Suggestion: Use differential screenshots on Recordings

[WhiteKnight]

In the documentation I've read that it takes a large amount of disk space having VM Workstation record screenshots of a recording periodically.

Wouldn't it be a good idea then to only save a full screenshot every, say.. 20th screenshot and to save only modified screen regions in between?

Usually, there's not so much screen content being updated every 5 seconds. Saving differential screenshots based on a full screenshot could downsize a recordings's footprint significantly.

Axel Dahmen

[RDPetruska]

Umm... Record/Replay does not record "screenshots". It records EVERY SINGLE CPU instruction executed, so that you can EXACTLY replay what happened.

[WhiteKnight]

Quite on the contrary - according to the Workstation 6.5 manual, page 242, recording virtual machine activity actually takes screenshots on a regular basis by default:

h1. 12 Recording and Replaying Virtual Machine Activity
...
h2. Physical and Virtual Hardware Requirements
...

• Disk space – How much disk space a recording uses depends on the type of activity that occurs on the virtual machine and the duration of the recording session. By default, a screenshot is created every five seconds. Therefore, assume that you will need several megabytes of disk space for one minute of recording.

-

---

NOTE Having a number of virtual machines with high‐resolution display settings open on the screen consumes more disk space.
-

---

...see?

Axel

PS: I have the feeling the Rich HTML Editor of this forum doesn't work correctly ...