autoscreen
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gavinkendall
Optimize Screen Capture does not seem to work
Hi Gavin, I do not know why but app still makes screenshots even if nothing happens on the screen. I have enabled Optimize Screen Capture but it does not seem to work as intended. I have it set to take a screenshot every 1 second.
Are you taking screenshots of the entire screen or just an area (region) of it? Is it taking screenshots every minute? If so then that would be the clock changing the captured image.
When you look at the "screenshots.xml" file in the "!autoscreen" directory do any of the records show a hash value?
For example one of my screenshots has a hash value of 8d203b75262aad9d446e3dbf141c28b5
<screenshot id="cf071c05-fba5-4e5c-8bd3-e0cf2ad9ce4f"> <version>2.4.1.6</version> <viewid>91287131-4bda-4f83-a1a1-daa4fe8675d2</viewid> <date>2022-02-14</date> <time>17:12:08.633</time> <path>C:\Users\psyph\AppData\Local\Auto Screen Capture\screenshots\2022-02-14\Screen 1\notepad (2022-02-14 17-12-08.633).jpeg</path> <format>JPEG</format> <slidename>{date=2022-02-14}{time=17:12:08.633}</slidename> <slidevalue>17:12:08.633 [screenshots.xml - Notepad]</slidevalue> <windowtitle>screenshots.xml - Notepad</windowtitle> <processname>notepad.exe</processname> <label> </label> <hash>8d203b75262aad9d446e3dbf141c28b5</hash> <encrypted>False</encrypted> <key> </key> </screenshot>
I've done a little bit of my own testing and I've noticed two images that look identical but the hash values are different. Very interesting.
I already mentioned it takes a screenshot every second. I don't want to miss anything. So it only works by comparing hashes ,not any machine learning algorithm to verify the actual image itself?
Yes but if you have it set to take screenshots every second yet it takes screenshots every minute while nothing is happening on the screen then that’s a sign it’s considering the change from the clock on the taskbar and nothing else.
The method to determine the difference between an existing image and a new image just captured is literally comparing the image’s byte data so even the smallest difference will be noticed. The byte data is fed into a hashing algorithm to obtain a singular value that represents the image.
Where and when did i say it takes screenshots every minute? I said it takes screenshots every second. That's how I set it up. And I have identical screenshots of the same thing on screen. I guess reading just hashes is not enough. How do you plan to fix it? The only reason I wanted to use your app is for not needing to manually take screenshots when some pieces of text changes in someone's video presentation.
I meant that it will take screenshots every minute regardless of setting up with a faster interval because of the clock in the taskbar changing every minute. You've set it for every second (which is fine), but the clock in the taskbar will change every minute so you'll end up with screenshots every minute (for a full screen capture).
So video changes all the time. The byte data in each image captured in a video is going to change as perceived by the algorithm even if it's not visually changing as perceived by a human. It would be better to have some Optical Character Recognition to be used for determining the difference in captured text rather than the difference in captured images.
I'm looking into implementing OCR. It will take a while to figure out a good solution but I'll let you know when it's ready.
I know ShareX does an auto capture and OCR (they do online OCR instead of offline OCR). If you ask the development team of ShareX how to set it up I'm sure they'll be able to help. You can find them on Discord at https://discord.gg/ShareX or Twitter at https://twitter.com/ShareX
There's no clock in taskbar. I was recording a full screen video. Only a video that had only text was shown on the whole desktop. Hopefully you can implement OCR of some sort. Only then your app will actually help me win hours of manual work. I'm so sad honestly. I saw a video you made that seemed to work fine and no duplicate images appeared that made me so happy. Now when tried it myself it does not work as expected.
Gavin do you have a support email or some other way I can send you a message?