New Screen Capture Lossless Codec released!

[DmitriyV2]

MSU Screen Capture Lossless Codec 1.0 released!

This codec is intended for lossless compression of video taken from computer screen. It may be used for making software presentations, video lessons and tutorials, recording video from games etc.

Main features:
* Now many times better than Huffyuv on such files!
* We clame best compression rates (please check us!)

We've compared results of proposed algorithm with other available codecs results.
Comparison was made on several sequencies captured in DOSBox emulator from several games (UFO, Jazz Jackrabbit, Test Drive 3, Ultima 6 and Lemmings). All these games except Lemmings ran in 256 colors mode, Lemmings ran in 16 colors mode.
http://www.compression.ru/video/ls-codec/images/sc-test.gif

Codecpage: http://www.compression.ru/video/ls-codec/screen_capture_codec_en.html
Direct link to exe: http://www.compression.ru/video/ls-codec/msu-sc-codec.exe

Enjoy! :)

[siddharthagandhi]

the link don't work

[DmitriyV2]

the link don't work
What link? I check them - both works now. (thanks for report anyway)

[mod]

yes it does

[GmorG McRoth]

Nice!
MSU codec beat even Techsmith screen capture codec (http://www.techsmith.com/download/codecs.asp)

I made test on small screen recording in 24 fps (Recording lenght 0:49.66 min, grabbed in techsmith camtasia with techsmith codec, with no audio, resolution 1024x768 in 24bit color):


MSU Screen Capture Lossless Codec 1.0.avi 2,13 MB 2 186 KB
TechSmith Screen Capture Codec 2.06.avi 3,06 MB 3 138 KB
FM Screen Capture Codec 1.0.avi 5,94 MB 6 090 KB
CAMstudio Lossless Codec 1.0.avi 7,53 MB 7 714 KB
Lagarith 1.3.8.avi 80,7 MB 82 712 KB
CorePNG 0.8.2.avi 85,3 MB 87 358 KB
Alparysoft lossless codec 2.0.avi 107 MB 110 584 KB
uncompressed.avi 2,62 GB 2 748 582 KB

settings were set for max compression for every codec (null frames on for lagarith) and full lossless (no color conversion).

Also, MSU codec seemed to be fastest in bunch!
wery nice indeed

[DmitriyV2]

I made test on small screen recording in 24 fps (Recording lenght 0:49.66 min, grabbed in techsmith camtasia with techsmith codec, recompressed with Techsmith in best compression settings, with no audio, resolution 1024x768 in 24bit color. MSU codec in default settings.):

MSU Screen Capture Lossless Codec 1.0 = 2,186 KB
TechSmith Screen Capture Codec 2.06= 3,138 KB

wery nice indeed
Our research is in maximum compression.

Thanks for independent comparison!

[dragongodz]

tested on first 40 seconds of the movie stuart little. this includes the columbia(movie studio) opening and a bit of the opening credits.
resized to 352x288 at 25fps.

MSU
----
size = 115mb (same with fade detection turned off)
time = 2 minute (1 minute 57 seconds with fade turned off)

Lagarith RGB mode
------------------
size = 95mb
time = 44 seconds

Lagarith yuy2 mode(both input and in codec settings)
-------------------
size = 56.7mb
time = 36 seconds

null frames was disabled for both Lagarith encodes.

i also got a completely black picture for MSU playback. turning output to overlay in MPC i got what appeared to be a couple of frames but still seemed to get stuck on a frame and not show the ones after it.

i will try some different clips tomorrow and see what happens then.

[DmitriyV2]

tested on first 40 seconds of the movie stuart little. this includes the columbia(movie studio) opening.
Maybe this was not so clear, but "MSU Screen Capture Lossless codec" is designed for lossless compression of specific video taken from computer screen. :) (it's main competitors - TechSmith Screen Capture Codec and FM Screen Capture Codec). It overtake Lagarith on such video in several times.

Please use "MSU Lossless Video Codec" for lossless compression of movies: http://compression.ru/video/ls-codec/index_en.html

i will try some different clips tomorrow and see what happens then.
Ok! Please take into account - sequences with 265 or 16 colors with dithering are welcome! On such sequences (in program tutorials or old game examples) common codecs like XviD work not so good. Such area (not so big, but not so small) - is area of Screen Capture Codecs. Also please use other screen capture codecs or MSU Lossless Codec in your comparison if possible.

[DmitriyV2]

Also, MSU codec seemed to be fastest in bunch!
Wow! It's not so typical for us! :)
We did not make our own time measurements (speed is next step after bugfixing and public release), but your results sounds encouraging!

[siddharthagandhi]

How do I get it to show up in CamStudio?...its not in the codec list

And is it possible to use this with fraps?

[Backwoods]

And is it possible to use this with fraps?

Fraps uses it's own codec but it would be nice to see a comparison between this codec and Fraps.

[siddharthagandhi]

fraps codec is absolutely horrible

if recorded at full resolution something as simple as a four minute video can take 4 GB

if recorded at half resolution a video would take up 10 minutes-->1.5 GB

[Backwoods]

A comparison of system resources and compression ratio based on the same source footage. I could easily say Fraps will turn 4min of captured video into 2.4gigs instead of your 4gigs.

[tekNerd]

I can't see it in CamStudio's codecs list neither in DemoStudio's list!
Too bad for me! :(

[dragongodz]

ok a new test of a captured screen while i opened some windows, looked at a text file etc etc etc. only 30 second clip(720x576 section of my screen) because capturing it uncompressed was huge of course.

lagarith
-------
size = 30.6mb
time = 28seconds

MSU capture codec
------------------
size = 6.13mb
time = 35 seconds

MSU lossless video codec
------------------------
size = 6.32mb
time = 3 minutes 5 seconds
thats set at balanced, set to max compression estimated time was over 1 hour. :)
heres a funny result though. i turned it to maximise speed and it resulted in a size of 6.22mb and time was 2 minutes 26 seconds. so smaller and faster.

so yes this codec appears to compress things like screen captures very good. however of note is the speed. that it was not compressing real time with my athlonxp 2400+ while lagarith easily did. this wouldnt be a problem if capturing at a lower rate such as 15fps of course but if i wanted to capture realtime i suspect i would end up with some dropped frames using this codec. if you can speed it up a bit, even as an optional compression loss(so faster but doesnt compress quite aswell option), then this would be a very good codec for any capture speed.

DmitriyV2 - a couple of tips about critiquing peoples posts.

Please take into account - sequences with 265 or 16 colors with dithering are welcome!
please do not try and tell people they can not test on any other type of footage to see what the codec does with it. yes you said what type of footage this was for but if i want to see how it handles movie footage aswell and report that then its also a valid test and possibly important information for other users.

Also please use other screen capture codecs or MSU Lossless Codec in your comparison if possible.
please do not try and tell me what codecs i should or should not test against. the fact is Lagarith is also a lossless codec and infact you used not only it but corepng, huffyuv etc in your own tests. if you use and compare against a codec then others have every right to make their own comparisons with the same codecs, or even other lossless codecs you may not have.

[slavickas]

well screen capturing usually is done at few fps imho

[dragongodz]

well screen capturing usually is done at few fps imho
to which i already said this would not then be a problem. however screen captures are not always done at low rates. an option or ability to handle such cases would not be a bad thing would it ?

[signatory]

This sounds very interesting, so yeah please make it work in CamStudio... :) (I also tried)

[DmitriyV2]

This sounds very interesting, so yeah please make it work in CamStudio... :) (I also tried)
We found a problem root. It will work if monitor will be in RGB24 mode! Other modes will be patched in next version.

[DmitriyV2]

dragongodz! Thanks for comparison!

Other screen capture codecs is our real competitors (see results of GmorG McRoth (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=805766#post805766)), whats why comparisons with them are interesting for us.

Also: This two codecs has completly different compression methods inside. But in future we planning to merge this two codecs to one codec with sophisticated data type recognition. Hope we fulfil this plans after set of current patches and fixes (it's easy technically to test and fix separate codec). Inspirit support is welcome! :)

[GmorG McRoth]

Also: This two codecs has completly different compression methods inside. But in future we planning to merge this two codecs to one codec with sophisticated data type recognition. Hope we fulfil this plans after set of current patches and fixes (it's easy technically to test and fix separate codec). Inspirit support is welcome! :)
This sounds very interesting and promising indeed.

There are plans for directshow/CLI version in future?

[dragongodz]

Other screen capture codecs is our real competitors (see results of GmorG McRoth), whats why comparisons with them are interesting for us.

as i said though, you also used other lossless codecs such as Lagarith and infact if they can be used for screen capture aswell then they are just as valid to test with and against.

This two codecs has completly different compression methods inside. But in future we planning to merge this two codecs to one codec with sophisticated data type recognition.
this sounds like a good idea. it would be interesting to see a codec that can give huge compression and reasonable speed for multiple types of footage.

[DmitryPopov]

dragongodz, thanks for your tests.
What FPS did you use?

You are absolutely right about other codecs. Every lossless codec is a victim for comparison with ours. ;) I think, DmitryV wanted to say that codecs like Lagarith, Huffyuv, Alpary etc. which don't use delta-frames are not very good for screen captured video like software presentations and stuff, where there's no noise, a little movement, lots of repeating frames and so on.

Your idea of a simpler and faster method for high FPS is also very good. Maybe there will be such method in version 1.2.

In a couple of days I'm planning to release version 1.1 with support of forcing key-frames, working in CamStudio and a little better compression.

In a couple of weeks there's going to be a new version of MSU Lossless Video Codec. I think it will include MSU Screen Capture Codec as a choosable method for compression.

As for DirectShow and command line, I don't see now a big need in it. The codec is seen and works fine in GraphEdit, so other DirectShow apps also can use it.

[DmitryPopov]

As promised, version 1.1 released.
Changes:
* Supports forcing key frames.
* Supports RGB24 and RGB32, so it can easily be used in CamStudio.
* A little better compression (improved by 3% in average).
Can still play files created with version 1.0.

In CamStudio files created with this codec are played successfully with Player.exe, but not with Playplus.exe. Don't know the reason yet, maybe you can say.

[DmitriyV2]

This sounds very interesting and promising indeed. There are plans for directshow/CLI version in future?
Thanks! We concentrate on research, but I thin directshow support will be better in future.

To all! As Dmitry wrote: We patch codec to work with CamStudio. Hope it's ok, any feedback is welcome.

Version 1.1 available from codec page
http://www.compression.ru/video/ls-codec/screen_capture_codec_en.html

[GmorG McRoth]

nice quick progress :) I don't have much time now to test so can't realy give much feedback but I like to see things evolve. Keep the good work.

[tekNerd]

Works great for me in CamStudio! Quality excelent, min file size! This is Great! Thanks a lot!
The only "bad" thing is that someday ago i tried to upload a file to some hosting site and told me that doesn't know the codec! But...
Anyway, thanks, great work!

PS: I just observed that on my computer i can't play back this files with vlc. (it does work with bsplayer, mpc, wmp).

[dragongodz]

What FPS did you use?
sorry to take awhile to answer. only been popping on and off the board so didnt see the question. :)
answer = 25fps
yes i could have vaptured at 15fps, for example , and then converted that to 25fps with either replicated or blended frames. it would hawever not have looked as nice or as smooth compared to real 25fps footage.

[grouik]

It is possible, that in the future ffdshow could decode msu created file ?

i have little problem to play msu 1.1 file at full speed in fullscreen using media player classic, video are 304x224 at near 60fps, in windows that's ok in fullsrcreen there are frameskip. I'm using all in "System Defaut" in output configuration of mpc.

Tested on Athlon-XP 2400 mhz and A64-2600 Mhz same problem with ati et nvida video card, overlay seem ok

[DmitryPopov]

At this moment the source code is not open to public, so ffdshow cannot decode it, unless someone reverse engineers it. ;)

60 is pretty much high fps, it's hard to be fast when you compress good. ;) If you can, capture video with less fps, it can help.

[Zarxrax]

I just want to say this is an amazing codec! I am creating some tutorial videos, and MSU Screen Capture codec compressed over 11 minutes of video at 800x600 24fps down to just 2MB! :D

I was wondering if it would be possible for this codec to support an alpha channel. This would be very usefull for things such as rendering motion graphics from Adobe After Effects or something similar.

[DmitriyV2]

I just want to say this is an amazing codec! I am creating some tutorial videos, and MSU Screen Capture codec compressed over 11 minutes of video at 800x600 24fps down to just 2MB! :D
Thank you! :)

I was wondering if it would be possible for this codec to support an alpha channel. This would be very usefull for things such as rendering motion graphics from Adobe After Effects or something similar.
Hm. This is first such request. Anyway thanks for idea!

[Isochroma]

The download link on your page still says:

MSU Screen Capture Lossless Codec 1.0, EXE installer

So is this version 1.0, or 1.1?

[DmitryPopov]

It's 1.1.
Version 1.2 is coming soon.

[tekNerd]

Will version 1.2 be decoded by Divx/Xvid decoder?

[foxyshadis]

No. Where'd you get that idea?

[tekNerd]

I just thought that...I am a noob so...Please, be gentile!

[Deathbliss]

How do I get it to capture the mouse properly when using CamStudio? I love the quality and compression, but the mouse cursor tracking is HORRIBLE. Be nice if that was fixed!
- Deathbliss

[foxyshadis]

Er, you don't seem to understand the idea of "lossless codec", which both of these are. Anything camstudio gives to them is recorded, so if the mouse is disappearing (I think that's what you mean by "mouse cursor tracking"), it's entirely camstudio's fault. Since this seems to be the major problem, you shold go back to your other thread, define what you mean, and look for a solution in camstudio itself.

[DmitriyV2]

MSU Screen Capture Codec 1.2 released with 16-bit support
http://compression.ru/video/ls-codec/screen_capture_codec_en.html

[zakxos]

what program do I need to capture screen video with this codec?

[foxyshadis]

Camstudio works for basic screencasts.

[lansing]

anyone with an update with this installer? I can't install it on my windows 7 64bit machine.

UPDATE: nvm, I figured that I forgot to run the installer as administrator.

[lansing]

Just took a try in this codec for my screen capture, not really happy with the quality. Yes it has smaller file size, but the frame drops are just unacceptable. I set capture frame rate at 30, but the actual outputing frame rate was probably under 15fps.

[DmitryPopov]

This MSU codec (as well as the others) is abandoned and not supported anymore.

There is a successor to it which works faster and compresses better, it's called ScreenPressor (http://www.infognition.com/ScreenPressor/). Also available for Linux and OS X (as a library) and there is a free Flash player for embedding video on the Web.

[Procrastinating]

While necrobumbing isn't in my taste, Is there a straightforward way to pipe screenpresser into x264? I haven't checked whether ffmpeg supports the format.

[DmitryPopov]

Anything that can use VfW or DirectShow will do.
ffmpeg has no support for it, to my knowledge.