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How to perform a screen capture


Tim_S

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I'm looking to perform a screen capture and am having some difficulty finding how to do this. By screen capture I don't mean a single VI's front panel, but the entire display.

I found an example that simulates using the print screen button to capture the display to the clipboard. This worked when I pasted into paintbrush, however reading the clipboard in LabVIEW returned a zero length string. Searching resources hasn't produced any other information on how a screen capture of the display can be done. Ideas I've had appear to have run into walls.

I'm using LabVIEW 8.5 on Windows XP.

Anyone have ideas? (Dare I hope for sample code?)

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QUOTE(tcplomp @ Jan 17 2008, 07:09 AM)
The Code Capture Tool doesn't provide what I'm looking for as I want to perform a screenshot of the entire display, which could include, say, an instance of Notepad. It appears that the tool accesses the clipboard, but is this different than the method that the invoke node Read from Clipboard performs?QUOTE(Louis Manfredi @ Jan 17 2008, 10:18 AM)

Hi Tim:Have you tried SnagIt? (
) Not completely free, but inexpensive & has a free trial & I've been happy with it.Best, Louis

In 10 minutes of playing about with SnagIt, I'm impressed with the user interface and the apparent ease of use. However, it doesn't appear to have a programmic interface, which is what I need (lousy customer specs!). There is an registration for ActiveX for SnagIt (nothing in .net), but the property and method nodes were empty.

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QUOTE(TobyD @ Jan 17 2008, 01:41 PM)

Yes, the first part looks recognizable. I don't see a "Get Image" under the clipboard, so I assume there's a flag I've not set in the LabVIEW ini file. Taking the data into a Draw Flattened Pixmap produces an interesting image, but not a correct image. The results remind me of interlaced image files.

Before I forget again, thanks to everyone who is helping! :)

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QUOTE(MikaelH @ Jan 17 2008, 12:24 PM)

I had this happen once but I couldn't get it to repeat so I was not able to figure out why it happened. I'm sure the lack of delay is what caused the problem.

QUOTE(Tim_S @ Jan 17 2008, 12:29 PM)

I don't see a "Get Image" under the clipboard, so I assume there's a flag I've not set in the LabVIEW ini file.

There was an ini setting, but it no longer works in the newer versions of LabVIEW. You'll have to copy and paste the code from my VI into yours. Also realize that if you are creating this project for a customer this method may not be a good idea. It is not considered a supported use case of LabVIEW and NI will not provide support for it.

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I use SnagIt for screen captures, it is probably the premier Windows product for capturing all or parts of a MS Windows screen. SnagIt allows you to create capture profiles tailored to your needs. You can then assign a hot key combination to trigger the capture. If you can figure out a way to send keystrokes to trigger the capture from LabVIEW, this might work for you.

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