DirectX« Direct3D« and Glide« capture dialog

This dialog offers a number of important options that can improve the quality of captured game screens. Several of them are, from a purely technical standpoint, too complex to cover in detail here. Because of this (it would involve pages of text and complex references to bit planes and methods of interpolating data and encoding color formats and how pictures are drawn and picture palettes are defined in 3D games) we've decided to simplify how we explain these functions.

We'll cover just the bare bones of these features, but enough so that you should know what they do, rather than "how they do it." How they do it just isn't that important for normal use of the program.

The features of the dialog relate only to DirectX, Direct3D, and Glide (generated by older 3dfx hardware) screens. If you see your screen captures from such sources appearing in a way that's not how you want them to appear, the options below used as directed may correct the problems.

Getting data from these high-speed buffersùand making that data look the way you want it to frozen into a single image rather than a dynamic animation that takes advantages of quirks in human perception like persistence of visionùis a complex task requiring some difficult finessing of the video hardware and the data itself.

You can choose which type of hardware from which you wish to capture a screen. Of course make sure it's the same as that which your game or other software is using to generate its screens.

DirectX/Direct3D Primary Surface - check this to capture from software using Microsoft's DirectX and Direct3D technology. Games like Combat Flight SimulatorÖ, as well as many others use the primary surface to display content. These are not overlaid across the main desktop such as DVD players, which are covered below. Anything full screen is usually a primary surface, for the most part.

DirectX Overlay (for example, DVD or Video) - check this to capture an overlaid screen, such as that you would see inside the region of a DVD player application. This is different from a primary surface capture. This data is overlaid on "top" of existing screen information and during a "regular" capture may not appear at all (the captured region may appear distorted, black, or be missing data).

3dfx Glide - check this to capture screens from Voodoo, Voodoo Rush, and other various 3dfx chipset-enabled software.

Hot key limits.

Note that the hot key for full screen game and DVD screens is most likely going to be "forced" to the Windows standard Print Screen. Other keys may be blocked by full screen applications, or controlled by them. When you select the type of capture you're doing, the DirectX capture dialog will tell you which capture hot key to use during game play below the check box that enables it. Be sure to read that before you jump into the game, so you know which key to hit to fire off the capture!

HyperSnap-DX 5 has some post-capture processing tools that may improve some captures should they not appear as desired. To enable automatic post processing of these captures, check this box and then select the type of processing you wish to have applied. These are performed based on the type of capture you're making, and are designed to improve the appearance of captures from these various hardware types based on our knowledge of "typical defects" gotten from their images.

You must first select the type of graphics controller you have installed.

None, unknown, or other than listed below - defines a "generic" post processing environment.

K1x4 filter for 3dfx Voodoo 1, Voodoo Rush, or other Voodoo 1 based cards - optimizes processing based on the characteristics of the images generated by these boards.

K2x2 filter for 3dfx Voodoo 2, Voodoo Banshee, and Voodoo 3 based cards - optimizes the post processing based on the characteristics of the images generated by these boards.

Gamma correction Factor [value] - this function works just like the Gamma processing on the Color menu except it's applied post-processing. It's common to see very dark screens from accelerated 3D hardware, and you can save time by having these screens automatically brightened after capture. You can quickly set this value back to the default by clicking the button to the right of the value entry box.

Get your bearings.

Perform a capture first with all values set at the default in order to get a "reference capture." Then change the settings here, thus you'll best be able to see how "fine or coarse" the adjustments actually are to the appearance of the captured images.