Get a snapshot of a webcam and a screenshot of the screen using VLC

Prehistory

It all started with the fact that someone constantly took my tablet, and without my knowledge. ASUS VivoTab Smart tablet with Windows 8 on board. It was decided to make a fake label on the desktop that runs a script that will take pictures from the camera, a screenshot of the screen, send the whole thing to my e-mail, and then, as if nothing had happened, will launch the explorer.

We write a script

Once installed a full-fledged Windows, then you can get by with the capabilities of WSH.
To watch the video on the machine is installed VLC . The player can capture video signal from various sources.

Video sources

The tablet has two cameras: the back and front. We will take photos from both.


Each camera supports certain resolutions, they can be viewed in the settings of the ASUS YouCam application:


You can test the selected parameters through the batch file:

C:\\Progra~1\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe dshow:// :dshow-vdev="" :dshow-size= 

If the player is open, the video is broadcast and there are no errors - great, the camera and resolution are right.

Screenshot

VLC and it can do. By the way, everything is pretty well written in their wiki .

 C:\\Progra~1\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe "screen://" 

Getting Started for WSH

So that the command prompt window does not appear, we will execute the commands using the Exec method:

 var WSH = new ActiveXObject('WScript.Shell'); WSH.Exec('C:\\Progra~1\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe dshow:// :dshow-vdev="IMX175" :dshow-size=1280x720'); 

Great, but we need to save the image, not output it. To do this, we add the necessary parameters :

 WSH.Exec('C:\\Progra~1\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe --dshow-vdev="IMX175" --dshow-size=1280x720 -V dummy --intf=dummy --dummy-quiet --video-filter=scene --no-audio --scene-path=C:\\ --scene-format=jpg --scene-prefix=Shot --scene-replace --run-time=1 --scene-ratio=25 "dshow://" vlc://quit'); 

The image from the camera will be saved to the file C: \\ Shot.jpg

Similarly for the screenshot:

 WSH.Exec('C:\\Progra~1\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe -V dummy --dshow-vdev=none --intf=dummy --dummy-quiet --video-filter=scene --no-audio --scene-path=C:\\ --scene-format=jpg --scene-prefix=screen --scene-replace --run-time=1 --scene-ratio=25 "screen://" "dshow://" vlc://quit'); 

What happened

In general, a solution using VLC is cross-platform. I just showed the implementation to fit my needs.
Here is the archive with the finished script.