Saturday 27 November 2010

screenshot of full screen of multiple monitors , comparing xnview, nircmdc, boxcutter

I am comparing xnview, nircmdc, boxcutter , wheres these 3 are command line screen capture tools on windows, and I would like to capture a full screen with 2 monitors.
xnview - 1.97.8 [http://www.xnview.com/]
nircmdc - 2.45 [http://www.nirsoft.net]
boxcutter / boxcutter-fs - 1.4 [http://rasm.ods.org/boxcutter/]


windows 2008 r2 sp1rtm
config1

config2

boxcutter -c -1024,0,1024,768 08r2-boxcutter-c.png

boxcutter -f 08r2-boxcutter-f.png
(-1024,0)-(2048,768)

xnview.exe -capture=desktop,.\08r2-xnview.png

nircmdc.exe savescreenshotfull .\08r2-nircmdc.png






windows 2003 sp2
config1

config2

boxcutter -c -1152,0,1440,900 03-boxcutter-c.png

boxcutter -f 03-boxcutter-f.png
(-1152,0)-(2592,900)

xnview.exe -capture=desktop,.\03-xnview.png


nircmdc.exe cmdwait 5000 savescreenshotfull .\03-nircmdc.png




In the Windows 2003 test, it is a real environment, I am using 2 monitors, having the secondary on the right hand side of the primary monitor. The height of my secondary monitor (1152x864) is smaller than the primary monitor (1440x900), so there is a black area in the lower portion.
The common problem is, when using `nircmd savescreenshotfull` and `boxcutter -f` a dummy screen is produced on the right hand side of the primary monitor and it is black out. I think it is how windows handle the screen, secondary screen is suppose to extended on the right, but since the option is putting the secondary to the left of the primary, the workaround is blacken a dummy screen out and mirror it on the left. And it produce many many problems for an application to work on multiple monitors, like missing user objects, scroll bar won't really scroll, start up/saved position(may not understand a negative coordinate), crash, program don't even aware there is a screen(like the case `nircmdc savescreenshotfull`)  ... etc
`imagemagick import` requires X server implementation on windows, and as you can see the xnview capture not really working for dual screen.
And it is tested that PrintScreen function of windows can handle the capture/output properly. Just like the `boxcutter -c a,b,c,d` case.
If someone knows a command-line tool which can also handle multiple screen capture properly, please also add it in comment. In this moment, I highly recommend boxcutter.

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