[moki]

Snapz Pro X 2.0 is a major upgrade to our screen/video capture product, Snapz Pro X. Our major focus for this release is quite simple: performance.

We've spent the better part of the last year working on an optimized version of the Snapz Pro X video capture engine, and the results are simply astounding. You want to do full screen, 30fps video capture? Not a problem. And without noticably impacting your computer's performance during the capture.

We're also rolling in the audio capture abilities we debuted in WireTap to make Snapz Pro X 2.0 a simply astonishing video capture tool. While we're at it, we're also putting in a number of other requested features

If anyone has anything they'd like me to take a video of with Snapz Pro X 2.0, I'd be happy to oblige. There are a few pretty cool ones posted to the progress log:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/F...ML/000021.html

[MojoRising022]

So, when will we see it released and, of course, what will it cost?

[moki]

Originally posted by MojoRising022:
So, when will we see it released and, of course, what will it cost?

Well, when it's done. Wish I could give you a better forecast than that, because I know a lot of people are eager to get it.

It largely depends on how many other features we plan to add before calling it 2.0 and going through regression testing and then release.

[ambush]

I won't be convinced till I see it with my own eyes.

Snapz has always been nightmare-slow on my iBook, my eMac and all my computers, G4 or not.

[nforcer]

Originally posted by moki:
Snapz Pro X 2.0 is a major upgrade to our screen/video capture product, Snapz Pro X. Our major focus for this release is quite simple: performance.

We've spent the better part of the last year working on an optimized version of the Snapz Pro X video capture engine, and the results are simply astounding. You want to do full screen, 30fps video capture? Not a problem. And without noticably impacting your computer's performance during the capture.

We're also rolling in the audio capture abilities we debuted in WireTap to make Snapz Pro X 2.0 a simply astonishing video capture tool. While we're at it, we're also putting in a number of other requested features

If anyone has anything they'd like me to take a video of with Snapz Pro X 2.0, I'd be happy to oblige. There are a few pretty cool ones posted to the progress log:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/F...ML/000021.html

I'm curious to see if we can get some decent video captures while playing games. If you have Quake 3 or another pretty CPU and GPU intensive FPS game, I'd love to see some fullscreen footage from that.

And a quick question: Does it look like, or is Snapz Pro X 2 going to require more RAM for video captures? In other words, is it saving movies directly into RAM instead of to the disk to speed things up, so would a RAM upgrade at some point before or around SPX2 release be advisable if one was going to be taking some rather large and long movies?

[moki]

Originally posted by nforcer:
And a quick question: Does it look like, or is Snapz Pro X 2 going to require more RAM for video captures? In other words, is it saving movies directly into RAM instead of to the disk to speed things up, so would a RAM upgrade at some point before or around SPX2 release be advisable if one was going to be taking some rather large and long movies?

No, Snapz Pro X 2.0 doesn't require any more RAM than 1.0.x did -- the capture engine is just extremely advanced. We've spent a lot of time tuning it, and the results are simply incredible.

[moki]

Originally posted by ambush:
I won't be convinced till I see it with my own eyes.

Snapz has always been nightmare-slow on my iBook, my eMac and all my computers, G4 or not.

Much of this depends on how you utilize it. You can believe what you will, but check out some of the comments from our beta testers:

.....

.....

Holy $#%$$%$^%$^

I'm sitting in Starbucks crying like a little baby...ok, that's a little overstated...but...

This is truly wonderful. I'm using a G4 Titanium, 1 Ghz- did 1024x768 with Millions of colors. 29.74 frames a second!!!!

.....

It's a paradigm shift. We bet on SnapZ for our training, knowing it was too slow for half of our stuff...in hopes it would improve...this is what we were waiting for...I'll be putting it through its paces next week. I'm going to try to cut a DVD training on it...

.....

Wow! I am most impressed! On my dual gig G4, with 2 monitors set to millions of colors, I was able to capture one of the 780x520 pixel flash movies that my company did off of safari at a full 30 fps with none of those "torn frames" that bothered me so much about the earlier versions. Hats off to you, Andrew. Would that I had had this two months ago.

.....

To say I'm impressed would be a complete understatement. With iTunes open to
about 800x600 and the visualizer turned on, the terminal open to a 96x40
line window and running cmatrix, and running an output to MPEG4 in iMovie 3
my 2001 733MHz Quicksilver system actually remained useable.

.....

I'm also getting great results on a Albook 17in 1 Ghz. I'm capturing fullscreen movies at 30 fps, with music playing, moving windows around, menus around, scale effect, etc. Im using 10.2.6.

.....

Who needs a G5?
27.6FPS-28.98FPS!! - G3 iMac, 1GB RAM
1024x768 movie, millions
Running:
Safari, Mail, iChat AV, iTunes, 2 or 3 menubar apps (weatherpop, iSeek, etc)
Even got 18.6FPS playing PoG 640x502!

[ambush]

Originally posted by moki:
Much of this depends on how you utilize it. You can believe what you will, but check out some of the comments from our beta testers:
<snip>

Still.

I won't be convinced till I see it with my own eyes.

Sorry, RealPC and FWB thaught me to be skeptical

[CheesePuff]

Originally posted by ambush:
[B
Sorry, RealPC and FWB thaught me to be skeptical [/B]

Thaught me too.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Well I don't know if it thaught me...but I know it taught me.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by moki:
If anyone has anything they'd like me to take a video of with Snapz Pro X 2.0, I'd be happy to oblige. There are a few pretty cool ones posted to the progress log:

A Redline race with jonas. Quick...before he leaves.

[ambush]

man I always choke on that word! grrr

taught taught taught taught



yo cheese puff wassup dawg

[moki]

Originally posted by ambush:
Still.

Sorry, RealPC and FWB thaught me to be skeptical

Ouch. Well, fair enough. I'd be happy to send you a beta version and let you [Ambush, not everyone ] make some movies of your own, if you wish. Mail me privately at: andrew@AmbrosiaSW.com

[catsank]

How much will the upgrade from
1.08 to version 2 cost us moki ?

[oVeRmInD911]

Originally posted by catsank:


How much will the upgrade from
1.08 to version 2 cost us moki ?

Insert big GIF here

[catsank]

oVeRmInD911 - 600K inline Gif - you know how to make friends !

[oVeRmInD911]

SOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRY!


Well it made you check the file size, so it had some effect...

[moki]

I sent the beta to ambush; hopefully he'll post his experiences (and a sample movie or two) here when he gets a chance.

[catsank]

Politely as possible -



As much as we all love ambush, some of us on getting this
unique opportunity to hear from the horse's mouth so to
speak would really appreciate an estimate
( ball park figure - if you like ) of the upgrade from
1.08 to version 2 will cost us please moki ?

[moki]

Originally posted by catsank:
speak would really appreciate an estimate
( ball park figure - if you like ) of the upgrade from
1.08 to version 2 will cost us please moki ?

It has not yet been decided, so I really can't answer your question.

[catsank]

Thanks for reply Moki - how long till the
next release or you do know how much ?

[sandsl]

Can we get a screenshot of the interface?

[catsank]

Seems a little too much effort predominantly on movie capture
and not enough on a smoother join with the OS and even removing
itself from being old 'Carbon crap' and going truly OSX native and
cocoa - am I right Moki, or am I right !

[lookmark]

I quite agree. Why is time being spent on performance in the program's core functionality instead of, say, rewriting the entire thing in another development environment so it can be rather sluggish until it's re-optimized months later?

For shame.



Snapz Pro X 2 looks really promising, moki. Look forward to its release.

[WJMoore]

Originally posted by catsank:
Seems a little too much effort predominantly on movie capture
and not enough on a smoother join with the OS and even removing
itself from being old 'Carbon crap' and going truly OSX native and
cocoa - am I right Moki, or am I right !

Geez that's a bit rough... Funny lots of people complain about Apple not concentracting on the "core" things enough and wasting time on eye candy etc. Ambrosia (potentially) go the other way (obviously unless you're a beta tester you don't know whether this is indeed true or not) and there is still complaints. You can't win.

[ambush]

I got the beta and, well, it looks just like the old version.

BUT it doesn't lag your computer to death! yay! very good job!

I filmed my new app in action and the animations were quite smooth, I will probably use it a lot to demo my new game.

Thanks!

[sandsl]

Originally posted by ambush:
I got the beta and, well, it looks just like the old version.

BUT it doesn't lag your computer to death! yay! very good job!

Its great that the core functionality of the app is better, don't forget to do something about the interface, it looks a bit stale, sort of 10.0 ish.

[suthercd]

moki-

Impressive. A fine product and from the data from your site, then new release will be even more so.

Kudos.

[alex_kac]

The only thing I want to ask for in Snapz 2.0 is the ability to target key combinations directly to screen snap settings. For example, press CMD-OPTION-F5 and do a screenshot without any UI to a file, while adding a SHIFT would do it to the clipboard.

The other thing that would be VERY neat would be to take this new tech and create a remote control app. We're going to a gigabit network here (over fiber), but we'd love the ability to truly control a remote machine almost as quickly as it being local. This new tech may be able to do that, possibly Moki? I'd gladly pay $100 for it.

[Person Man]

Originally posted by alex_kac:
The other thing that would be VERY neat would be to take this new tech and create a remote control app. We're going to a gigabit network here (over fiber), but we'd love the ability to truly control a remote machine almost as quickly as it being local. This new tech may be able to do that, possibly Moki? I'd gladly pay $100 for it.

Ever tried Timbuktu?

That should do what you're asking for, and you can get a 30 day trial from them as well.

[alex_kac]

Yes, and its unacceptable. I've been using Timbuktu since version 2. I also use Remote Desktop for Windows and VNC daily. I've not tried Apple Remote Desktop so I don't know how it compares.

The problem with VNC and Timbuktu is that they are SLOW on OS X. VERY slow. A lot of this is that the way they capture the screen image and send it off over the network. Since moki figured out how to get screen capture to be very very fast, my hope is that he can take that tech and use it to allow that to be sent over the network in a manner much more acceptable than Timbuktu or VNC.

This is one of those areas I've had a tremendous amount of experience in USING since I've been administering mac and windows servers using different forms of remote desktop technologies since Timbuktu 2 was released in the mid/late 90s.

The best thing would be, of course, a remote Quartz setup, but unfortunately its not there yet. The next best thing would be a very fast version of Timbuktu/VNC which I'm hoping that moki's tech may be able to accomplish.

[Sam Venning]

We use Timbuktu on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10. We also use Apple Remote Desktop. Timbuktu seems just as fast on Mac OS 10 as it is on Mac OS 9. Apple Remote Desktop is slower than Timbuktu when it comes to screen re-draw. Apple Remote Desktop is fine over a LAN (expect that it doesn't work with computers with dual displays - bummer). Apple Remote Desktop would be too slow over a dialup connection (not sure if it will actually work over a dialup connection - VPN).

Looking forward to Snapz Pro 2.

[moki]

Originally posted by ambush:
I got the beta and, well, it looks just like the old version.

Right. In the notes I sent you, it mentioned that nothing had changed, other than our new engine has been bolted onto it.

I filmed my new app in action and the animations were quite smooth, I will probably use it a lot to demo my new game.

Thanks!

Cool; can we see the videos you made?

[moki]

Originally posted by catsank:
Seems a little too much effort predominantly on movie capture
and not enough on a smoother join with the OS and even removing
itself from being old 'Carbon crap' and going truly OSX native and
cocoa - am I right Moki, or am I right !

You are wrong. Snapz Pro X always been fully OS X native.

As for the focus, indeed, our main focus is on video capture performance, because we deemed that it was the area we most wanted to improve.

We've gotten some pretty spectacular results, I can't wait to get it out there for people to use. It makes creating video of your screen as easy and painless as it does creating screenshots. Perhaps we need a new term -- vidshots?

[alex_kac]

Originally posted by Sam Venning:
We use Timbuktu on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10. We also use Apple Remote Desktop. Timbuktu seems just as fast on Mac OS 10 as it is on Mac OS 9. Apple Remote Desktop is slower than Timbuktu when it comes to screen re-draw. Apple Remote Desktop is fine over a LAN (expect that it doesn't work with computers with dual displays - bummer). Apple Remote Desktop would be too slow over a dialup connection (not sure if it will actually work over a dialup connection - VPN).

Looking forward to Snapz Pro 2.

You know, I never tested Timbuktu on OS X with dual monitors. Only on OS X without dual monitors and on many OS 9 machines without dual monitors.

Does Timbuktu let you use both monitors? If so...that would be something I may need to look at it again. Though they don't seem to have updated anything in quite a long time...

Still, for whatever reason I think I'd feel more comfortable with something from moki.

[catsank]

moki said ...I can't wait to get it out there for people to use.

Again thanks for reply Moki -But how long till the
next release or you do know how much ?

And will 'Snapz 2' include Audio capture ( WireTap )
with the same level of features as 'Audio Hijack Pro' ?

[moki]

Originally posted by catsank:
And will 'Snapz 2' include Audio capture ( WireTap )
with the same level of features as 'Audio Hijack Pro' ?

I integrated the audio capturing abilities of WireTap into the developmental build of Snapz Pro X 2.0, and of course, the first thing I wanted to do was record a nice visualizer with audio in iTunes.

Have a look, it's quite cool:

http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/news/upcom...enSnapz006.mov (27mb)

(You may want to view this video in QuickTime Player -- some web browsers don't play QuickTime videos very well)

This was recorded at 20fps on my dual 1ghz G4 tower (512mb RAM) with the monitor in Millions -- and no lag to be found during the recording, and the resulting movie is quite smooth. I compressed the audio/video fairly highly, so the file size wouldn't be too huge, so there is some artifacting.

[moki]

If that link is slow to download, try this one instead:

http://mahajir.ambrosia.net/iTunesScreenSnapz006.mov

[moki]

Here's a requisite "cool video" taken with Snapz Pro X 2.0 on my dual 1ghz G4 tower, with the monitor in Millions mode, at 20fps:

http://mahajir.ambrosia.net/spx2_dvd.mov (2.6mb)

It's a picture of a full size DVD playing, and Snapz Pro X 2.0 captures all of the audio and video without a hitch.

[Michaelm8000]

When will 2.0 be out?

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Michaelm8000:
When will 2.0 be out?

When OW 5.0 is out. Muahahahaha!

[Mr Scruff]

Originally posted by moki:
Here's a requisite "cool video" taken with Snapz Pro X 2.0 on my dual 1ghz G4 tower, with the monitor in Millions mode, at 20fps:

http://mahajir.ambrosia.net/spx2_dvd.mov (2.6mb)

It's a picture of a full size DVD playing, and Snapz Pro X 2.0 captures all of the audio and video without a hitch.

This all looks like great stuff - could you give us some insight into how you were able to make such a big leap forward in performance?

What specific optimisations made the difference?

[moki]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
When OW 5.0 is out. Muahahahaha!

Drat. You took my line from me...

[moki]

Originally posted by Mr Scruff:
This all looks like great stuff - could you give us some insight into how you were able to make such a big leap forward in performance?

What specific optimisations made the difference?

A whole host of optimizations were made. We profiled every step of the video capture process, and optimized each step. We also took a fresh look at the methodology we used for video capture, and found better ways to accomplish what we were trying to do.

In all, it's really several orders or magnitude faster, with little to no lag for the recording machine.

[moki]

Originally posted by catsank:
Thanks for reply Moki - how long till the
next release or you do know how much ?

We've tentatively decided on the pricing.

Snapz Pro X 2.0 (still capture) will remain at $29
Snapz Pro X 2.0 (w/Movie capture) will be $69 (up from $49)

Upgrades from Snapz Pro X 1.0.x to 2.0 are free for static capture, regardless of how many features we add
Upgrades from Snapz Pro X 1.0.x w/Movie capture to 2.0 w/Movie capture will be $20 (the price differential)

Upgrades from the Apple bundle version of Snapz Pro X to 2.0 w/Movie capture will be $20

For static capture, your Snapz Pro X 1.0.x license code will continue to work. For movie capture, you'll need to purchase the upgrade to get a new license code that enables the movie capture without watermarking.

These prices are subject to change without notice, but we're fairly sure these will be the final prices.

[Mr Scruff]

Another question - can snapz pro X 2.0 make small but smooth movies using higher compression?

How will the captures compare to the ones Apple uses to demo OS X features?

[moki]

Originally posted by Mr Scruff:
Another question - can snapz pro X 2.0 make small but smooth movies using higher compression?

Snapz Pro X allows you to choose any QuickTime compressor and any quality settings you wish, so it's really up to you how much your movies get compressed.

How will the captures compare to the ones Apple uses to demo OS X features?

Given that Apple uses Snapz Pro X to create those demo movies, I can only assume those will improve greatly as soon as Snapz Pro X 2.0 is released.

[Judge_Fire]

Moki,

the movies seem to be processed with a similar sharpening/enhancing algorithm you have for images.

Or am I imagining things? Or was this in 1.0 already...

J

[catsank]

Originally posted by moki:
We've tentatively decided on the pricing.
- These prices are subject to change without
notice, but we're fairly sure these will be
the final prices.

Moki thanks for the prices - looks good,
hope it all works out for you guys ;)

[fat mac moron]

Originally posted by moki:
Snapz Pro X allows you to choose any QuickTime compressor and any quality settings you wish, so it's really up to you how much your movies get compressed.



Given that Apple uses Snapz Pro X to create those demo movies, I can only assume those will improve greatly as soon as Snapz Pro X 2.0 is released.

Moki, I'm really looking forward to this new release, I'm currently building a web site that will be using Snapz extensively! Glad the new version is going to rock...