DirectDraw, and Creating AVIs

I've a pretty interesting question for you guys. I have a program that uses DirectShow, and I need a to figure out a way to take the data from the DirectShow window and write it into an AVI. The code that I have right now, is takes a Bitmap Screenshot in memory, and writes it directly to the AVI File, then loops until I tell it to stop. I should mention, that I haven't yet been able to put the bitmap that I store in memory into the AVI File, I'm not sure why, either, but I'm more concerned with the following problem atm.

But, in the process of the screencapture, I have to tell it to lock the window, actually, freeze the program, so it can take an accurate screenshot. It makes the program extremely jittery, as it's looping and writing to the AVI file.

I don't know what to do. Are there any DirectX functions that will allow faster screenshots, or even direct writing to avis?


Thanks in advance.

Thats a very messy way of doing it. But I cant suggest a better way - i have no windows c++ programming knowledge.

anyway, you can speed up the program by writing the avi at the end of the capture - compile the bmp's to the avi. and just take the screenshots and freeze in the loop.

Well, my way is actually quite structured, and I just didn't give it enought credit in my first post. Here's psudeocode (cause the actual code in on my other computer) :D

Code:

---

Start_AVI_Dump(){

    char filename = validhandle;

    CreateAVI(params);
    if (Sound_Enabled){
        Start_Wav_Dump(FileName);
    }
    DumpingAvi = 1
}

Update_AVI_Dump(){
    char = Take_Screenshot();
    AVIAddFrame(char);
}

Stop_AVI_Dump(){
      CloseAVI(param);
      DumpingAvi = 0;
}

---

The WinMain and WinProc loops hold the code for the menu items, which call the Start and Stop functions, and every loop the program makes, if checks if DumpingAVI == 1, and if it is, then calls the Update_AVI_Dump.

The problem, I am refering to, is that every time I call my function to create the screenshot, it has to stop the loop, so that the screenshot won't be a mix of a bunch of frames. It becomes very jittery. I was hoping that there just might be some sort of code or function in DirectX that could handle AVIs directly from another part of DirectX....


Thanks in advance.

Ack! Does nobody know?

I don't know much about DirectShow, but I looked a bit at msdn and it didn't sound like it was suited for what you want to do...It seems like it deals with devices like video cameras and such, but the monitor is an output device...

The only experience I have with doing this is using a program to record video of a computer game, and that was terribly slow. I don't know of any programs that can do this quickly

Hmm...Well, I found a site that has source for creating a screenshot of a DirectDraw surface using the GDI library. That *might* speed things up a bit...we'll see...

Take a look at this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...and_macros.asp

And this tutorial and the neat set of classes (in the sample, includes DirectDraw in one of the samples):
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art...article840.asp