Capture screen video using AForge.Video.FFMPEG / AForge.Video.VFW. Frame frequency

Question

My WinForms.NET 4 C # application records the desktop while the user interacts with it.

It uses AForge FFMPEG or VFW wrappers depending on the speed of the system. Capture is done in the background thread, of course.

In any case, wrappers require that the frame rate be specified in advance. This is problematic since the capture frequency is uncertain and easily depends on how busy the target computer is. On a good system, I get a maximum of 10 FPS.

So there are two problems here:

• How to align frames based on actual capture frame rate?
• How to increase the frame rate, possibly using a solution other than AForge?

The code I'm using is below for clarity:

private void ThreadWork ()  
{  
    int count = 0;  
    string filename = "";  
    RECT rect = new RECT();  
    System.Drawing.Bitmap bitmap = null;  
    System.Drawing.Graphics graphics = null;  
    System.DateTime dateTime = System.DateTime.Now;  
    System.IntPtr hWndForeground = System.IntPtr.Zero;  
    AForge.Video.FFMPEG.VideoFileWriter writer = null;  

    filename = @"c:\Users\Raheel Khan\Desktop\Temp\Capture.avi";
    if (System.IO.File.Exists(filename))
        System.IO.File.Delete(filename);

    writer = new AForge.Video.FFMPEG.VideoFileWriter();
    writer.Open
    (
        filename,
        System.Windows.Forms.Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Width,
        System.Windows.Forms.Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Height,
        10, // FPS
        AForge.Video.FFMPEG.VideoCodec.MPEG4
    );

    bitmap = new Bitmap
    (
        System.Windows.Forms.Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Width,
        System.Windows.Forms.Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Height,
        System.Drawing.Imaging.PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb
    );
    graphics = System.Drawing.Graphics.FromImage(bitmap);

    dateTime = System.DateTime.Now;

    while (System.DateTime.Now.Subtract(dateTime).TotalSeconds < 10) // 10 seconds.
    {
        graphics.CopyFromScreen(Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.X, Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Y, 0, 0, Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Size);

        rect = new RECT();
        hWndForeground = GetForegroundWindow();
        GetWindowRect(hWndForeground, ref rect);
        graphics.DrawRectangle(Pens.Red, rect.Left, rect.Top, rect.Right - rect.Left, rect.Bottom - rect.Top);
        graphics.DrawString(count++.ToString(), this.Font, Brushes.Red, 10, 10);

        writer.WriteVideoFrame(bitmap);

        System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(10);
    }

    writer.Close();
    writer.Dispose();

    System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(filename));
}

Answer 1

jpegs mjpeg, AVI-, . , " ", - .