Screen Capture

The Screen Capture actor will capture the video image from a display or a window and bring it into Isadora as a standard video stream. Simply choose the display or window you want to capture, and a live capture of that area of the display will appear at the video output.

Isadora 3.x and above only!
The Screen Capture actor only works with Isadora 3.x and above! Isadora 2.x and Isadora 1.x will not work with this add-on.

Apple silicon (ARM/M1)

The macOS version of this plugin has been compiled to run natively on both Intel-based and Apple silicon based computers.

Instructions / Getting Help

Our online mini-tutorial will tell you what you need to know to get up and running with this actor.

You can also refer to the integrated help for more information. Hover your cursor over any input or output, or the actor itself, and look in the Help View at the bottom right for further information.

If you need additional assistance using this actor, try asking for help in the TroikaTronix Forum. Our team and our community of users are ready to help.

Best Practices

When possible, we recommend that you place the Screen Capture actor in a background Scene and broadcast the video output to other scenes that need it.

Why? Because when you have a Screen Capture actor in each scene, and you transition from Scene A to B, it will have to shut down the capture engine in Scene A and then start up a new capture engine in Scene B. While this shut down/startup sequence is not the end of the world, it’s good to avoid it if you can.

Note that you only adopt this strategy if the settings on the Screen Capture actor are the same for each Scene.

For an example of using background Scenes with the Screen Capture actor, take a look at the patch called screen-capture-using-background-scene.izz included with this download.

Bug Reports

if you find a bug, please let us know by opening a support ticket.

Known Limitations

On Windows computers with dual GPUs, you may be able to capture from the internal laptop display but not the external displays or vice-versa. This is a limitation of the system that Windows offers to perform screen capture found not only in this actor, but in major software like OBS (Open Broadcasting System). We are investigating to see if there is a solution to this issue.