New screen capture codec

[Dee Mon]

ScreenPressor is our new lossless screen capture codec. It compresses video better than other lossless codecs and for screen recording better than lossy ones like DivX while keeping 100% quality and being very fast.
http://www.infognition.com/ScreenPressor/
(infognition.com is another name for thedeemon.com)

[JamieFaye]

Dmitry,

Congratulations on your new product launch and thanks for keeping GraphEditPlus growing and growing.

One of my more unusual projects is a program that lets you watch any part of memory as it changes through your video card, visualized in a variety of ways. I use DirectShow and Freeframe as part of the pipeline, and am just about to put in a "Record" and "Playback" capability and your codec might just be perfect for this, assuming that it works the way most screen capture codecs do, which is subtract the current frame from the last, determine the bounds of what has changed, and do a lot of patent-pending stuff to that to make it smaller.

Anyway, I am giving the program away so I don't have a lot of money to spend, so a couple of alternatives for this include:

• Getting a license to bundle a codec with each .EXE I distribute..
• Putting in somebody's free codec and letting those who want maximum performance to drop in yours..
• Rolling my own. Not out of the question - I wrote a screen capture codec in 1986 and I have not forgotten much.

So please consider giving a general description of how you are marketing this for the benefit of your visitors, and we can take the "numbers" part of the discussion offline when it is appropriate to do so.

-- Jamie Fenton

http://www.seductivelogic.com/index2.html for more on my programs.

[Dee Mon]

Thanks, Jamie!

and your codec might just be perfect for this, assuming that it works the way most screen capture codecs do, which is subtract the current frame from the last, determine the bounds of what has changed, and do a lot of patent-pending stuff to that to make it smaller.

Right, that's exactly how it works. It also finds motion which I think is not so helpful in your case.

I consider two major use cases for the codec.
1. Users or companies producing video tutorials and presentations. They capture or create some video, use the codec to compress it (on a limited number of machines) and then distribute the video via Web, CDc etc. In this case they just purchase limited number of licenses (1 per machine where they compress the video) and distribute the codec for their users who use it for playing their video for free.

2. Companies or persons developing software which captures or creates some video and compresses it with ScreenPressor. They have two options:
a) Distribute the codec in its original unregistered form together with their application and let their users decide if they like this codec and ready to pay for it or they want to use some other codec they have.
b) Include to their software a special build of ScreenPressor (as a codec or as a library) which doesn't require registration. This special build can be obtained by purchasing a developer license which cost depends on the form (VfW codec, DLL, source code) and other factors (like number of products).

In case of a free product I guess option 2a is the best: developer doesn't pay a penny and lets users decide if they want ScreenPressor or not. In near future ScreenPressor will be available for affiliates, and authors of free software will be able to monetize it by providing ScreenPressor with their software and being affiliates to get some percent of the codec's cost when an end user buys it.

[ininjuly]

It compresses video better and keeping 100% quality and being very fast? that is a good feature of the software...


_________________
Call Center Software

[Dee Mon]

Only for typical screen capture: windows, text and simple graphics.
It doesn't compress so well photos and natural video.

[JamieFaye]

I just bought it.  It works well in my application, which again is a real-time memory dump program.  I use it with a DirectShow capture filter I adapted (VCam) to write the dump data out at 10-30 fps. I use VirtualDub to handle the capture, which it does extraordinarily well. Most other stuff jittered and juddered too much, making the captures look like garbage. I am curious to find out why - which is entirely possible due to VD's open source nature. (My guess is that V.D. runs tasks better, with more even timing than say Media Player Classic).

So maybe you can sell a few more of these things. (If you can recommend a good, free, "screen record program", or perhaps bundle that in with your codec, you will find a larger mainstream audience).

-- Jamie F

[Dee Mon]

Thanks!
Yes, we do plan to offer a bundle with a capture program. Now one of the most popular free screen recording apps is CamStudio. We thought about releasing a version of CamStudio with ScreenPressor preconfigured by default (CamStudio open source license is ok with that) but it turned out that current maintainer of CamStudio is making a new version and is ready to include ScreenPressor in the main CamStudio distribution so there's no need for a fork. So let's just wait for the new version of it.

Right now we're keeping quiet about ScreenPressor because we're planning to make a Flash and/or Silverlight player for it so it can be easily used to post video online. Lots of exciting things ahead!