Re: [Gnash-dev] Screen Capture / Snapshot / Save As...

[Brian]

Martin Guy wrote:
> > > B> One thing I've seen significant interest in (as I've searched 
> > around
> > > B> trying to find the solution myself) is a way to take snapshots of a
> > > B> flash movie and save them as a JPG / PNG / GIF,
>
> Hard to know what that means when you're talking about a moving object
> that may have user-interaction. Personally when I need to document a
> disfunciton I get gimp's Acquire-screenshot-window thing ready, run
> gnash from the command line and suspend (control-Z) it to freeze
> something I can grab.

Here is an .swf file as an example (quickly thrown together):
http://www.gzmarketing.com/header.swf

I've created a Flash header builder using PHP and Ming, which is what 
generated the attached .swf.  But when the movies get very complicated 
(too many drop shadows, too much text, too many images, PNG's, etc), the 
movie is slower to load and render.

So I want to generate a static version in a JPEG / PNG / GIF file, to 
use instead for the header, while still using Flash as an easy way to 
design it.

However, it needs to be automated, because it's run from a control panel 
that my endusers use, and many of them are novices.

In the movies there is no motion, no sound, no interaction, etc.  
Clearly it wouldn't work for every .swf file for every user out there, 
but it would still fill a need.

> > > Also very easy. It's possible to create a new "GUI" using AGG which
> > > just creates a in-memory buffer where AGG can render in. This buffer
> > > can then be further processed (ie. written to a file).
>
> Yes, the same way that mplayer and friends have a play-to-file
> video-out option and create a movie/sound file. For automatic testing
> of moving images that would be perfect. However, in an ideal world
> that applies to all of the renderers, not just AGG
>
> Menu-save-as only really applies to the .swf stream, since it is the
> only static object around to be saved. Random screen shotting would be
> better done with an external screenshot application I feel, and there
> are plenty of thise already.
>
> put it on the list... :)
>
>     M

I agree that screenshots can already be done manually.  However, there 
are a lot of requests on the internet for exactly what I'm describing, 
and so far no solution.

Thanks,
Brian