Member Avatar for Joshua Kidd

Hello,
I have a little question about Screen Video Capture.

Does anyone know What the best SDK for video capture is, WME Sdk? or do I even need an SDK.

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asked whether a screen-capture SDK is needed and whether the older WME approach is best; correctly noted you do need an SDK/encoder. Below is a concise, practical update for VB.NET/.NET developers that fills gaps in the thread and points to maintainable options today.

For Windows-native, high-performance capture use the Desktop Duplication (DXGI) path or the WinRT Windows.Graphics.Capture API for modern apps. Encode with Media Foundation when staying fully native on Windows; both APIs are intended for low-latency, GPU-friendly capture and are documented by Microsoft (, ). These require COM/PInvoke or a managed wrapper, so expect more work but better performance.

For quick results or cross-platform needs, spawn ffmpeg and let it do capture + encoding. Example ffmpeg command for Windows: ffmpeg -f gdigrab -framerate 30 -i desktop -c:v libx264 out.mp4. In VB.NET you can launch ffmpeg like this:

Dim args = "-f gdigrab -framerate 30 -i desktop -c:v libx264 output.mp4"
Dim psi As New ProcessStartInfo("ffmpeg.exe", args)
psi.UseShellExecute = False
psi.CreateNoWindow = True
Process.Start(psi)

Notes and tips: capture audio separately (WASAPI/dshow) and mux it; prefer hardware encoders (NVENC/QuickSync/AMF) for lower CPU; avoid GDI captures for full-screen video because of CPU cost; be aware of codec licensing when choosing H.264. For managed helpers check libraries like SharpAvi or FFmpeg wrappers to reduce P/Invoke work (FFmpeg, SharpAvi).

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Member Avatar for Animal Mother

You’ll definitely need a SDK and an encoder package, Visual studios or any other coding platform for that matter doesn’t have these required components from the get-go.

If you are using Visual studios I would suggest using Microsoft certified products.

So I would suggest the following "Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 Pro"

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/EncoderPro_Overview.aspx

Member Avatar for Joshua Kidd

Alright thanks man.
This helped a lot. :)

Member Avatar for Animal Mother

Big Pleasure :cool:
I also dabbled in the video application coding. But I only coded a standard media player that uses the codecs' that are installed on the PC which was actually pretty easy.

Good Luck with your Project

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