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VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 28. Nov 2017, 12:02
by doron

[ModEdit; related ticket: #17307: Video capture doesn't work after upgrade from 5.1.30 to 5.2.0]
Hi,

Installed VB 5.2.2 on my Win7 x64 host. Trying to activate video capture.
Pulling down the View menu to enable video capture ends up with "failed to..." message.

Shutting down the guest, configuring the video capture (with path and all) and starting the guest - the film roll animation on the frame rolls as if all is fine, but no video file is produced at the designated location.

Is this a known issue?

Thanks for any help!

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work?

Posted: 5. Dec 2017, 21:15
by doron
Anyone?...

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work?

Posted: 6. Dec 2017, 07:42
by socratis
Open a Command Prompt window. Navigate to the VirtualBox installation directory (typically "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\"). Post the output of the following command:
  • 
    VBoxManage showvminfo "<Your_Virtual_Machine_Name>"
On top of that:
  • Start the VM from cold-boot (not from a paused or saved state) / Observe error / Shutdown the VM.
  • With the VM completely shut down (not paused or saved), right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log".
  • Save only the first "VBox.log", ZIP it and attach it to your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form).

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work?

Posted: 6. Dec 2017, 11:02
by doron
Thank you! Attached both vminfo and vbox.log (brief session).

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work?

Posted: 9. Dec 2017, 12:31
by socratis
00:00:01.155220 Host RAM: 16382MB (15.9GB) total, 3896MB (3.8GB) available
00:00:01.337958 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000100000000 (4 294 967 296, 4 096 MB, 4.0 GB)
You are assigning memory to your guest, that you do not have available. Either close some applications on the host, buy more RAM for the host, or reduce the amount of RAM assigned to the guest.
00:00:02.502667 GUI: 2D video acceleration is disabled
And so is the 3D acceleration. You should enable them both in the VM settings and then re-install the Guest Additions (GAs).
00:00:01.338048 Path <string> = "N:\VMs\Windows 10 New.vdi" (cb=26)
What's drive "N:\" and why do you keep your snapshots separately from your main VDI?


In any event, the above are generic advice/questions. That's not your real issue. Your real issue is that you seem to have hit a regression. Here's what I found:

VirtualBox 5.2.x (any .x)
  • If you start the recording before you start the VM, then no .webm file is created. Nothing in the logs.
  • If you start the recording after the VM has started, then a .webm file is created, but Firefox (the "test" standard) says that it's a corrupt file. It plays fine on VLC.
VirtualBox 5.1.30
  • If you start the recording before or after you start the VM, then a .webm file is created, Firefox and VLC play it just fine.
It's funny that no one reported that so far. Do you want to create a new ticket, or do you want me to do it?

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work?

Posted: 11. Dec 2017, 00:44
by doron
@socratis, thanks for the analysis and the general comments.
I do know my host tends to be short on phys memory (RAM at mobo's limit) and that snapshots are configured to be separate from v drives (by design). Will look into the video acceleration - thanks!

Re the regression - thanks for doing the problem analysis! I now have a sort-of-working workaround, which is A Good Thing.
Be my guest in opening the ticket, - you did some hard work recreating the problem, you should have the credit for the bug :-)

EDITED: Here we are.

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 10. Jan 2018, 13:12
by socratis
@doron
You shouldn't be simply editing your posts, but you should be adding a new reply. Otherwise we don't get notified about the edit. I just saw the ticket that you opened. I've updated your first post and the thread title with the related information...

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 10. Jan 2018, 13:58
by ricecrispies
Socratis said that 2D acceleration should be enabled, but when I check the 2D acceleration box I get told that it is an invalid setting. Is there a way round this?

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 10. Jan 2018, 14:02
by socratis
ricecrispies wrote:Is there a way round this?
No. And don't take any advice that you read on the net literally, including mine ;)

It depends on the guest. If your guest doesn't support 2D acceleration (i.e. only Windows > 2000), then you'll get the warning.

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 10. Jan 2018, 14:36
by ricecrispies
I'm trying to record Windows 95, so that would figure. I've just done a bit of experimenting and it seems to make no difference whether the 2D acceleration box is checked or not. However what I have also discovered is that sometimes the video recorder does actually succeed in recording a bit of video, but it always fails at some point. The longest I have managed to record was about a minute before the video terminated. In other words, it seems to be just extremely unreliable rather than completely non-functional.

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 10. Jan 2018, 14:41
by doron
socratis wrote:@doron
You shouldn't be simply editing your posts, but you should be adding a new reply. Otherwise we don't get notified about the edit.
I didn't realize that. Thanks for this info - will use reply.
socratis wrote: I just saw the ticket that you opened. I've updated your first post and the thread title with the related information...
Just to be clear - I didn't open that ticket. I found it, after you mentioned creating a ticket. It predates my post.

Thanks for all your help!!

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 10. Jan 2018, 16:07
by socratis
doron wrote:Just to be clear - I didn't open that ticket. I found it, after you mentioned creating a ticket. It predates my post.
Oops! :shock:
It does predate your report, by 5 days. Should have checked more thoroughly the poster and the date...

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 18. Jan 2018, 20:01
by KONNEX
This is the only thread i found which target video capture.

In 5.1 it was all working kind of fine (with improvment potential) in 5.2 (also 5.2.6) it's all completely broken.

Default settings will through an error (--> "" can't be emtpy or something). All settings get reset (every time).
If the file exist, you can't start a new session. (and if you try it says running, but it isn't and you can't stop it) - As the default-date-time.webm format isn't working. ["" empty bug]
and my 15min video was 1:08min and completly broken. first 50 secounds are fine, everything afterwards was not useable.- I'm downgrading to 5.1

VB should review the whole video capture section.

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 18. Jan 2018, 22:20
by socratis
@KONNEX
The fix that's included in ticket #17307 was included in a development build. Please try the latest Development snapshot (at the bottom of the page). They start with 5.2.97 and they're not for production. Plus the links expire... ;)

But at least you can try and see if the issue you're facing has been fixed. If not, let us know...

Re: VB 5.2.2 on Win7 - video capture does not work? (#17307)

Posted: 15. Feb 2018, 22:59
by vinyanalista
I googled "virtualbox broken webm" and found this topic.

I'm using VirtualBox 5.2.6 r120293 with Windows 7 SP 1 64-bit. My guest machine is a Windows Server 2016.

I recorded 3 videos using it. Settings are: frame size 1024 x 768, frame rate 25 fps, quality 1024 kbps. Using those settings, VirtualBox estimates 37MB for each 5 minutes of video.

Despite the fact that the videos are indeed big files (84.2MB, 33.3MB and 167MB), VLC 2.0.5 plays only a few seconds of them. Same behavior using Windows Media Player or Google Chrome to reproduce those WebM files. They seem like broken video files.

By reading the ticket you linked, it seems there is a solution coming to that video recording bug, and that is great. But is there anyway I could recover the videos I already recorded?