here is a small overlay program that can be used to cover portions of the screen when you record a replay or broadcast a tournament, for example. in can also work for any other purposes outside BW (e.g. SC2, CS, QUAKE) etc.
it only runs on windows but probably on a lot of different versions of the os. tested on xp-x86 and vista-x64. not tested on wine but there is a big chance its broken there due to api incompatibility and bugs.
i'm also pretty sure that most definitely there are alternatives of this out there :-).
[q]: why use this when bitmaps can be placed in multi-cam software like VHMultiCam ? [a]: this is a very efficient yet simple alternative written in c (+ some asm to cut a couple of corners). if you have a lets say 10y/o machine you might find that VHMultiCam is actually quite resource hungry. on the other hand you can possibly run 100 instances of this program and still be under 1% cpu (for single frame images).
[q]: how to load images and use transparency ? [a]: supported image formats (since 0.52) are BMP/GIF/PNG/JPEG. you can check for a short example in the [extras] sections of the "readme.txt" file on how to load images with transparency.
[q]: it says that it cannot load an image ? [a]: probably there is something wrong with the image format. try to open the file in an image editor (like ms paint, photoshop, image ready) and save the image as a new file.
[q]: why do the colors look bad for some animated GIFs ? [a]: this should be a similar answer to the one above.
[q]: when i set transparency the overlay disappears with VHScrCap or Xsplit ? [a]: bcoverlay uses very simple winapi methods to make use of transparency. it also depends on what the capturing software is doing. for example CamStudio _does_ capture transparent windows. edit: looks like VHScrCap has an option which enables that "Config -> Settings -> Capture layered windows".
[q]: how efficient is it ? [a]: it is quite efficient for a static overlay, but rendering animated images (multiple frames) is a cpu heavy operation.
[q]: does it support unicode and different languages ? [a]: it is an unicode application essentially and "should" work with all languages, but i have only tested with latin / cyrillic. one of the downsides of this is that it consumes more ram per instance (~2mb) thus the current maximum number of characters is limited to 512.
[q]: why keyboard shortcuts instead of a settings panel ? [a]: i think there should be less configuration windows and panels popping out during a stream, so most overlay controls are accessible with shortcut keys. its very easy to get used to the controls.
[q]: i find it a bit difficult to prepare my overlay setup each time ? [a]: bcoverlay allows command line scripting. each overlay which is currently on the screen has a command line accessible via f5. a list of command lines can be stored in a cmd or bat file and executed later. please check the included files "set_start.cmd" and "set_kill.cmd" for an example.
[q]: where to report bugs ? [a]: you can report in this thread for now. if not check the "readme.txt" for contact info. please specify OS/ CPU and steps to reproduce.
[q]: source code ? [a]: i may release it eventually. it is quite a mess and needs some cleanup. (edit). ------------------------ download (v.0.52): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28720954/bcoverlay.zip
thanks for the comments. @ byFd: bc means "BasiC" i guess. "boverlay" project name was already taken last time i've checked via google.
here is a quick update. the download link in the first posts now points to version 0.2. changelog: - f5 - will show all settings in the form of a command line, so that such can be reused later on if copy/pasted to a cmd prompt or in a batch script. - double click right mouse button - duplicates the window with all its settings (except multiline text) - double click left mouse button - closes the window
notice: the new duplicate functionality might trigger a false-positive in AV software. let me know if this is the case, specifying the AV program (+vendor) and possibly if a heuristics engine is active.
I used this today (Version 0.2) and appreciate the release. From my attempt to use it, noticed the following things:
1. Changing the color (F3 or F4) also seems to update the text in this version to the color that was set. So - if I have "Player VS Player" and then change the text color to white, it would now read "FFFFFF".
2. Double clicking on it shouldn't close it, I think. It is too easy to accidentally do so and it happened to me twice using this. I think it would be more user friendly for a double click to simply pop-up the text editor as it is more likely one wants to edit text rather than close it?
On May 15 2011 13:07 [-Bluewolf-] wrote: I used this today (Version 0.2) and appreciate the release. From my attempt to use it, noticed the following things:
1. Changing the color (F3 or F4) also seems to update the text in this version to the color that was set. So - if I have "Player VS Player" and then change the text color to white, it would now read "FFFFFF".
oops, that was a bug. fixed in the link in first post now (0.2a).
2. Double clicking on it shouldn't close it, I think. It is too easy to accidentally do so and it happened to me twice using this. I think it would be more user friendly for a double click to simply pop-up the text editor as it is more likely one wants to edit text rather than close it?
Thanks again for the application!
yes, you are correct - "edit text" is more intuitive for double left click. i though that it might be way to easy to close unintentionally....option is now present like you suggested in 0.2a. -- edit: p.s. if someone records a vod when using this overlay solution, please post a link for everyone to check out.
EPT![[image loading]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28720954/bcoverlay_scr.PNG)
