HyperSnap-DX

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HyperSnap-DX v3.xx Frequently Asked Questions

Installation and startup issues:

Technical Problems

DVD Screen Capture

I enter my license, it's accepted, but next time I run, HyperSnap-DX is unlicensed again...
You may need to obtain a new license, you you bought HyperSnap-DX 3 license in 1997 or early 1998, and you now upgraded to HyperSnap-DX ver. 3.30 or higher. Contact Hyperionics by email: support AT hyperionics.com, provide your full name, email address and postal address at the time of your purchase, and the "Register To" name from the old license.

Another reason for this may be that  you are running on Windows NT, under a user account that does not have a right to save data in certain registry keys. Normally, "Power Users" and regular "Users" can save this data with no problems, but the policy on your machine has been changed, or you are running as a "Guest" user. Please log-in as Administrator, start HyperSnap-DX again, enter the license once, exit and log-off. Now you may log on normally and your license will be remembered.

To make HyperSnap-DX always start (or auto-start) minimized...
This became easier now with the release of HyperSnap-DX ver. 3.4. If you have an older version, please download and install the latest version from our web site. Then, select "Options" menu from HyperSnap-DX window, and then "Startup and Tray Icon..." item under that menu. You can turn on or off the following options there:

  • Auto Start HyperSnap-DX with Windows
  • Always start minimized
  • Display the small tray icon only, not task bar button, when minimized.

Every copy of HyperSnap-DX I download is corrupt, I can't install or...
...even if it installs, HyperSnap-DX says that HSHelper.dll could not be started.
Most probably your system is infected with a computer virus, which attaches itself to HyperSnap-DX installer or the actual program. Unlike other software, HyperSnap-DX checks its own integrity before running, and refuses to run if it was changed by a virus or some other means. So please get yourself a good virus checker (e.g. VirusScan from McAfee) and check your system, then clean it from viruses.

Note: recently we have a report of a virus corrupting HyperSnap-DX and HyperCam (and other programs), which is not detected by McAfee scanner. It is called "CIH Space Filler" or something similar. We were told that it can be detected with VET virus scanner from http://www.vet.com.au One user told us, that VET in fact detected and reported the virus correctly, but was unable to clean it up completely. He subsequently tried the latest version of Norton Anti-Virus product to clean it. We have no report if he did succeed or not.

Another virus recently reported and not detected by popular anti-virus programs is Win95.CIM. We are told that AntiViral Toolkit Pro (AVP) can detect and remove it. The Toolkit can be downloaded from http://www.avp.ch or http://www.avp.com .

Another report of anti-virus program to clean Win95/CIH virus:

Greg,

Thanks for all your help! I was successful in detecting and correcting the Win95/CIH virus on all of the infected files on my system. I then again downloaded HyperSnap-DX from your site and it worked without a problem.

I used TBAV (ThunderBYTE Anti Virus ) for Windows 95 http://www.thunderbyte.nl to confirm that I indeed had this virus. I then used Norton AntiVirus Command-Line Scanner (NAVC) to repair each infected file. I found the instructions to use and download NAVC at http://help.mindspring.com/modules/00800/00843.htm

Thanks again!

Other possible causes of such behaviour would be a disk error (bad sector on a disk, or something). If you find out your system to be clean of viruses, run SCANDISK program (standard Windows 98 and 98 component) with a full surface scan to identify and mark out all bad sectors. When all of the above is done, download a fresh copy of HyperSnap-DX, best from Hyperionics web site directly, and install.

How to make multiple captures without exiting a game/other program to save or print them.
Please enable the "Quick Save" or "Quick Print" (or both if you want) options under the "Capture" menu of HyperSnap-DX. Now, every picture you capture will be auto-saved or printed. If you enable "Quick Save", which I recommend most, you can make it to auto-number the files saved like snap001.bmp, snap002.bmp etc., for each press of capture hot key. Then, when done playing and capturing, return to HyperSnap-DX window and review your captures by pressing Page Up and Page Down keys. Please read more about these options in HyperSnap-DX help file.

HyperSnap-DX connects periodically to the Internet...What info does it send?

HyperSnap-DX does not send any information from the user's machine to the Internet. It only reads a text file from Hyperionics web site, by default once every 7 days, to tell you if there is a new version of this program. You can change the frequency or disable this check under "Help/Check for a New Version" menu.

How to capture image from a DVD movie

The video capture will work or not, depending on which video player software you are using, and if it uses DirectX or not. Here is the correct DVD capture procedure to follow:

1. Enable "Special Capture" in HyperSnap-DX under "Capture" menu. Click on that item and make sure that DirectX "Primary" and "Overlay" surfaces are turned on. Then click on OK button.

2. Run the DVD, pause the movie where you want to capture, click on DVD player to make sure it is the front window, then press Scroll Lock key (HyperSnap-DX special capture hot key).

3. Click on HyperSnap-DX window and see what was captured. If you don't see the picture there, most probably your DVD player software does not use DirectX. Try to download PowerDVD program from the net and use it when you need to snap pictures from movies.

4. If you do see a picture in HyperSnap-DX window, but it has incorrect proportions, or maybe is also repeated several times, please use the "Quick Crop & Scale" function under the "Capture" menu in HyperSnap. It will let you to auto- crop each image you capture (so that only one image remains) and then scale it to correct proportions.

5. If the above does not work (you still get a full screen capture with some solid color where the DVD was, your DVD player program does not use DirectX, so HyperSnap-DX can not capture from it. Please try to find or buy another DVD player software, one that is based on DirectX, such as PowerDVD, SoftDVD or other.

I got an "Unknown Pixel Format" message when trying to capture from a DVD

I won't be able to support proprietary pixel formats like this in HyperSnap-DX. The hardware manufacturers keep their specifications secret and refuse to provide any info on how to decode the pictures from them - only their hardware controllers can do this.

The only thing I can advice you, is to check all the "Settings" and "Options" menus/buttons in your DVD player, and see if you can find some setting to disable "Hardware Acceleration", "Optimized Video" or similar option in it. Then you should be able to capture images (restore this setting again after finished with captures, for smoother playback in regular video watching).

If you DVD player does not have such setting, try another DVD player program, e.g. PowerDVD from Cyberlink - I know that it does have such setting, and several users confirmed that they were able to capture images from DVDs after disabling "Hardware Acceleration" in it.

For ATI DVD players, you may also try this:

You may be able to temporarily turn off proprietary ATI's pixel format (usually MCAM), by editing a registry entry. Please attempt to do this only if you are an advanced computer user, and confident that you can edit and restore registry entries. Note that this may or may not work, I'm not making any warranties:

Run RegEdit program and try to find the registry keys under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Quadrant International, Inc.\Software Cinemaster\0.9\VideoDecoder

The 0.9 there was version number, there may be another, higher number now. If you find such key, try to look up "PerformanceClass" value. It defaults to 0x3 for the ATI version of this program, which uses the motion compensation hardware. Settings are 0-4, try using 4, then 0, 1 and 2, maybe something will work. You must completely exit and restart the ATI DVD player for a new setting to take place. Then follow HyperSnap-DX DVD capture procedure.

How to capture pages longer then the screen (using Auto-scroll feature)

Set your other window with a vertical scroll bar, that you want to capture with auto-scroll, to the top of the page, or a place where you want to start capturing.

Go to HyperSnap window and click on "Capture" menu. Make sure that "Auto-Scroll Window" item has a check-mark to the left of it. If not, click on "Auto-Scroll Window", then open "Capture" menu again. This time the check mark should be there.

Select "Window" from the "Capture" menu. HyperSnap will disappear. Go with the mouse cursor over the window that you want to capture with auto-scroll. Click _inside_ of that window (not on a scroll bar!) and observe how HyperSnap scrolls it while capturing. If you want to end the capture early, click again, otherwise wait until it's done.

Note: Auto-Scroll does not work for all applications that have a vertical scroll bar. Some applications erase the marks that HyperSnap draws over the window it captures while scrolling, that allow it to find out how many pixel lines the window was scrolled. If the marks are erased, HyperSnap has no way of knowing how much to capture. It will display an error message and capture only what it could without scrolling. Main WEB browsers (Netscape and MS Internet Explorer) are known to be working well with auto-scroll, as well as many other programs that we tested.

Note: there is no horizontal auto-scroll. If you have something to capture, that is WIDER than your screen, try first switching your machine into a higher resolution, e.g. 1024x768, or even 1280x1024 (some machines will even go higher). If that is not enough, capture the image in separate vertical strips, and assemble it into one bitmap under MS Paint or similar bitmap editor.

On some machines, HS-DX will crash when attempting Region capture or Image/Crop

This is a bug in the graphics card driver that some computers use (most often, certain models of Toshiba laptops). It does not execute correctly certain system call that HyperSnap-DX needs to enlarge a piece of screen for precise cropping. You can disable in HyperSnap-DX this enlargement (zoom) window, by selecting "Options" menu, "Hide Help in Region Capture" item. As long as there will be a check-mark next to that item, the Region Capture and Crop functions will work correctly.

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