How to take a screenshot of desktop fast with Java in Windows (ffmpeg, etc.)?

Question

I would like to use java to take a screenshot of my machine using FFMPEG or some other solution. I know linux works with ffmpeg without JNI, but running it in Windows does not work and may require (JNI?) is there any sample of some simple Java class (and anything else necessary) to capture a screenshot runnable in a windows environment? Is there some alternative to FFMPEG? I want to take screenshot at a rate faster than the Java Robot API, which I have found to work at taking screenshots, but is slower than I would like. I know in Linux this works very fast: ``` import com.googlecode.javacv.*; public class ScreenGrabber { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { int x = 0, y = 0, w = 1024, h = 768; FFmpegFrameGrabber grabber = new FFmpegFrameGrabber(":0.0+" + x + "," + y); grabber.setFormat("x11grab"); grabber.setImageWidth(w); grabber.setImageHeight(h); grabber.start(); CanvasFrame frame = new CanvasFrame("Screen Capture"); while (frame.isVisible()) { frame.showImage…

Accepted Answer

Using the built-in Robots class is way easier than other Java libraries and should probably fit your needs.

If you need a smooth video with >= 30fps (more than 30 screenshots per second), you should first try the Robots approach plus performance improvements there using asynchronous storing of the screenshots.

If it doesn't work for you, try using JNA and that is (even though it's more complex) almost guaranteed to work for smooth screen capturing.

Approach with Robots

The robots class is indeed capable of doing what you want, the problem most screen capturing approaches with Robots have is the saving of the screenshots. An approach could look like that: Looping over the captureScreen() method, grabbing the screen into a BufferedImage, convert it to a byte array and save it with an asynchronous file writer to a target file after adding the future reference of your image to the ArrayList to be able to keep going while storing the image data.

```
// Pseudo code
while (capturing)
{
    grab bufferedImage (screenCapture) from screen
    convert bufferImage to byte array
    start asynchronous file channel to write to the output file
      and add the future reference (return value) to the ArrayList
}
```

Approach with JNA

Original Question: How to take screenshots fast in Java?

As it is bad practice to just link, I will post the example here:

```
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.awt.image.ColorModel;
import java.awt.image.DataBuffer;
import java.awt.image.DataBufferInt;
import java.awt.image.DataBufferUShort;
import java.awt.image.DirectColorModel;
import java.awt.image.Raster;
import java.awt.image.WritableRaster;

import com.sun.jna.Native;
import com.sun.jna.platform.win32.W32API;
import com.sun.jna.win32.W32APIOptions;

public class JNAScreenShot
{

public static BufferedImage getScreenshot(Rectangle bounds)
    {
        W32API.HDC windowDC = GDI.GetDC(USER.GetDesktopWindow());
        W32API.HBITMAP outputBitmap = GDI.CreateCompatibleBitmap(windowDC, bounds.width, bounds.height);
        try
        {
            W32API.HDC blitDC = GDI.CreateCompatibleDC(windowDC);
            try
            {
                W32API.HANDLE oldBitmap = GDI.SelectObject(blitDC, outputBitmap);
                try
                {
                    GDI.BitBlt(blitDC, 0, 0, bounds.width, bounds.height, windowDC, bounds.x, bounds.y, GDI32.SRCCOPY);
                }
                finally
                {
                    GDI.SelectObject(blitDC, oldBitmap);
                }
                GDI32.BITMAPINFO bi = new GDI32.BITMAPINFO(40);
                bi.bmiHeader.biSize = 40;
                boolean ok = GDI.GetDIBits(blitDC, outputBitmap, 0, bounds.height, (byte[]) null, bi, GDI32.DIB_RGB_COLORS);
                if (ok)
                {
                    GDI32.BITMAPINFOHEADER bih = bi.bmiHeader;
                    bih.biHeight = -Math.abs(bih.biHeight);
                    bi.bmiHeader.biCompression = 0;
                    return bufferedImageFromBitmap(blitDC, outputBitmap, bi);
                }
                else
                {
                    return null;
                }
            }
            finally
            {
                GDI.DeleteObject(blitDC);
            }
        }
        finally
        {
            GDI.DeleteObject(outputBitmap);
        }
    }

private static BufferedImage bufferedImageFromBitmap(GDI32.HDC blitDC, GDI32.HBITMAP outputBitmap, GDI32.BITMAPINFO bi)
    {
        GDI32.BITMAPINFOHEADER bih = bi.bmiHeader;
        int height = Math.abs(bih.biHeight);
        final ColorModel cm;
        final DataBuffer buffer;
        final WritableRaster raster;
        int strideBits = (bih.biWidth * bih.biBitCount);
        int strideBytesAligned = (((strideBits - 1) | 0x1F) + 1) >> 3;
        final int strideElementsAligned;
        switch (bih.biBitCount)
        {
            case 16:
                strideElementsAligned = strideBytesAligned / 2;
                cm = new DirectColorModel(16, 0x7C00, 0x3E0, 0x1F);
                buffer = new DataBufferUShort(strideElementsAligned * height);
                raster = Raster.createPackedRaster(buffer, bih.biWidth, height, strideElementsAligned, ((DirectColorModel) cm).getMasks(), null);
                break;
            case 32:
                strideElementsAligned = strideBytesAligned / 4;
                cm = new DirectColorModel(32, 0xFF0000, 0xFF00, 0xFF);
                buffer = new DataBufferInt(strideElementsAligned * height);
                raster = Raster.createPackedRaster(buffer, bih.biWidth, height, strideElementsAligned, ((DirectColorModel) cm).getMasks(), null);
                break;
            default:
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("Unsupported bit count: " + bih.biBitCount);
        }
        final boolean ok;
        switch (buffer.getDataType())
        {
            case DataBuffer.TYPE_INT:
            {…

How to take a screenshot of desktop fast with Java in Windows (ffmpeg, etc.)?

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