[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Add Win32 GDI-based screen grabbing

Calvin Walton calvin.walton at kepstin.ca
Wed Apr 2 20:36:48 CEST 2014


On Tue, 2014-03-25 at 05:30 -0400, Don Moir wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Eli Kara" <eli at algotec.co.il>

> > I just have to mention something with regards to capturing from the
> > screen. As far as modern operating system go, i.e: Win7 with 
> > desktop composition and Windows 8 (where desktop composition cannot
> > even be disabled),
> > the performance will *always* be far from optimal. Copying from
> > video memory back to system memory is an inherently expensive 
> > operation, sometimes in the order of tens of milliseconds.
> > Additionally, it will inevitably
> > stall the entire GPU and WDM pipes. Actually, due to this, capturing
> > this way is even slower than it used to be in Windows XP 
> > (this is documented).
> >
> > Just a point to keep in mind..

This is of course true of any composited desktop system, on Windows or
Linux. A simple fact of life; fortunately, doing live screen capture
isn't something most people do that often, and they're pretty much given
to expect that it'll have a hit on desktop performance.

> With Vista and up, GDI is not hardware accerated when Aero is on.
> Don't know about Win 8. Turn Aero off and with Vista and Win 7, 
> GDI goes back to hardware acceleration. It can have a radical effect
> on performance. Anything using GetPixel and SetPixel too often 
> can bring a fast computer to a crawl with Aero on. Try the MS utility
> zoomin.exe with Aero on and off in Win 7. BitBlt can also 
> suffer quite abit. With Aero off or in XP, BitBlt goes right to screen
> memory. With Aero on, it's layered in software.

It's GDI is actually (partially) hardware accelerated in Aero on Windows
7 and later... take a look at
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff729480%
28v=vs.85%29.aspx
which reports that with a WDDM 1.1 driver, some GDI operations (notably
text rendering, BitBlts, AlphaBlend, TransparentBlt, and StretchBlt) are
accelerated while the compositor is running.

Naturally, Eli's comments about performance due to the copy from video
to system ram still apply!

-- 
Calvin Walton <calvin.walton at kepstin.ca>



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