Capture screen using DirectX
Here is some sample code to capture the screen with DirectX 9. You shouldn't have to install any SDK (except the standard files that come with Visual Studio, although I didn't tested VS 2010).
Just create a simple Win32 console application, add the following in the stdafx.h file:
#include <Wincodec.h> // we use WIC for saving images
#include <d3d9.h> // DirectX 9 header
#pragma comment(lib, "d3d9.lib") // link to DirectX 9 library
Here is the sample main implementation
int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
HRESULT hr = Direct3D9TakeScreenshots(D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT, 10);
return 0;
}
What this will do is capture 10 times the screen, and save "cap%i.png" images on the disk. It will also display the time taken for this (saving images is not counted in that time, only screen captures). On my (desktop windows 8 - Dell Precision M2800/i7-4810MQ-2.80GHz/Intel HD 4600 which is a pretty crappy machine...) machine, it takes 100 1920x1080 captures in ~4sec, so around 20/25 fps.
HRESULT Direct3D9TakeScreenshots(UINT adapter, UINT count)
{
HRESULT hr = S_OK;
IDirect3D9 *d3d = nullptr;
IDirect3DDevice9 *device = nullptr;
IDirect3DSurface9 *surface = nullptr;
D3DPRESENT_PARAMETERS parameters = { 0 };
D3DDISPLAYMODE mode;
D3DLOCKED_RECT rc;
UINT pitch;
SYSTEMTIME st;
LPBYTE *shots = nullptr;
// init D3D and get screen size
d3d = Direct3DCreate9(D3D_SDK_VERSION);
HRCHECK(d3d->GetAdapterDisplayMode(adapter, &mode));
parameters.Windowed = TRUE;
parameters.BackBufferCount = 1;
parameters.BackBufferHeight = mode.Height;
parameters.BackBufferWidth = mode.Width;
parameters.SwapEffect = D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD;
parameters.hDeviceWindow = NULL;
// create device & capture surface
HRCHECK(d3d->CreateDevice(adapter, D3DDEVTYPE_HAL, NULL, D3DCREATE_SOFTWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING, ¶meters, &device));
HRCHECK(device->CreateOffscreenPlainSurface(mode.Width, mode.Height, D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8, D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM, &surface, nullptr));
// compute the required buffer size
HRCHECK(surface->LockRect(&rc, NULL, 0));
pitch = rc.Pitch;
HRCHECK(surface->UnlockRect());
// allocate screenshots buffers
shots = new LPBYTE[count];
for (UINT i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
shots[i] = new BYTE[pitch * mode.Height];
}
GetSystemTime(&st); // measure the time we spend doing <count> captures
wprintf(L"%i:%i:%i.%i\n", st.wHour, st.wMinute, st.wSecond, st.wMilliseconds);
for (UINT i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
// get the data
HRCHECK(device->GetFrontBufferData(0, surface));
// copy it into our buffers
HRCHECK(surface->LockRect(&rc, NULL, 0));
CopyMemory(shots[i], rc.pBits, rc.Pitch * mode.Height);
HRCHECK(surface->UnlockRect());
}
GetSystemTime(&st);
wprintf(L"%i:%i:%i.%i\n", st.wHour, st.wMinute, st.wSecond, st.wMilliseconds);
// save all screenshots
for (UINT i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
WCHAR file[100];
wsprintf(file, L"cap%i.png", i);
HRCHECK(SavePixelsToFile32bppPBGRA(mode.Width, mode.Height, pitch, shots[i], file, GUID_ContainerFormatPng));
}
cleanup:
if (shots != nullptr)
{
for (UINT i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
delete shots[i];
}
delete[] shots;
}
RELEASE(surface);
RELEASE(device);
RELEASE(d3d);
return hr;
}
Note this code implicitely links to WIC (an imaging library included with Windows for quite a time now) to save the image files (so you don't need the famous D3DXSaveSurfaceToFile that require old DirectX SDKs to be installed):
HRESULT SavePixelsToFile32bppPBGRA(UINT width, UINT height, UINT stride, LPBYTE pixels, LPWSTR filePath, const GUID &format)
{
if (!filePath || !pixels)
return E_INVALIDARG;
HRESULT hr = S_OK;
IWICImagingFactory *factory = nullptr;
IWICBitmapEncoder *encoder = nullptr;
IWICBitmapFrameEncode *frame = nullptr;
IWICStream *stream = nullptr;
GUID pf = GUID_WICPixelFormat32bppPBGRA;
BOOL coInit = CoInitialize(nullptr);
HRCHECK(CoCreateInstance(CLSID_WICImagingFactory, nullptr, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_PPV_ARGS(&factory)));
HRCHECK(factory->CreateStream(&stream));
HRCHECK(stream->InitializeFromFilename(filePath, GENERIC_WRITE));
HRCHECK(factory->CreateEncoder(format, nullptr, &encoder));
HRCHECK(encoder->Initialize(stream, WICBitmapEncoderNoCache));
HRCHECK(encoder->CreateNewFrame(&frame, nullptr)); // we don't use options here
HRCHECK(frame->Initialize(nullptr)); // we dont' use any options here
HRCHECK(frame->SetSize(width, height));
HRCHECK(frame->SetPixelFormat(&pf));
HRCHECK(frame->WritePixels(height, stride, stride * height, pixels));
HRCHECK(frame->Commit());
HRCHECK(encoder->Commit());
cleanup:
RELEASE(stream);
RELEASE(frame);
RELEASE(encoder);
RELEASE(factory);
if (coInit) CoUninitialize();
return hr;
}
And some macros I used:
#define WIDEN2(x) L ## x
#define WIDEN(x) WIDEN2(x)
#define __WFILE__ WIDEN(__FILE__)
#define HRCHECK(__expr) {hr=(__expr);if(FAILED(hr)){wprintf(L"FAILURE 0x%08X (%i)\n\tline: %u file: '%s'\n\texpr: '" WIDEN(#__expr) L"'\n",hr, hr, __LINE__,__WFILE__);goto cleanup;}}
#define RELEASE(__p) {if(__p!=nullptr){__p->Release();__p=nullptr;}}
Note: for Windows 8+ clients, all these (except WIC) should be dropped in favor of the Desktop Duplication API.
You have not stated the requirements for the target Windows versions. If you do not need to support Windows 7, Windows 8 includes a nice new DXGI interface IDXGIOutputDuplication that allows to create a COM object that duplicates the output of a video adapter and provides CPU access to the video memory through IDXGIOutputDuplication::MapDesktopSurface. MSDN has quite a nice sample that captures the desktop through this and draws it inside a form and works nice and smooth. So if Windows 7 is not a must have, I'd suggest you look at this.
You can get the DirectX SDK from microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=6812 (posted by @yms). This SDK is compatible with all versions Windows, including XP. Refer to its documentation on how to include/link with D3D9.
In your example Device
is an IDirect3DDevice9
. Every D3D9 application must create one of these. It's very easy to find example code on how to create one (eg. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb204867%28v=vs.85%29.aspx).
In your example code, only the contents being rendered in DirectX are being captured, which I assume is not your intention. To capture the entire screen (which I'm assuming is the goal), instead of using IDirect3DDevice9::GetRenderTarget
, you should use IDirect3DDevice9::GetFrontBufferData
, as in this tutorial (http://dim-i.net/2008/01/29/taking-screenshots-with-directx-and-dev-cpp/). If you're looking for speed, you should not recreate the offscreen surface every frame, as in both your example and this tutorial. The memory pool should be D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM
in this case, not D3DPOOL_SCRATCH
. Depending on the size of the screen, the likely bottleneck will be writing the images to disk.
Also note that the screen captured from this will be for the adapter used to create the IDirect3DDevice9
. This is the first parameter to IDirect3D9::CreateDevice
. This is only a concern if capturing multiple monitors is a possibility.