μGiffer [graphic capture utility]

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vacherin
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:01 am

μGiffer [graphic capture utility]

#1 Post by vacherin »

[Mod note: the present topic was split from its original posting location in the Bvckup thread: viewtopic.php?t=16768]

Just a quick note to say that I somehow ended up making another spin-off program instead of, you know, continuing to diligently chew through the bvckup's todo list.

Meet Giffer - a minimalist screen to gif recorder.

Image

Point at what you want, hit F1 to start record, hit F1 to stop it, make a gif and open it with a default viewer.
Around ~100KB in size, no funny dependencies.

Full(er) description is over here - https://gist.github.com/apankrat/14b286 ... f3102cf72d

* Can be used in a portable mode by feeding config folder path with "-c <path>" command line argument.
** The name's temporary. Apparently I am not the only creative namer out there.

Specular
Posts: 443
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:54 pm

Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#2 Post by Specular »

vacherin wrote: Wed May 29, 2019 12:22 am Just a quick note to say that I somehow ended up making another spin-off program instead of, you know, continuing to diligently chew through the bvckup's todo list.

Meet Giffer - a minimalist screen to gif recorder.

* Can be used in a portable mode by feeding config folder path with "-c <path>" command line argument.
Nice. I compared it to the GIF screen capture I normally use, ScreenToGIF (v1.4 with the simpler UI that launches directly to the capture window), and set to the same framerate the filesizes were pretty much the same for the similar subject captured, which is good since Giffer was faster to process the GIF (though ScreenToGIF has the advantage of allowing subsequent editing functions like timeline trimming, cropping, etc).

One thing I noticed was the green 1px window border would become visible in the capture if the Giffer window is moved during capture. Not a big deal for captures in which the window is static though.

vacherin
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:01 am

Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#3 Post by vacherin »

One thing I noticed was the green 1px window border would become visible in the capture if the Giffer window is moved during capture. Not a big deal for captures in which the window is static though.
Hmm. There's actually the code to prevent that from happening. I'll give it another look.

vacherin
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:01 am

Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#4 Post by vacherin »

@Specular - Can you give this build a try please - https://bvckup2.com/files/giffer-0.9.3.exe ?

Specular
Posts: 443
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:54 pm

Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#5 Post by Specular »

vacherin wrote: Wed May 29, 2019 2:10 am @Specular - Can you give this build a try please - https://bvckup2.com/files/giffer-0.9.3.exe ?
Seems to have fixed it for moderate panning speeds now, yup. Only if one rapidly moves the window will it occasionally reveal the window frame itself within the capture (see attachment) but that's hardly a concern.
Attachments
Example.gif

vacherin
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:01 am

Re: Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#6 Post by vacherin »

@Specular - Thanks. I nearly torn my wrist off, but managed to reproduce it!
Uno mas, if you can, please - https://bvckup2.com/files/giffer-0.9.4.exe ?
This should, in theory, fix it.

Specular
Posts: 443
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:54 pm

Re: Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#7 Post by Specular »

vacherin wrote: Wed May 29, 2019 1:55 pm @Specular - Thanks. I nearly torn my wrist off, but managed to reproduce it!
Uno mas, if you can, please - https://bvckup2.com/files/giffer-0.9.4.exe ?
This should, in theory, fix it.
Ah nice, this fixes the self-capture of the window during rapid movements (wasn't actually anticipating a fix since it's likely a fringe scenario but I can see you like to be thorough :)). Curiously has the side-effect of displaying as nothing when opened in my regular GIF/image viewer, Pictus but viewed in a browser and vimage however it displays as expected so must be some difference in GIF handling of that type in Pictus.

Couldn't think of anything else I have to test with. Most will probably be previewing the output in a browser though, like you said, so I'm not that concerned.

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webfork
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Re: Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#8 Post by webfork »

The program synopsis might be helpful to visitors:
The program records contents of the screen within its light-green frame and
then produces an animated GIF from the capture.

It works by grabbing frames as quickly as possible, but not exceeding 100 FPS.
Higher FPS doesn't make sense, because the smallest per-frame delay in GIF is
1/100 of a second => 100 FPS max, at best.

For each frame it checks if it's different from the last saved frame. If it's,
then it saves it as .bmp in a work folder (see below) and notes duration of
the previous frame in index.txt file, also in the work folder.
I haven't been able to test this as I don't have a 64-bit Windows machine currently.

vacherin
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:01 am

Re: Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#9 Post by vacherin »

webfork wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 12:49 pm I haven't been able to test this as I don't have a 64-bit Windows machine currently.
Add "-32" in front of .exe for the 32-bit version, e.g. https://bvckup2.com/files/giffer-0.9.4-32.exe

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webfork
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Re: Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#10 Post by webfork »

vacherin wrote: Thu May 30, 2019 12:56 pm Add "-32" in front of .exe for the 32-bit version, e.g. https://bvckup2.com/files/giffer-0.9.4-32.exe
Thanks, that worked.

Usage notes:

A unique program from the screen recording tools I've tested, Giffer records only if something's happening in the recording window, and then only as much as is necessary. Rapid activity appears to have a minimum 10 ms presence with everything after taking up progressively more time, with lengthy periods of idle just recording a single frame. Many video codecs work this way dynamically, but here you can see it working frame-by-frame.

This is demonstrated inside ScreenToGif's editor component: the frame that didn't see any activity just has a very long delay. The delay matches the idle time between something happening within the recording. This makes means a very accurate to the recorded screen activity without wasting space or sacrificing quality.

Image

vacherin
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:01 am

Re: Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#11 Post by vacherin »

Thanks, webfork.
webfork wrote:A unique program from the screen recording tools I've tested, Giffer records only if something's happening in the recording window, and then only as much as is necessary.
The idea comes from GifCam.
webfork wrote:Rapid activity appears to have a minimum 10 ms presence
This is because per-frame delays in a GIF are set in 1/100s of a second, so the smallest is 10ms.

vacherin
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:01 am

Re: Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#12 Post by vacherin »

0.9.5 is out. "Release notes" are here.

Settled on a proper name too - μGiffer.

Specular
Posts: 443
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:54 pm

Re: Giffer [graphic utility; name provisional]

#13 Post by Specular »

vacherin wrote: Mon Jun 03, 2019 1:47 am 0.9.5 is out. "Release notes" are here.

Settled on a proper name too - μGiffer.
An error, 'Failed to create temporary work folder', occurs for me when launching this version each time. I run the program via a shortcut with the -c <configdirectorypath> parameter.

After capturing something it outputs to the config directory set in the shortcut (which is nice) then generates a uGiffer.ini file to the config directory set in the shortcut (only after I captured something fwiw). Not sure what is causing the error, since the previous version could write to the temp directory just fine.

Tested with a longer capture and appears to use the custom config directory for the temp frames capture before processing it into a GIF. Perhaps there's some internal check that doesn't account for the custom config directory with the error message?

vacherin
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 12:01 am

Re: μGiffer [graphic capture utility]

#14 Post by vacherin »

Thanks for the heads-up. My bad, sorry. Rushed things in a bit.

0.9.6 should have this resolved.

Specular
Posts: 443
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Re: μGiffer [graphic capture utility]

#15 Post by Specular »

👍

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