Help with Greenshot (screenshot utility)

[RikOz]

Since I'm among those who have a problem with the game crashing to desktop when I try to use the game's native screenshot function, I followed a recommendation from another player (Philotic Knight, I think) and installed the 3rd-party screenshot utility, "Greenshot". It has some weird behaviors, and I'm not sure what's going on.

 

* Sometimes the "screenshot" ends up just a plain black image

 

* Sometimes no screenshot files gets saved at all

 

* Sometimes I'll take a screenshot that turns out correctly. Then, a few minutes later, I'll attempt to take another screenshot, and when I press PrintScreen, my entire screen reverts back to that shot I took earlier. This seems to be related to the function that lets me use crosshairs to select only a portion of the screen, as using that function "freezes" the screen while making the selection, and it appears that Greenshot is then holding that still image in memory and popping it back up the next time I hit PrintScreen.

 

* I think the weirdest screenshot of all was the very first one I took - I logged into the game, loaded in a character, and took the screenshot. When I looked at the file, it was a screenshot of the login screen.

 

The last one in particular makes me think that Greenshot is running afoul of the game's windowing, somehow.

[RikOz]

Hah - just now, I took a screenshot immediately after defeating Kurse in the second mission with Fusionette in Faultline. Here's what I got:

 

[MageAgainstTheRegime]

Greenshot is great, I use it on all my PCs. There are only 3 tabs in the settings that I make modifications to. Try matching your settings to these and see if that helps you.

 

[RikOz]

Hmm. Aside from my "Save Directly" vs your "Open in image editor", and changing the hotkeys so that Print Screen by itself does a full screen capture, everything else is the same. I did specify the destination folder in the Output tab.

 

What I'm experiencing seems to be, largely, a "timing" issue, as if it's somehow holding my shots on the clipboard and then actually saving them later. For example, yesterday I attempted to take a screenshot of my character hovering near the tram station in Atlas Park. I immediately checked the destination folder, and that image was not there. About five minutes later, I took another screenshot of the same character standing under Atlas' statue. Again, I immediately tabbed out to check the destination folder. Now there was a new file, and the timestamp in the file name indicated that it was the last shot I had just taken. But when I opened the file, the image was of the shot near the tram station, not the shot standing under the statue.

 

Some factors that might be contributing to this:

 

My game install is on my SSD, but I'm sending the screenshots to a folder on my hard drive, since I don't want to fill up the SSD with screenshots. (don't see how that would cause this)

 

Greenshot is conflicting with something else on my system? Aside from other games (all various MMOs - WoW, FFXIV, SWTOR, ESO), I actually have very little 3rd-party software installed on this machine that didn't come pre-installed. It's a gaming PC from CyberpowerPC, and came with just Windows 10 Home and the GeForce Experience software for my GPU. The GeForce software has some sort of screenshot ability, but I've never used that function, and don't have it running when I play anyway.

[MageAgainstTheRegime]

Does it only happen when you play CoH? Greenshot should behave the same way regardless what's on your screen. and you want to make sure that it's running in the background (check your ^ arrow next to your date/time on the bottom right of your taskbar if you're using Windows 10). There's only 2 functions I use for Greenshot - Print Screen button (capture region), and Ctrl + Print Screen (capture full screen). When I execute any of those commands, the screenshot does not automatically save to my desired path shown in the Output tab. Instead, it brings up the capture in the image editor, which is managed in the settings options under the Destination tab > "Open in image editor" option.  From the image editor, I then tell it where I want my screenshot to save. So far I've never had a timing issue, I save all my captures on my SSD, but regardless of that, I force it to pull up the editor first so that it can't just automatically save. This gives me better control.

Edited August 13, 2019 by MageAgainstTheRegime

[_NOPE_]

Yeah, I always have it open in the editor, I never "auto-save".

[MageAgainstTheRegime]

So back to my original question - does it only do this while you're trying to capture CoH, or does it happen everywhere else?

[RikOz]

1 hour ago, MageAgainstTheRegime said:

So back to my original question - does it only do this while you're trying to capture CoH, or does it happen everywhere else?

Well, CoH is about the only thing I'm trying to screenshot, so hard to say. I just now hit Print Screen a few times with this page open in my browser, and it worked just fine. But that's not really an equivalent test, as my desktop isn't constantly changing/animating like the game screen is.

 

And yes, it's running in the background.

[RikOz]

Gah, this is starting to break my brain. I took a screenshot of my character hovering in the air in front of the Steel Canyon university, and the resulting image was the same character at the character select screen.

[MageAgainstTheRegime]

12 hours ago, RikOz said:

Gah, this is starting to break my brain. I took a screenshot of my character hovering in the air in front of the Steel Canyon university, and the resulting image was the same character at the character select screen.

That's extremely bizarre. Only think I can think of is uninstall/reinstall Greenshot. I'm running version 1.2.10

[_NOPE_]

12 hours ago, RikOz said:

Gah, this is starting to break my brain. I took a screenshot of my character hovering in the air in front of the Steel Canyon university, and the resulting image was the same character at the character select screen.

Try changing the behavior of Greenshot from autosave to opening in the editor. Then I'm curious to see what appears in the editor at the MOMENT you take the screenshot. Let us know.

[RikOz]

Okay, changed setting to "Open in editor".

 

First screenshot immediately after logging a character in: Blank black screen.

 

Exited university in Founder's Falls, flew toward tram station. About halfway there, stopped and took another screenshot. Resulting image was of character standing inside the university, unmoved from login.

 

Continued to tram station. Landed and moved inside tram station, facing the tram. Took screenshot. Resulting image was the character hovering in the air, where I took the second screenshot.

 

Took another screenshot while standing in the same place in the tram station. This one appears to be correct. But can't tell for sure, since nothing had changed. So...

 

Turned character 180 degrees to face the map on the wall, took screenshot. Resulting image showed character still facing the tram.

 

Took tram to Atlas Park. Took screenshot in tram station immediately upon disembarking. Resulting image was character facing the map in FF tram station.

 

Flew to flag atop City Hall, took screenshot. This one came out correctly.

 

Traveled to Brickstown, where I had a mission. Entered mission door (blue cave mission), took screenshot. Resulting image ... character looking at flag in Atlas Park, but in slightly different pose compared to previous shot.

 

Completed mission, which took somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. Before exiting, took screenshot where I defeated final enemy. Result: character standing just inside the cave entrance, immediately after entering.

 

 

This is almost looking like a memory issue - as if Greenshot is grabbing frames from the cache instead of what is currently onscreen.

[_NOPE_]

Ueaj, that's bizarre. What version of Windows are you using? 

[RikOz]

Oh, also logged into World of Warcraft (heh - misread launch date of WoW "Classic", reactivated account a month too early) and took a screenshot about a minute after logging a character in. Screenshot turned out exactly as is should have.

[RikOz]

Using Windows 10-1903, including the update that got pushed last night/this morning.

 

AMD Ryzen 5 1400 Quad-Core processor, 3.20 GHz

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU, with up-to-date drivers

 

8GB RAM

[_NOPE_]

Weird. Are you running full screen or Windowed? If you're doing one way, try the other (Alt + Enter) and see if it changes the condition. 

 

You can also try changing the hotkey button, in case some other software on your system is messing with things:

https://getgreenshot.org/faq/my-prntscreen-key-no-longer-works-with-greenshot/

 

Edited August 15, 2019 by The Philotic Knight

[RikOz]

Okay, switching to "Windowed" made the problem go away. Alas, that is a less than optimal way to play.

 

I wonder if this could somehow be related to DirectX 12. When WoW finally moved to support D12, they outraged many people by getting rid of "Full Screen" mode and forcing everyone to use "Windowed Full-Screen", on the grounds that D12 didn't, for some reason, support "Full Screen" games. I'm assuming that CoX doesn't "support" D12, seeing as how it didn't exist when the game was live.

[_NOPE_]

Looks like, yeah, it's a known issue:

 

https://greenshot.atlassian.net/plugins/servlet/mobile?originPath=%2Fbrowse%2FBUG-2084#issue/BUG-2084

[RikOz]

Well, I guess I'll look for an alternative.

 

Thanks for the help!

[MageAgainstTheRegime]

On 8/14/2019 at 5:40 PM, RikOz said:

Okay, switching to "Windowed" made the problem go away. Alas, that is a less than optimal way to play.

 

I wonder if this could somehow be related to DirectX 12. When WoW finally moved to support D12, they outraged many people by getting rid of "Full Screen" mode and forcing everyone to use "Windowed Full-Screen", on the grounds that D12 didn't, for some reason, support "Full Screen" games. I'm assuming that CoX doesn't "support" D12, seeing as how it didn't exist when the game was live.

That's really odd. It's obviously an isolated incident since I'm running Greenshot on multiple computers with multiple installs of CoH , all of which take the screenshots with no lag, nor have I got it switched to windowed. It even worked on an older laptop with no problems. It's a 15 year old game, I can't imagine it using up that many resources where it would impact a screen capture to that extent. 

 

Did you try uninstalling/reinstalling Greenshot? Try using a different version?

[Mizuhim3]

Hallo guys...

for this matter u can just change hot key!

it work for me haha

go try~!

sometimes the game took the prntscreen key to their game, so it won't work when u click it there.

[SuggestorK]

Thats an very old Issue.. for me Fullscreen back on Live always got the Blackscreen issue... always had to do a windowed style mode for screenshotting.