Question / Help Problems with Window Capture

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Greetings,

I am encountering problems with the Window Capture functionality: the captured window of an application is not displayed properly.

For example, MS Excel window is shown as white, without bars, texts or Explorer browser is also captured as white windows, without showing its content properly.

Or in another application, blender, there was no display of objects in captured window. Partial remedy is the screen capture which is showing the whole scree honestly.

The OBS log file is not showing any warnings/errors. Can OBS somehow manipulate display settings of captured window ?
Any help, please ?
 

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Well, the same problem with Google Hangout...shared (captured) windows showing up partially, uncompleted.

I played with OBS settings (video, output) and could not get properly displayed captured windows... Maybe this is an issue related to computer's graphics card ?
 

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Hi again,

I am opening this thread hoping to solve issue with unproper window capture on my HP notebook with Radeon HD 4650 graphics card.

OBS with default settings is not properly displaying capured windows - blender, avogadro - these are graphics intensive applications.

For windows capture, chrome browser works fine, as well as MS OneOne and MS Excel applications.

I am checking web for possible solutions. if I get something I will post it here.
 

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Hi, just wish to add that these are two threads here, each for own computer - the first one is for Desktop Windows 10 with nvidia, the second one is HP notebook (Win 7) with Radeon graphics card. In both cases I am getting similar problems with window capture of OBS. Hoping to solve both issues here....
 

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Well, in both cases I don't have window capture screen completely white or black. Some parts of the application are showing there....
 

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
But the issue is most likely occurring due to the GPU that OBS runs on; that thread explains the problem and possible workarounds. Historically AMD hasn't made it easy to deal with, so if you don't have a way to run OBS on a specific GPU, you may need to use the compatibility options or possibly disable one of the GPUs in the BIOS.
 

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
For the laptop (HP Windows 7, Radeon HD 4650 ) I have only one display adapter - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650, as showing up within Display adapters. The OBS window capture for blender is black screen (for avogadro.cc, for instance, it's not showing up within drawn molecules, so it's only partially correct display).

What can I do in this case ? There is "3D application settings" in the graphics card control center. Maybe some extra setting for obs64.exe would help to resolve this issue ?
 

Sapiens

Forum Moderator
Depending on how the application renders, window capture may not always capture everything. Did you try using display capture instead as suggested earlier?
 

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Yes, display capture works always. The common problem on my two computers is that I have only one GPU device (radeon, nvidia) on each, and the black screen of certain captured window (like blender) shows up on both.

I see no way to fix it, after reading a lot about this problem on the inernet.
 
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Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Well, on my Desktop PC (Windows 10, fresh update in the morning) with nvidia GPU as one adapter only I found that blender got properly displayed in windows capture, but internet explorer got white screen with tabs. For Chrome browser I got completely black screen.

The question is if we can fully control what can be displayed as window capture in OBS.
 
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Sapiens

Forum Moderator
No, window capture doesn't work with all programs. If you want to window capture Chrome then hardware acceleration in Chrome needs to be disabled. I don't know of a way to fully capture programs like MS Office apps and Photoshop without using display capture.
 

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Well, I got Chrome captured, thanks for the hint.

Would be good to make a big Table into documentation, where one would puts hints about how to make window capture working. Maybe community finds something. I long for MS Office, Internet Explorer and other applications under MS Windows 7/10 working with window capture,
 

SpringDoge

New Member
I know this is a bit of a late reply for this thread, but I experienced a similar issue regarding Chrome being captured as a black screen on OBS Window Capture function. I tried the disable hardware acceleration for Chrome, it worked but it is not a viable option for me. Thus, I attempted to run Chrome in compatibility mode for Windows 7/8, and it does capture on OBS. I have not tried this for any other application aside from Chrome but this option is worth a try. Though I noticed applications run significantly slower while in compatibility mode so that's something to take into consideration.
 

Miroslav Iliaš

New Member
Well, finally I mastered the workaround with OBS: two monitors. The principal one where the screen capture is going on, and the other (extended) monitor where the OBS software in running.
 

Jetpack_Boy

New Member
I know this is a bit of a late reply for this thread, but I experienced a similar issue regarding Chrome being captured as a black screen on OBS Window Capture function. I tried the disable hardware acceleration for Chrome, it worked but it is not a viable option for me. Thus, I attempted to run Chrome in compatibility mode for Windows 7/8, and it does capture on OBS. I have not tried this for any other application aside from Chrome but this option is worth a try. Though I noticed applications run significantly slower while in compatibility mode so that's something to take into consideration.
Thank you, you fixed my problem.
 

klepp0906

New Member
Well, finally I mastered the workaround with OBS: two monitors. The principal one where the screen capture is going on, and the other (extended) monitor where the OBS software in running.

care to elaborate? new user here and I have hours into this. (which pains me with 2 babies "hours" are a hot commodity)

Im using SLI and multiple displays. Ive gotten much of what didnt work, working with disabling hardware acceleration but regardless of which display i use (the surround display) or the accessory display, obs display capture always comes back with a black screen.

Unless i can make this work - RIP any chance of capturing windows apps among other things.
 
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