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Need a WinXP Screen Capture App.


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Need a WinXP Screen Capture App.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2008-11-27, 01:42

I figure someone here must use one or at least know of a good one. I need something that will capture the screen and save it to file every 10 minutes or so. For a little background, this is for a computer that controls the HVAC in a building I volunteer with and the logs files produced aren't enough. So screen capture is the only way to show a realistic idea of what's actually going on.

I Googled it but came up with more than I'd know what to do with and figured I'd ask here. Thanks for any help.

Louis L'Amour, β€œTo make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
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Banana
is the next Chiquita
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
 
2008-11-27, 03:04

What's wrong with the default Prnt Scrn key?

If you want something automated, I am fairly sure it's in one of Windows API which can be called by a batch.
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Mac+
9" monochrome
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: πŸ‡¦πŸ‡Ί
 
2008-11-27, 06:38

Try Jing by techsmith. Not sure if it handles automation though.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2008-11-27, 10:59

Yeah, it needs to be totally automated. We aren't going to be able to sit at the terminal nor see the system most of the day but we need something to log it.

I'll check out Jing. I wouldn't mind doing a batch file, but I'm pretty rusty on my my batch language skills.

Louis L'Amour, β€œTo make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
colivigan
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
 
2008-11-27, 11:09

How about this?

Looks like you could set it up to automatically capture to a time-stamped file.
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Kraetos
Lovable Bastard
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2008-11-27, 23:38

The PrtScr button actually does work, even though you don't see a new picture file on the desktop. That's not how XP does things. PrtScr sends a screenshot to the clipboard.

So, you have to hit PrtScr, and fire up Paint. Hit ctrl-v, save, and you're good to go.

I know, it doesn't make any damn sense. What else did you expect from Windows? The good news is that Vista has much improved screen capture abilities. Vista has a utility called "snipping tool" which gives you the same three screenshot options OS X has had forever (screen, window, rectangle) as well as an incredibly useless "freeform" option which lets you circle anything on the screen with a red pen and save a picture of it. "Snipping tool," however, is more analogous to Grab than to Cmd-Shift-3, because snipping tool is not invokable via hotkey. In my experience, Grab (and, by extension, Snipping Tool) is utterly useless. When I want a screenshot, time is a factor. Taking the time to launch a program that does more than I need is a pretty crappy way to do something quickly.

Snipping tool gets an A for effort and a C for implementation. But it's still a step up the D that XP's PrtScr behavior earns.

A combination of the legacy Windows screenshot behavior and the new snipping tool would be ideal, i.e. if the PrtScr button invoked snipping tool. Don't count on this happening any time soon.

As for your specific situation, there's probably a way to script the behavior you're looking for using just the PrtScr button, however, I don't know what that is. Sorry I can't be of more help.

Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.
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turtle
Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
 
2008-11-28, 04:39

The problem with this PrtScr is it requires user interaction. We aren't going to be able to sit at the computer more than a few minutes at a time. That's why this needs to be automated completely. That way we can check resulting files from a networked drive on another system at our leisure.

Louis L'Amour, β€œTo make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it.
  quote
Kraetos
Lovable Bastard
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
 
2008-11-28, 17:30

Quote:
Originally Posted by turtle2472 View Post
The problem with this PrtScr is it requires user interaction. We aren't going to be able to sit at the computer more than a few minutes at a time. That's why this needs to be automated completely. That way we can check resulting files from a networked drive on another system at our leisure.
Yeah. There is probably a way to script the native functionality... but I don't know what it is.
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bassplayinMacFiend
Banging the Bottom End
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2008-12-01, 10:07

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraetos View Post
Yeah. There is probably a way to script the native functionality... but I don't know what it is.
There isn't a decent solution built into Windows like you get with AppleScript or Automator. WinRunner will do this, but has been EOLed by HP (who seems to own Mercury Interactive). HP has a new product to replace WinRunner, but must be quite pricey as you can only request a demo on the website, there is no price listing or listing of different products.
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