Wii Screen Recorder

Okay, i had this idea to make a screen recorder that put the video straight to the sd card. First, you would load it to the hbc channel, and use it as always, you could then boot it and select screen region, quality etc etc. You would then boot your game. I had it nearly working, and then accidently reformated my sd card, so it was all lost. I am not going to redevelope it, because it was so hard for me, but i suggest someone else begin to make it.

awww...damn.

That would save me $100 on a dazzle. I can't code, so someone please do it!

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kkrol
I had it nearly working, and then accidently reformated my sd card, so it was all lost.

You keep your source code on your SD card too? With no backups?

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kkrol
I am not going to redevelope it, because it was so hard for me, but i suggest someone else begin to make it.

If anything it would be easier a second time, as you already know what you need to do and will have found code sources regarding video encoders etc.

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pimpsahoy
That would save me $100 on a dazzle. I can't code, so someone please do it!

Tevion/Meridon do a video capture device for about £25, that'll save you $50

Who ever makes this app will be a god in my eyes.

you'd need some major compression when storing that video

also i find it hard to believe u made this and then accidentely erased everything to do with it?

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whodares

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pimpsahoy
That would save me $100 on a dazzle. I can't code, so someone please do it!

Tevion/Meridon do a video capture device for about £25, that'll save you $50

I am looking for such a devise, could you give me a link?

@Dr Lucky:
They just appear in Aldi from time to time.

Apparently, it's also known as KWorld
[www.amazon.co.uk]

I know im very stupid for not having backups, i just wasn't thinking that it would be deleted, you also will need a higher capacity SD card to hold the video, im going to try to do it again, but alot of it was help from some friends, who probably wont want to do it again. i suggest getting a free recorder codec like camstudio, hypercam etc. Good Luck to anyone who tries to tackle this, it will be tough, but it is possible. I was having a problem being able to stop the recording, and also putting it into a serarate file. It would deffinatly be one of the best apps, and their could be some money made from this if your smart enough to do that, i was just doing it for fun.

I can see two quite large issues with a system like yours:

1. Memory Space: If this is running on the Wii at the same time as a game, the game will undoubtly be using the majority of RAM, so your vid capture code to take a copy of the screen (I suppose it doesn't need to duplicate the actual data tho), compress and encode it and write it out to the SD will have very limited space to operate

2. Perfomance: Encoding most video is not quick, and usually the trade off of encoding time is compression size. Either way you have to take the screen data and compress it, you also have to write it to the SD card (which is also not quick).

I'm interested to know how you worked around these problems?

well i got a 10gb sd from prizerebel for free, and yes, ofcourse quality was a problem, 10 GB is a very small harddrive. I did this because i dont have a computer near my tv, so i couldnt record stuff. If anyone could give me a device that got good video with out a computer or off screen camera i would be sooooo happy. Does anyone know if you could use a DVR. And Also, with the program, you have to get rid of alot

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kkrol
well i got a 10gb sd from prizerebel for free, and yes, ofcourse quality was a problem, 10 GB is a very small harddrive.

10GB is plenty of storage space, I was more refering to RAM usage for compressing the display and compiling the video, or did you do all your buffering on the SD?

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kkrol
Does anyone know if you could use a DVR.

Depends on your DVR, if it has SCART, Composite, or Component inputs, then yes. Don't confuse an input with an output. Plugging your Wii into the SCART port that usually goes to your TV will not work.

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kkrol
And Also, with the program, you have to get rid of alot

What does that mean? A lot of what?

I would also love to hear from you the technical concept behind your program

how did you managed to run a program in "background" of the game program, you used the hidden processor ?
how did you managed to encode AND write video on sd without a dramatic speed loss ?
how the fact that you formatted your sdcard is related to the loss of the program ? or maybe you mean you didn't use a sourcecode and simply put the program like that ?

I've got a few ideas how this could possibly be done (You would still get significant lag though), but I'm not going to say anything about them yet :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2008 01:56PM by whodares.

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kkrol
well i got a 10gb sd from prizerebel for free, and yes, ofcourse quality was a problem, 10 GB is a very small harddrive

i have never seen a 10Gb SD card, the standard size formats are 1,2,4,8,16 & 32


this prog could possibly work, in the same way gecko rebooter works and keeps the gecko code active in the background to the game?

the things is, I have the feeling that a complete frame grabber + video encoder + SD handler requires lot more ressources than a simple asm stub or code patch

but I might be completely wrong, i don't really know how the Gekko thingie is working ;-)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2008 03:08PM by ekeeke.

You understand it right. However, there are cetain tricks and methods that could be used to "lighten" the load.

Firstly, you actually have several outputs, each with varying degrees of speed. SD card, USBGecko, WiFi, USB-LAN and USB Mass Storage. Gecko and WiFi might provide an advantage in that you can basically shove the data out, and perform video encoding on a recipient (ie. desktop PC). This would would also reduce processing time from grabbing the data.

As I was talking this over with one of my friends, he said that it would still require ~600KB of transfer per frame. From my understanding, these code hooks apply from the PowerPC side, leaving the ARM chip relatively untouched.

So was born the idea of using the IOS Module Toolkit (http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Custom_IOS_Module) to create a /dev/videoencoder device. This would mean the PowerPC chip could flush data to the ARM processor (or even just nudge the ARM chip to get it itself). The ARM could then encode, and return the data back to the PowerPC for outputting.

This will allow you to compress the data, meaning less transfer time, and should less affect the console running a game.

You could also just collect every other frame or something like that. You're video might not be as smooth, but hey.

Ultimately, I think unless you're wanting the real technical challenge, time verses money, you'd be better off buying a cheap video capture device IMO.

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kkrol
I had it nearly working, and then accidently reformated my sd card, so it was all lost. I am not going to redevelope it, because it was so hard for me, but i suggest someone else begin to make it.

Ha, ha!!!
This is the worst "dog ate my homework homework" story I've ever heard.
This guy is clearly taking you for a ride, with all due respect.

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ekeeke
I would also love to hear from you the technical concept behind your program]

Yes. That should be amusing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2008 06:49PM by TheManuel.

Well... I don't know if the guy is joking with people or something, but this is a very interesting thread, after all.
OK, video recording is kind of hard, but what about plain and no-motioning screen capture? I like to take screenshots of cool moments in the games, but taking a photo from a camera doesn't work very well...

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TheManuel
This guy is clearly taking you for a ride, with all due respect.

Oh don't worry, we're not being fooled, however I'm having fun throwing the ideas about, so I'm quite enjoying this ride. :-)

Okay, well i might start to work on it again, but theres really no point for me. I found something called EasyCap, a $10-15 capture card. Since my CPU i not near my games, im going to FIRST record it with my tape recorder, and then bring the recorder up stairs, and move the video from the output of that to my easycap to my PC, this should work and im going to be uploading some videos when it get it from prizerebel, and you guys can be the judge to see if it was a good idea, youtube.com/gptsiteuser i also think we could get alot of help from people who programed the screen recorders for PC like Camstudio, and Hypercam, maybe they could throw something in, or suggest their ideas.