Prevent screen capturing with DirectX

Question

Hi everybody!

I would like to render a single image using DirectX. It should work similar to VLC player's "directx video output", were it is not possible to capture a frame using simple screen capturing software or the printscreen-key. It should not be possible (or very difficult) to make a screenshot!

Does anyone know how this works in VLC player?

Are there any other possible solutions? Maybe with "Output Protection Manager" (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd388980(VS.85).aspx)

I've about 3 years C# programming experiance earnt at school. I've also done some C++ programming, but I would prever a C# solution maybe using WPF or Managed DirectX.

Sorry for my English and thanks for your help in advance!!!

Answer 1

Maybe by the sound of it you need to intercept WM_PRINTCLIENT by hooking into a global windows procedure, if the WM_PRINTCLIENT message is used, just return from the hooked window procedure. See here for a detailed information by Feng Yuan about WM_PRINTCLIENT. The other way of doing it is to intercept the clipboard functions where the data is from a particular application and the clipboard contains a bitmap.. See Larry Osterman's blog about this. Here is an article on CodeProject that implements a global windows hook, there's two other links I could supply here and here. (All on CodeProject)

Hope this helps, Best regards, Tom.