[Resolved] Capturing Backglass and DMD Images

[MrGrynch]

I've been trying to find a solution for capturing backglass and DMD images (not videos) for the front end.  I found one old tool that kinda does this (PBXRecorder), but it has two critical flaws:

1. You cannot specify the DMD size to capture outside of screenres.txt.  This is problematic for FullDMD users, since it will only capture the dimensions defined in screenres.txt
2. It does not appear to shut down PuP Packs

Is there a solution you folks use for this purpose?  I appreciate any assistance!

[scutters]

Not sure i can help much as i use videos and only use a 'half' full dmd, but..

1. Can you amend screenres.txt so that the defined dmd is the 'full' dmd screen? (note that screenres.txt can be updated by PinballX if you have 'autoposition directb2s' set in settings). Pbxrecorder should then pick up the full dmd screen. This would affect 3screen B2S file dmd's though if you use them.
2. Do puppacks close if a table is launched & exited from VPX direct or PinballX?, strange you have that issue with pbxrecorder unless something somewhere is set to run as admin. Regardless, try the latest version of pbxrecorder updated by @jejegameex v1.9 here - https://forums.gameex.com/forums/topic/17684-pbx-recorder-captures-playfield-backglass-and-dmd-videos-and-images/?do=findComment&comment=195930 that should close puppacks for scenarios like yours.

[MrGrynch]

32 minutes ago, scutters said:

Not sure i can help much as i use videos and only use a 'half' full dmd, but..

1. Can you amend screenres.txt so that the defined dmd is the 'full' dmd screen? (note that screenres.txt can be updated by PinballX if you have 'autoposition directb2s' set in settings). Pbxrecorder should then pick up the full dmd screen. This would affect 3screen B2S file dmd's though if you use them.
2. Do puppacks close if a table is launched & exited from VPX direct or PinballX?, strange you have that issue with pbxrecorder unless something somewhere is set to run as admin. Regardless, try the latest version of pbxrecorder updated by @jejegameex v1.9 here - https://forums.gameex.com/forums/topic/17684-pbx-recorder-captures-playfield-backglass-and-dmd-videos-and-images/?do=findComment&comment=195930 that should close puppacks for scenarios like yours.

I might end up just using the videos as well.  I want a "seamless" transition from attract mode through loading, to playing, but I noticed that if I uncheck the "Hide DMD" etc, I get around 10 fewer FPS than if I load with the Backglass and DMD hidden (also the backglass still disappears).  I already have a few tables that will intermittently fail to run when launched from PBX.  Regarding the screenres, one approach I tried that mostly worked was to define a screenres.txt for each table (using the subfolder approach) and then redefining my main screenres file to the fullDMD dimensions.  I say "mostly" worked because a few tables like Buck Rogers and Amazing Spiderman do not like this approach.  My static DMD image just shows up as blank.

[scutters]

5 minutes ago, MrGrynch said:

I might end up just using the videos as well.  I want a "seamless" transition from attract mode through loading, to playing, but I noticed that if I uncheck the "Hide DMD" etc, I get around 10 fewer FPS than if I load with the Backglass and DMD hidden (also the backglass still disappears). 

I might not be fully up to date with your setup, i thought from previous posts that you used pup packs for the full screen fulldmd in game (and in pinballx only define a letterbox area within that screen as the dmd) - if using pup packs for the full dmd video then i'd have guessed you'd always want hide dmd set in PinballX? Not sure why your backglass video / image would still getting hidden if set to show in game though, that has always worked for me (might be worth separating that as an issue in a new post with log & ini files).

FPS - even on my old hardware with a backglass video always running i didn't notice any FPS drop in game (that was using a GTX1080 to run a 4k playfield @ 120hz). What resolution are the backglass and fulldmd set as? - maybe they could be lowered?

14 minutes ago, MrGrynch said:

Regarding the screenres, one approach I tried that mostly worked was to define a screenres.txt for each table (using the subfolder approach) and then redefining my main screenres file to the fullDMD dimensions.  I say "mostly" worked because a few tables like Buck Rogers and Amazing Spiderman do not like this approach.  My static DMD image just shows up as blank.

There's a couple of things to check there,. do you have any duplicate media (video and image? - PinballX would prioritise the video) or any errors in pbxrecorder log file?

[MrGrynch]

2 minutes ago, scutters said:

I might not be fully up to date with your setup, i thought from previous posts that you used pup packs for the full screen fulldmd in game (and in pinballx only define a letterbox area within that screen as the dmd) - if using pup packs for the full dmd video then i'd have guessed you'd always want hide dmd set in PinballX?

You are correct.  I am using PuP Packs and have PinballX DMD dimensions set to the FullDMD spec.  I am not sure why you would assume I'd always want to hide DMD though.  If I want the DMD to display something while loading, wouldn't I uncheck the "hide" option?

4 minutes ago, scutters said:

FPS - even on my old hardware with a backglass video always running i didn't notice any FPS drop in game (that was using a GTX1080 to run a 4k playfield @ 120hz). What resolution are the backglass and fulldmd set as? - maybe they could be lowered?

I was curious.. if my backglass and DMD were playing videos and I kept them running doing gameplay, wouldn't it take away resources from my game?  So, I checked the frame rate and recorded it.  I then re-checked the boxes to hide them and checked again.  I consistently see higher frame rates with the backglass and DMD hidden.  My backglass is 1920x1080 and my DMD is 1360 x 768.

I will look into the backglass behavior a bit more and will open a separate ticket if I don't find the problem

[MrGrynch]

Just wanted to follow up.  I re-ran the FPS test and captured images

 

[MrGrynch]

@scutters once I resolved the backglass issue, the frame rate loss was even worse.  The problem with the backglass was that there was a blank image with the same name, so there was no video running, only a static blank image.  Once I fixed it and added another playing video to the mix, the frame rate dropped more.  I captured an image of my running tasks to show that indeed, both videos are playing in addition to the b2s and DMD.  This is why the frame rate is dropping, and why I want to use images instead of videos

 

[scutters]

1 hour ago, MrGrynch said:

I am not sure why you would assume I'd always want to hide DMD though.  If I want the DMD to display something while loading, wouldn't I uncheck the "hide" option?

Ahh, gotcha. I forgot you wanted it to show during load, duh!

It would seem a bit excessive to have a dmd video playing from PinballX with a pup pack video on top and then a DMD on top of that in game, and I can see that it does have quite a hit on your FPS too (from memory in my tests the hit was 2 or 3 FPS on my setup so i just ignored it - not sure why it's so more much of a hit on yours). As you've noted though you can have PinballX display videos in the front end and then images after launching a game so maybe the combination of both would be a good solution for you (assuming you have the drive space and don't mind a short flicker when pinballx changes from video to image during the table launch)?. 

So back to the original issue, does V1.9 pbxrecorder work better for you to capture the images?

(i've ignored native pinballx screenshots as an option as the original post was about pbxrecorder)

Btw - nice loading video! 

[MrGrynch]

18 minutes ago, scutters said:

As you've noted though you can have PinballX display videos in the front end and then images after launching a game so maybe the combination of both would be a good solution for you (assuming you have the drive space and don't mind a short flicker when pinballx changes from video to image during the table launch)?. 

I don't mind a little flicker, so yes, that would be a good solution.

18 minutes ago, scutters said:

(i've ignored native pinballx screenshots as an option as the original post was about pbxrecorder)

It actually wasn't.  Native PinballX screenshots would be preferred, but I don't see a way to do that, so I went looking around and found pbxrecorder

19 minutes ago, scutters said:

Btw - nice loading video! 

I know, right?!
 

25 minutes ago, scutters said:

So back to the original issue, does V1.9 pbxrecorder work better for you to capture the images?

It does a fine job of closing the PuP Pack, but it suffers from the same issue.  Since it uses screenres.txt, it only records the 4:1 portion of the DMD

[scutters]

57 minutes ago, MrGrynch said:

It actually wasn't.  Native PinballX screenshots would be preferred, but I don't see a way to do that, so I went looking around and found pbxrecorder

Not sure as i don't use it but for screen image grabs in PinballX you have to launch a game then press the 'grab screenshots' key set in keyboard input settings, no bulk image option i know of so might take a while to go through an existing table collection (might be quicker to create a ffmpeg script to loop through the videos and dump out the first frame as an image using the same file name - if you're familiar with ffmpeg)

57 minutes ago, MrGrynch said:

It does a fine job of closing the PuP Pack, but it suffers from the same issue.  Since it uses screenres.txt, it only records the 4:1 portion of the DMD

... so the 'DMD' for 3 screen b2s files get stretched if you change to 16:9 fulldmd screenres.txt, gotcha. There are fullDMD 3 screen B2S files being made now (e.g. Young Frankenstein (hauntfreaks 2021) 2 and 3 screen b2s - Backglass Downloads - Virtual Pinball Universe (vpuniverse.com) )  but i guess that's not much use until they all are.. 

 

[MrGrynch]

14 minutes ago, scutters said:

Not sure as i don't use it but for screen image grabs in PinballX you have to launch a game then press the 'grab screenshots' key set in keyboard input settings

At first I almost smacked myself for not looking there.  There is a key defined (keycode_s) but it does not appear to work.  When I press it, it appears to crash PinballX.  Gonna post a separate issue on that

[MrGrynch]

I'm marking this as resolved.  I modified the 1.9 version of PbxRecorder to use a local version of screenres.txt and was able to capture the necessary images.  I'm considering formalizing it into a version 2.0 of the app