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devrieskok
Contributor
Contributor

Capture Movie records black frames

Hi All,

I want to Capture a Movie of installation activities in a Windows 8 Guest OS running in VMware Workstation 9. Whenever the mouse is not moving completely black frames are recorded until I move the mouse again inside the Virtual Machine. I've tried all possibilities including reduce/increasing the resolution inside the VM.

What can I do, or is this a bug that I should report.

Regards Alfred

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Felix-The-Cat
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello Alfred,
Thanks for posting and sorry to hear you have a problem with WS 9.
To speed-up investigation, could you please:
1. Give us more info regarding Hosts and Guest config - OS, CPU, RAM, Video, etc...
2. Could you please replicate the initial 'failer'  and attach attach  latest UI log (WS menu Help -> About -> UI log path).
---------------
Cheers

FTC

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

I get similar results - capturing a video of a ESXi VM produces only a static screen  , same with a 2003 VM without tools.

Video capture seems to depend on the OS running inside the VM.
I tried several different guests and the only one that produced a video that really had moving pictures was with a Linux VM without vmware-tools.


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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devrieskok
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Thanks for your quick response.

Attached you will find log files end information regarding the VM and Host.

Hope you can help out.

Regards Alfred

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Felix-The-Cat
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Alfred,

Thanks for the reporting this problem! We been aware of it and, as workaround, I can suggest you to use MPlayer or VLC Player to view your Capture Movie records. We will try to address this issue in future releases…

----------------------

Cheers,

FTC

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal


VLCplayer or Windows Mplayer do not help -  the videos in itself are bad


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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TheWolf
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

the issue is still there in Workstation 9.0.1. Also I can second the posting from continuum, the videos themselves are bad. Whe I try to transcode them for upload, I still have the blank frames. Using VLC for display here helps me nothing, also the VLC transcoder does not like you files....

Regards,

  TheWolf

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alireza3
Contributor
Contributor

So bug of  video capture is my probleam!

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gbeaudoin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Is there any update for that issue?

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

nope - no known tweak can help


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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gbeaudoin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I opened a support request on this. I'll keep you updated with my results.

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gbeaudoin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello everyone,

Here is the information I've got from VMware through my support request.

After discussions with our engineering team I found that our engineering team  are aware of this issue (Reference PR / Bug - 854329) and it is been worked upon  which they are trying to address the reported issue in VMware Workstation future  releases.

Explanation - Movie encoder has problems relating to encoding latency, and  bandwidth estimation.  They tend to get worse as the size of the guest  resolution increases, or the host encoding speed slows down.  This can also  depend on the guest video driver, since a well-functioning video driver will  tend to give us better knowledge about which screen portions are actually  dirty. Hence we are re-writing our movie backend which will be addressed in  VMware Workstation future releases.

So they are working on it but it will only be in VMware Workstation 10. I'll downgrade to VMware Workstation 8 myself since it was working well for me then. Some of you might try to lower the guest's screen resolution or color deep.

I'll also be looking at alternate screen capture products like CamStudio to record my guest sessions.

So for now we're left hanging to find workaround by ourselves and we'll get support back for that functionality in VMware Workstation 10 or later only.

Regards,

- Guillaume

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

I dont buy the "too high resolution in the guest" story as this also affects guests that use a very low resolution


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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carversm
Contributor
Contributor

I've been trying to do a screen video capture using Camtasia 8.04 under Vmware 9.

The host is Windos 7, 64bit.  Tried Snagit 11 and everything on the guests, Win7 Ultimate 32bit,

XP SP3 32bit and a "installable Windows8 under Vmware.  Nothing worked.  Either audio stopped

or everthing froze.

I was trying to make a video showing installing Classic Shell from Sourceforge and then the Registry

fix to disable Charmshint and TopLeft hot spot.

Found this, installed on Win 8 on Vmware 9.01, and it works

My headset with mic worked.  I chose  Techsmith Screen Capture codec as compressor.

VLC plays it.  Hope Links are allowed.  If not search for  free-screen-video-capture.html

http://www.topviewsoft.com/free-screen-video-capture.html

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regeter
Contributor
Contributor

Same. I found I got black frames mostly when my guest mouse was leaving the screen. (going from guest to host). I suppose that is because the mouse is then "no longer moving".

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sprsite
Contributor
Contributor

Problem with Capture Movie is simply:

Capture Movie records correct frames until virtual VGA adapter changes resolution. Then Capture Movie starts to record black frames.

Probably codec VMnc does not adapt new picture resolution and fall to produce inproper frames (I use VirtualDub to investigate this).

Old version VMware Workstation works fine.

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TheWolf
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

gbeaudoin schrieb:

So they are working on it but it will only be in VMware Workstation 10.

does anybody know if this problem is resolved in VMware Workstation 10?

Regards,

TheWolf

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pwetter
Contributor
Contributor


It still seems to be there in 9.0.3.  However, if I use handbrake to encode as a m4v, it at least leaves it at the last viewed frame.  Hope this helps others.

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Gabitex
Contributor
Contributor

Yes it can be that.

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