Automatic Image and Video Snaps Utility

[aaronbewza]

Hi, I'm Aaron Bewza and am currently working on an automatic screenshot tool:

Aaron's Automatic Image and Video Snaps Utility

 It will be available totally free for everyone soon. This is a very brief overview so far:

 

- finds all your VPX tables in your "tables" folder (assignable)

- opens them automatically one-by-one

- waits ten seconds for the table/rom to be active

- saves a fullscreen image to your "snaps" folder (assignable) and/or a fullscreen video to your "videos" folder.

- scales output image/video up or down to your preferred resolution and filetype, with quality/compression controls

 

I'm getting 1.5 MB snapshots and 4 MB clear videos which still look decent after scaling down substantially from 4k (files attached)

 

Right now it takes approximately 25 seconds to cycle through each game with the ten-second buffer then the ten second video recording happening.
This translates as 3 1/2 hours to process 500 tables.

I still need to make it user-friendly but I will return soon.

Thanks very much for having me on your site

 

 

Here is my AHK v1.1 code for you to check out yourselves, please remember I'm still working on it and this is only the start of it.

#SingleInstance, Ignore								; only one instance of program may be run
#NoEnv												; no system variables

; Automatic Screenshots
; by Aaron Bewza
; December 2025
; written in AHK v1.1

Loop, Files, %A_ScriptDir%\tables\*.vpx
{
	Run, VPinballX64.exe -play "%A_LoopFileFullPath%" -Minimized -exit	; otherwise chosen game is run
	SplitPath, A_LoopFileFullPath,,,, OutNameNoExt	; gets game name
	WinWaitActive, ahk_class VPPlayer				; waits for pinball window to be active
	Sleep, 10000									; waits for table to be fully operational
	SavedScreenshot = %A_ScriptDir%\snap\%OutNameNoExt%.png	; <-- makes variable name from this
	Runwait, ffmpeg.exe -f gdigrab -framerate 1 -y -i desktop -frames:v 1 -compression_level 10 -vf scale=1024:-1 "%SavedScreenshot%",, Hide	; grabs a fullscreen screenshot and saves it
	Soundplay, %A_ScriptDir%\click.mp3, Wait		; plays camera click sound
	WinClose, ahk_class VPPlayer					; close pinball window	
	WinWaitClose, ahk_class VPPlayer				; waits for pinball window to close
}
return

#IfWinNotActive ahk_class VPPlayer					; if pinball window is not active
Esc::ExitApp										; "Esc" exits program (otherwise exits pinball window)
#IfWinActive


/*
LShift::
Gui, Submit, NoHide	; submits fresh variables
SavedScreenshot = %A_ScriptDir%\snap\%OutNameNoExt%.png
Runwait, ffmpeg.exe -f gdigrab -framerate 1 -y -i desktop -frames:v 1 -compression_level 10 -vf scale=1024:-1 "%SavedScreenshot%",, Hide
return
*/

; end script

 

Edited January 1 by aaronbewza
added information about updated script

[Cliffy]

cool little tool! I've done mine one at a time throughout the years to replace the ones that Launchbox uses. This tool would have made it a lot easier.

 

[aaronbewza]

19 minutes ago, Cliffy said:

cool little tool! I've done mine one at a time throughout the years to replace the ones that Launchbox uses. This tool would have made it a lot easier.

 

Thanks! I'm only getting started, and it shouldn't take too long. This program will  also create video snapshots in the exact same fashion, 100% automatically (user will set the video length, FPS, bitrate, scale, output filetype etc) so perfect snaps and videos can be made uniformly.

[aaronbewza]

Ok I have the video capture working quite well, here are a couple samples approximately 500 KB (half a MB) each. it's also automatic like the image capture. in fact they operate together to make both snaps and videos. Back soon.

Edited January 1 by aaronbewza
improved video creation, they are 8 times smaller filesize than before without losing obvious quality