Carny_Priest

I can confirm that the script works with the current OBS Studio v30.0.2 and the current stable release of ffmpeg v6.1.1. It's the way I capture media, so I will keep checking it against current toolsets every few months.

Hi, I have coded an AutoHotkey script to capture video for playfield, backglass, and fullDMD screens for PinballY. Why? I am capturing all three screens simultaneously, so it is a lot quicker than Pinball Y's built-in screen recorder. And it is cool to have the DMD display synchronous with action on the playfield. I built it for attract mode, but it could be adapted for gameplay capture on a cabinet. Last time I checked PinballX capture screens in sequence. It is OBS-Studio based. It will capture Future Pinball as well as Visual Pinball. It can be adapted to work with any games that players run on a cabinet. PinballY's GDI-based capture does not support Future Pinball. I've tried NVidia Experience based screen capturing with Future Pinball with weird results, an interpolation of playfield and backglass screen captures in a single stream. It takes advantage of GPU-based encoding and hardware acceleration to perform near real-time single pass captures even on my modest hardware configuration - better quality output, done faster, and with smaller file sizes. It's the latest step in the automated media capture work that I started back in 2014. See OP. PinballY's database is similar to PinballX. The behavior is a bit different in that PinballY matches to media solely based on the description tag so there are no invalid Windows characters allowed. PinballX last time I checked can match to media on either the description tag or the game name tag. I think getting the script working with PinballX would be a matter of adding some more error handling. Check it out! Includes instructions. Attached. CapScreensOBS.zip

I haven't looked at the latest PBX Recorder source. I'm pretty sure that it uses the gdigrab filter. It is CPU focused, so I don't think the GPU make matters at all. However, I'm guessing that it may not capture OpenGL like FP. And that may pose an issue for VPX as well, when players migrate over to the 10.8 GL version for it's performance and advanced features.

Thanks for all the responses! I've been out of the scene for awhile. I didn't realize that PBX Recorder had been updated to capture in 1 pass. I have an ancient CPU, so I probably still have to use a two pass approach.

It's not clear from the current documentation. Does PinballX capture/record all screens simultaneously as PBX Recorder does, or does PinballX capture the screens sequentially like Popper and PinballY? PBX Recorder uses a two pass approach - first pass for capturing raw frames and second pass for transcoding/compression. Does PinballX use a two pass approach or a single pass approach (i.e., real-time compression)? PinballX is capable of using ffmpeg for the capture application, but can it use the newer ddagrab filter for potentially capturing FP full desktop screen? The FP port for PBX Recorder replaced ffmpeg with OBS as the capture application but it was a little harder for users as it requires a custom profile input, etc. It would be nice to use ffmpeg for all systems. Yeah, there is capturing through NVidia ShadowPlay but the PinballX documentation says that it is only for playfield capture? I don't think I can face updating PBX Recorder at this point because of all of the supported customizations allowed with current front-ends. Screenres.txt allows any number of comments plus separate custom res files. Users can structure tables pretty much however they want. More ini stuff with Visual Pinball and dmdext. It's too difficult for me to allow for all the possibilities. Was hoping for comparable features from any current front-end.

You are all right. Changed to Fullscreen Windowed and all the displays showed up on the correct screens. I must have been rushing through, testing multiple things at once, and fouled myself up. I had the main screen windowed in the image just to show where the bg and dmd were showing up. Works fine now even running the dc2 instruction on startup. Please consider this issue resolved.

That dc2 is a launch before execution that gets the desktop looking like the picture. Outside of PinballX, I'll typically run the exact same configuration except that primary display is my backglass. It's more comfortable for me that way to update tables, etc. In other words, I don't have network access to the cab to do remote updating. I do everything standing there at the cab. Really, this is not a change from when I was using PinballX years ago. I basically ran the same launch before instruction. I found backups for my ini from 2019 and 2017. The only difference in the display settings was that back then monitor 0 was my BG and monitor 1 was my playfield. I did switch this up recently while I was wrestling with cab support for Pinball Wicked, but the current ini is consistent with my current dc2 configurations, screenres.txt, Windows screen identity, etc. B2S and PinballY work Ok. Monitor 2 remains my DMD. Back then, I defined a portion of the screen for DMD display. Now I define 3rd screen as FullDMD. Weird. I have not encountered this situation before. That attached image is directly following a reboot. I will try to launch PinballX again tomorrow without the launch before, and I'll try to simply copy over the display settings from that 2019 backup ini. I had the same issues yesterday when I was testing an install. I had previously installed forgetting about installing the LAV Filters codecs. I saw from the log an error with flash.ocx. I backed up my ini at that point along with databases and media and uninstalled PinballX. I had to use your guide to delete out flash.ocx. I installed LAV Filters with default settings and re-installed PinballX. I noticed that the ini had been set back to defaults. I copied over from my backup and tried again. No change, so that's when I gave up and submitted a request for support.

Yes, set up per table configuration in dmddevice.ini - documentation is here: https://github.com/freezy/dmd-extensions/blob/master/PinMameDevice/PinballFX_IDs.md scale and locate the display however you want. Works for DMD or alphanumeric. Bally/Williams or the Zen stuff.

Hi, I installed PinballX again after a very long break. I'm stuck on install simply getting the backglass image to display on screen 2 and DMD to display on screen 3. Both appear on screen 1. My screen references work fine for PinballY. I referred back to an ancient backup of PinballX.ini from 2019 that confirms for me that x/y positions are in reference to each respective display and not from top/left of the entire desktop. Attached screenshot of my desktop. Main display is windowed so that it can be seen where the bg and dmd images are getting placed. Hoping that this is just a simple mistake on my part. Used to feel like an expert, but it's been a while. PS LAV Filters are installed with default settings. PinballX.ini log.txt

Yeah, I don't think this project has anything to do with what you are describing.

Size varies by manufacturer: http://www.pinballrebel.com/pinball/cards/

I figured these current front-ends had screen recording all taken care of now that it is simply a feature every front-end offers. I wouldn't know. I haven't used a front-end in years. I've attached the source code that I have. Again, I haven't tested this at all. Likely if 1.5 did not work for you then neither will 1.6. I don't think gtxjoe made any huge changes in how this program functions between those two versions. PBXrecorder_1.6FP.ahk

Attachment is still in the following post: https://www.gameex.info/forums/topic/15207-capture-videos-to-pinballx-media-table-backglass-and-dmd/?do=findComment&comment=163944 I have not run this in years, so I don't know if it still works with current version of OBS Studio. If anyone is interested, I do have a version of the script updated to reflect PBXRecorder v1.6. I have not tested it at all.

I had published this logo a while back. Source files including ai are still on the FTP.

Well, you are correct. Visual Pinball as a software program has been under development since 2000. And it keeps getting better and it will likely not be finished because there is always new technology to incorporate and improvements to be made. To be clear, Visual Pinball is hobbyist software. It is mainly an editor that allows authors to build their own virtual pinball tables. Users being able to play reproductions is simply a happy by-product. This does require some background knowledge/modest PC skills to properly configure. The software is full featured and endlessly tweakable (i.e., having so many options means it is not relatively easy to use). But, thousands of users have done it. Keep researching. PinballX is merely a front-end to centralize the launching of tables and making it look attractive. If the underlying emulation software is not configured correctly and is not fully working, PinballX absolutely will not fix it for you. You can certainly build a full size table with commercial emulator options. This may be the initial track for you as it is built for a consumer experience. Steam + Pinball FX3 + The Pinball Arcade