How_To video, maybe ...
Thanks.

justW3 · « **Reply #20 on:** July 16, 2019, 08:39 AM »

Oh, I just realised I should have got to the cursor via the Options dialogue! Sorry about that. I'll try again.

justW3 · « **Reply #21 on:** July 16, 2019, 09:09 AM »

Right, I finally got this to work.

Problem with the process: Cursor remained behind the browser and would not come to the front. Pressed minimize button on browser, and suddenly AS was now on top, with the browser behind it! (Ie the browser did not minimize, it simply went to back. Odd.) But now the cursor could be used to select the portion of the webpage required. Had to do this twice, as the first time the AS Options screen was covering a portion of the area I wished it to capture, so I had to move it out the way, and try again, as it stayed on top even though the "On Top Behavbr □ Keep on top of other windows" box was unticked.

Conclusion: A very useful program, but still has a few quirks to get used to.
Many thanks.

justW3 · « **Reply #22 on:** July 17, 2019, 06:20 AM »

One last oddity (promise!):
As you can see from the screenshot below, the (default) location of files saved by the program is not displayed in the Options > File Saving

Automatic Screenshotter v1.17.01 - Jan 3, 2020

mouser · « **Reply #23 on:** July 17, 2019, 06:23 AM »

Thanks for the feedback -- that is odd that the directory is missing. Let me look into these things.. AS does not get nearly as much use as some of my other older programs -- it's nice to hear some feedback.

mouser · « **Reply #24 on:** July 17, 2019, 07:46 PM »

Ok my field is blank too, so clearly that options page needs improving; basically blank = default directory.
But that's obviously very unhelpful. I will fix.