How to record your screen and saving it as .AVI

This tutorial is going to show you how you can record your screen and then save the bitmaps to a .Avi file. It's a little bit complicated but if you only understands how to use the AViWriter class and the AVI class you doesn't necessary need to understand how it works.
Never mind, let's get started.


First we need to import a few things:

Code:

Imports System.Drawing.Imaging
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices

Then we add the AVI class:

Code:

Public Class Avi

        Public Const StreamtypeVIDEO As Integer = 1935960438
        Public Const OF_SHARE_DENY_WRITE As Integer = 32
        Public Const BMP_MAGIC_COOKIE As Integer = 19778



        <StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack:=1)> _
        Public Structure RECTstruc
            Public left As UInt32
            Public top As UInt32
            Public right As UInt32
            Public bottom As UInt32
        End Structure

        <StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack:=1)> _
        Public Structure BITMAPINFOHEADERstruc
            Public biSize As UInt32
            Public biWidth As Int32
            Public biHeight As Int32
            Public biPlanes As Int16
            Public biBitCount As Int16
            Public biCompression As UInt32
            Public biSizeImage As UInt32
            Public biXPelsPerMeter As Int32
            Public biYPelsPerMeter As Int32
            Public biClrUsed As UInt32
            Public biClrImportant As UInt32
        End Structure

        <StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack:=1)> _
        Public Structure AVISTREAMINFOstruc
            Public fccType As UInt32
            Public fccHandler As UInt32
            Public dwFlags As UInt32
            Public dwCaps As UInt32
            Public wPriority As UInt16
            Public wLanguage As UInt16
            Public dwScale As UInt32
            Public dwRate As UInt32
            Public dwStart As UInt32
            Public dwLength As UInt32
            Public dwInitialFrames As UInt32
            Public dwSuggestedBufferSize As UInt32
            Public dwQuality As UInt32
            Public dwSampleSize As UInt32
            Public rcFrame As RECTstruc
            Public dwEditCount As UInt32
            Public dwFormatChangeCount As UInt32
            <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValArray, SizeConst:=64)> _
            Public szName As UInt16()
        End Structure



        'Initialize the AVI library
        <DllImport("avifil32.dll")> _
        Public Shared Sub AVIFileInit()
        End Sub

        'Open an AVI file
        <DllImport("avifil32.dll", PreserveSig:=True)> _
        Public Shared Function AVIFileOpen(ByRef ppfile As Integer, ByVal szFile As [String], ByVal uMode As Integer, ByVal pclsidHandler As Integer) As Integer
        End Function

        'Create a new stream in an open AVI file
        <DllImport("avifil32.dll")> _
        Public Shared Function AVIFileCreateStream(ByVal pfile As Integer, ByRef ppavi As IntPtr, ByRef ptr_streaminfo As AVISTREAMINFOstruc) As Integer
        End Function

        'Set the format for a new stream
        <DllImport("avifil32.dll")> _
        Public Shared Function AVIStreamSetFormat(ByVal aviStream As IntPtr, ByVal lPos As Int32, ByRef lpFormat As BITMAPINFOHEADERstruc, ByVal cbFormat As Int32) As Integer
        End Function

        'Write a sample to a stream
        <DllImport("avifil32.dll")> _
        Public Shared Function AVIStreamWrite(ByVal aviStream As IntPtr, ByVal lStart As Int32, ByVal lSamples As Int32, ByVal lpBuffer As IntPtr, ByVal cbBuffer As Int32, ByVal dwFlags As Int32, _
        ByVal dummy1 As Int32, ByVal dummy2 As Int32) As Integer
        End Function

        'Release an open AVI stream
        <DllImport("avifil32.dll")> _
        Public Shared Function AVIStreamRelease(ByVal aviStream As IntPtr) As Integer
        End Function

        'Release an open AVI file
        <DllImport("avifil32.dll")> _
        Public Shared Function AVIFileRelease(ByVal pfile As Integer) As Integer
        End Function

        'Close the AVI library
        <DllImport("avifil32.dll")> _
        Public Shared Sub AVIFileExit()
        End Sub






    End Class

This class contains some dll imports and a few structures. This class is only for the AviWriter so it can write the .avi:s. By reading the comments you will see what the dll imports is for. You don't need to think about what id does now, because we're going to use everything here when we're creating the AviWriter class.



Now we come to something more interesting, the AviWriter class, we create it and add some variables:

Code:

 Public Class AviWriter
        Private aviFile As Integer = 0
        Private aviStream As IntPtr = IntPtr.Zero
        Private frameRate As UInt32 = 0
        Private countFrames As Integer = 0
        Private width As Integer = 0
        Private height As Integer = 0
        Private stride As UInt32 = 0
        Private fccType As UInt32 = Avi.StreamtypeVIDEO
        Private fccHandler As UInt32 = 1668707181

Code:

Private strideInt As Integer
        Private strideU As UInteger
        Private heightU As UInteger
        Private widthU As UInteger

The second code box is just because I had some problems converting Uint32 to integer and integer to Uinteger. So then I do like this:

Code:

strideU = stride

Just to show a example.



But never mind about that, now we're going to create a new class named OpenAVI:

Code:

Public Sub OpenAVI(ByVal fileName As String, ByVal frameRate As UInt32)
            Me.frameRate = frameRate

            Avi.AVIFileInit()


            Dim OpeningError As Integer = Avi.AVIFileOpen(aviFile, fileName, 4097, 0)
            If OpeningError <> 0 Then
                Throw New Exception("Error in AVIFileOpen: " + OpeningError.ToString())
            End If
        End Su

The variable fileName is where you want to save the .Avi file and frameRate is of course the frame rate of the video.


Then we set the frame rate of the video to the frameRate's value.

The next line of code Initialize the avi by using one of the dll imports in the AVI class.

Then with another dll import we're opening the avi so we later can add bitmaps to it. The opening will return a value which we store in a variable called OpeningError. If OpeningError is not equals to 0 it means we got an error so then an Exception is thrown.


Then we create a new sub Called AddFrame:

Code:

Public Sub AddFrame(ByVal bmp As Bitmap)

            bmp.RotateFlip(RotateFlipType.RotateNoneFlipY)

            Dim bmpDat As BitmapData = bmp.LockBits(New Rectangle(0, 0, bmp.Width, bmp.Height), ImageLockMode.[ReadOnly], PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb)

With this sub we can add bitmaps as frames of the video, the bmp variable is the bitmap we want to add.



The first thing we are doing in the sub is to flip the bitmap on its Y axis, I don't really know why the picture need to be upside down.



Then we declares a variable called bmpData and assign it a BitmapData which locks the bitmap to memory.


Now we'll add:

Code:

If countFrames = 0 Then
                Dim bmpDatStride As UInteger = bmpData.Stride
                Me.stride = DirectCast(bmpDatStride, UInt32)
                Me.width = bmp.Width
                Me.height = bmp.Height
                CreateStream()
            End If

the countFrames variable, which we declared in the beginning of the class, keeping track of how many frames we got. And if we have 0 (= this is the first frame) we want to set the Avi's stride to the stride of the bmpData and then set the Avi's size to our bitmap's size. At last we want to create a stream, this is a sub we'll create later.


Then we add these lines:

Code:

strideInt = stride
            Dim writeResult As Integer = Avi.AVIStreamWrite(aviStream, countFrames, 1, bmpData.Scan0, DirectCast((strideInt * height), Int32), 0, _
            0, 0)

            If writeResult <> 0 Then
                Throw New Exception("Error in AVIStreamWrite: " + writeResult.ToString())
            End If

Here we add the bitmap with bmpData by a dll import from the AVI class.
Here we also gets a value, if the value is 0 we know it worked, else we throw an exception.

Last in this sub we add:

Code:

 bmp.UnlockBits(bmpData)
            System.Math.Max(System.Threading.Interlocked.Increment(countFrames), countFrames - 1)
        End Sub

We removes the bitmap from memory and increases the countFrames with one.



Then that sub was done, now we will create the sub Called CreateStream which will be the sub which creating the stream (as I said before and as you can hear on its name):

Code:

Private Sub CreateStream()
            Dim strhdr As New Avi.AVISTREAMINFOstruc()
            strhdr.fccType = fccType
            strhdr.fccHandler = fccHandler
            strhdr.dwScale = 1
            strhdr.dwRate = frameRate
            strideU = stride
            heightU = height
            strhdr.dwSuggestedBufferSize = DirectCast((stride * strideU), UInt32)
            strhdr.dwQuality = 10000

            heightU = height
            widthU = width
            strhdr.rcFrame.bottom = DirectCast(heightU, UInt32)
            strhdr.rcFrame.right = DirectCast(widthU, UInt32)
            strhdr.szName = New UInt16(64) {}

So now we created the sub with some variables. We sets the quality, the size and the type of the stream etc.


Now we create the stream:

Code:

Dim createResult As Integer = Avi.AVIFileCreateStream(aviFile, aviStream, strhdr)
            If createResult <> 0 Then
                Throw New Exception("Error in AVIFileCreateStream: " + createResult.ToString())
            End If

And as usual we throw an exception if the value we get isn't 0.


Then two variables:

Code:

 Dim bi As New Avi.BITMAPINFOHEADERstruc()
            Dim bisize As UInteger = Marshal.SizeOf(bi)
            bi.biSize = DirectCast(bisize, UInt32)
            bi.biWidth = DirectCast(width, Int32)
            bi.biHeight = DirectCast(height, Int32)
            bi.biPlanes = 1
            bi.biBitCount = 24

            strideU = stride
            heightU = height
            bi.biSizeImage = DirectCast((strideU * heightU), UInt32

These we will used when we sets the image format to the stream. As you can see one of them is one of our structures from the AVI class.


And we'll set the format of the stream:

Code:

Dim formatResult As Integer = Avi.AVIStreamSetFormat(aviStream, 0, bi, Marshal.SizeOf(bi))
            If formatResult <> 0 Then
                Throw New Exception("Error in AVIStreamSetFormat: " + formatResult.ToString())
            End If
      End Sub

And as usual...


Now we only have one sub left in the AviWriter class:

Code:

Public Sub Close()
            If aviStream <> IntPtr.Zero Then
                Avi.AVIStreamRelease(aviStream)
                aviStream = IntPtr.Zero
            End If
            If aviFile <> 0 Then
                Avi.AVIFileRelease(aviFile)
                aviFile = 0
            End If
            Avi.AVIFileExit()
        End Sub
    End Class

This sub we use for closing the stream and the avi file when we're done with them.

So if we still have the aviStream left, we will release it.
And if the aviFile still in unreleased, we'll release it too.

Then we Exit the avi file because we're now done.


That was the two avi classes.

Now I'm going to show how to do a VERY simple screen recorder with these classes.

First we'll need to add a timer and one button. We call the timer for bmpTimer and the button for StartButton. The button's text should be "Start" and the timer's interval should be 100 (because here I will use 10 frames per seconds).

Now we can save the bitmaps in two ways, I'm going to save them in a variable but you can also save them as files on your computer:

Code:

Private screenBimaps(99) As Bitmap
    Private currentBitmap As Integer = 0

Observe that I only can store 100 pictures now.

When the user click on the button:

Code:

Private Sub StartButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles StartButton.Click
        If StartButton.Text = "Start" Then
            currentBitmap = 0
            StartButton.Text = "Stop"
            bmpTimer.Enabled = True
        Else
            CreateFile()
            StartButton.Text = "Start"
            bmpTimer.Enabled = False
        End If
    End Sub

If we haven't started yet, we reset the currentBitmap variable so it's starting from the beginning, then we starts our timer and changes the text on the button to "Stop".

If we're already recording we'll create the file with another sub, and then stops the timer and the text changes back to "Start".



Then we adds a sub which handles bmpTimer.tick:

Code:

Private Sub bmpTimer_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles bmpTimer.Tick
        If currentBitmap < 100 Then
            Dim w As Integer = Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Width
            Dim h As Integer = Screen.PrimaryScreen.WorkingArea.Height
            Dim bmp As New Bitmap(w, h)
            Using gr As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(bmp)
                gr.CopyFromScreen(0, 0, 0, 0, bmp.Size)
            End Using
            screenBimaps(currentBitmap) = bmp
            currentBitmap += 1
        Else
            CreateFile()
            StartButton.Text = "Start"
            bmpTimer.Enabled = False
        End If
    End Sub

So no when the timer tick a screen shot is taken and stored as the current frame. But if it already has recorded 100 pictures, it saves the avi (since I only added the opportunity for up to 100 images in the screenBitmaps variable).





And now we're going to create the AVI file with our bitmaps:

Code:

Private Sub CreateFile()
        Dim Writer As New AviWriter

        Writer.OpenAVI("C:\Test.Avi", 10)
        For Frame As Integer = 0 To currentBitmap - 1
            Writer.AddFrame(screenBimaps(Frame))
        Next
        Writer.Close()
    End Sub

So here we're creating a AviWriter which Opens a Avi File called Test located in C:\ with 10 frames/second. Then we're adding all the frames and at last we close the writer.

And now it's done. In this last part you can do many things, give the user the opportunity to choose file path, changing frame rate, pausing, changing recording area and so on.

This was my tutorial. It was a quite hard to explain some parts =)