CA Client Automation - 14.0

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Video Capture Policy Group

The Video Capture policy group contains the following device bitmap and video capture driver policies. You can modify policy parameter values by double-clicking a policy to display the Setting Properties dialog.
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The Video Capture policy group contains the following device bitmap and video capture driver policies. You can modify policy parameter values by double-clicking a policy to display the Setting Properties dialog.
Some other remote control products, including Microsoft NetMeeting, employ low-level video driver hooks that are dynamically installed when required. Unfortunately, interference between these hooks can cause interoperability issues. We therefore recommend that you do not connect using multiple remote control products at the same time.
  •  
    Enable Aggressive Caching
    If True, specifies that the host automatically use a CPU and memory-intensive aggressive caching technique when the available session bandwidth is low to further reduce the bandwidth requirements of Remote Control.
    You may want to disable this behavior on computers with limited CPU or memory resources, for example, point-of-sale terminals. However, Remote Control will automatically avoid using aggressive caching if 256MB or less of RAM is installed.
    Default: True
  •  
    Enable device bitmaps
    Enables device bitmaps if set to True. Device bitmaps increase the performance of viewer sessions, but they require more memory on the viewer.
    Default: True
  •  
    Enable Enhanced Driver Capture
    If True, specifies the use of the substantially enhanced video capture system in
    CA Client Automation
     r12 that improves performance in low bandwidth environments. The performance of this capture system should be better than the performance of the Unicenter DSM r11 video capture system in nearly all cases.
    If False, reverts to the Unicenter DSM r11 video capture system in the unlikely event that remote control performance for a specific application is degraded.
    Default: True
  •  
    Kernel buffer size
    Specifies the size, in bytes, of the kernel mode buffer used to store temporary data generated by the video capture driver.
    Default: 4194304
  •  
    Load driver on start
    Specifies that the Remote Control video drivers be loaded when the host is started and remain loaded until the host stops. If False, Remote Control dynamically loads its video drivers when a remote control session starts and unloads them when the session ends.
    On Windows platforms, the act of loading the video drivers causes a slight screen flicker. To facilitate a completely flicker-free connection for stealth mode connections on these platforms, enable this setting (True).
    This setting can also be enabled to alleviate some DirectDraw/Direct3D related problems, such as Java applications not being visible on the Remote Control viewer after connecting. However, loading the video drivers may prevent some applications, such as DVD players, from working.
     
     On Linux, the video driver is not dynamically loaded, so this setting has no effect.
    Default: False
  •  
    Maximum Cache Size
    Limits the maximum amount of memory in megabytes that the host allocates for caching of bitmaps.Reducing this value will reduce the maximum memory consumption of the host, when in session, at the expense of increasing potential bandwidth requirements for the session.However, Remote Control automatically limits the size of the bitmap cache if 256MB or less of RAM is installed.
    Default: 64MB
  •  
    Send system fonts
    Specifies how the host is to send the following legacy system fonts to the viewer computer:
    • MS Sans Serif
    • MS Serif
    • Courier
    • Terminal
    • 8514oem
    • FixedSys
    • System
    • Small Fonts
       TrueType and other third-party legacy fonts are not affected.
The host sends system font name and size information to the viewer. This information is very small and requires very little network bandwidth. However, if the viewer computer does not have the font installed that the host is using, it cannot exactly reproduce a view of the host's desktop from this information. Typically, this occurs if the host computer has nonstandard system fonts installed, for example, a Hebrew command prompt font.
The Send system fonts setting can be used to make the host computer send bitmaps of the system font's characters to the viewer computer. This permits the viewer to exactly reproduce a view of the host's desktop, even if it does not have the same font installed. This bitmap font information is larger than the equivalent name and size information—approximately 12 KB per font face and size. However, the host will send bitmaps for each font only once, when it is used for the first time.
This setting can be overridden at the viewer computer by disabling the Embed Missing Fonts option on the Experience tab in the Connection Settings dialog. For more information, see the Remote Control Viewer section of the DSM Explorer Help.
 Microsoft Windows installs several language versions of each system font by default. Therefore, it is not usually necessary to use this setting to enable support for viewer sessions between computers configured for different languages.
Valid values are as follows:
None
Specifies that system font bitmaps not be sent.
Console Fonts
Specifies that console (that is, command prompt) fonts be sent as bitmaps.
All
Specifies that all system fonts be sent as bitmaps.
Default:
 None 
Suppress display flicker on connect
Indicates whether the host prevents the slight display flicker that can take place when a remote control session connects. This setting does not affect stealth mode connections, which always try to suppress the display flicker.
For this setting to be effective on Windows, the Load driver on start policy must also be enabled.
Default:
 False
Video capture mode
Indicates the video capture mode for capturing screen changes. There are three methods of capturing screen changes, DXGI capture, Driver capture and Polling capture. DXGI uses the Microsoft Desktop Duplication API to capture the screen. Driver capture uses a low-level video driver to capture the changes to the screen image. Polling capture works by periodically scanning the screen image for changes.
There are four video capture mode settings for the Remote Control host:
  1. Auto
     In this mode, For Windows 8, Server 2012 and above the DXGI mode is used. For older Windows platforms Driver capture is used if it is available. If the video capture driver cannot be installed for some reason, or the machine resources are too limited to load the driver, Polling capture is used as a fallback.
  2. Driver
     Driver capture is used exclusively. There is no fallback to Polling mode if the Driver mode is unavailable.
  3. Polling
     Polling mode is used exclusively.Windows: See Notes on Secure Control in Polling capture mode on Windows.
  4. DXGI
     Desktop Duplication API is referred to as DXGI. It is a new video capture mechanism that uses Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM).
Default:
 Auto
Note:
 Mac OS X Hosts do not have a Driver mode of video capture. They rely on a specially enhanced Polling capture mode, which uses low-level OS support to accelerate video capture. Therefore, modifying this setting has no effect on this platform. 
Screen capture using the Microsoft Desktop Duplication API
The Remote-Control Host configuration policy “Video capture mode” is set to Auto, by default. This enables the Remoter Control host process to use the DXGI method for Windows 8, Server 2012 and above. For older Windows platforms the Remote-Control mirror driver is loaded, and upon failure, uses the polling mode.
Due to the changes made by Microsoft in the Windows 10 design, the OS loads the dual stack implementation of older driver models as well as newer models. This results in a BSOD during 3D rendering software as the Remote-Control drivers are loaded in the background.
The RC mirror drivers are automatically uninstalled after implementing
CA Client Automation
 14.0.3, on Microsoft 8 and above, and Windows Server 2012 and above. 
 
Limitations of the Microsoft Desktop Duplication API
  1. if you change the configuration policy 'Video capture mode' to 'Driver Mode', then the RCHost process re-installs the mirror drivers. Restart the RCHost process using the following commands: 
    caf stop rchost
     
    caf start rchost
  2. Selecting Driver Mode, may produce the following issues:
    1. Poor performance of the RC session with driver mode.
    2. Failures while using 3D rendering software.
    3. High memory and CPU usage of the rcUtilCmd.exe process.
    4. Blue Screens (BSOD) or Green Screens (GSOD).
    5. Blank or black screens, upon successful connection to the remote host.
  3. The Remote-Control secure mode is not possible even after moving to the replacement DXGAPI.
  4. For some systems that have multiple graphics cards, the desktop duplication API initialization fails if the graphic card does not support the WDDM 2.3 or higher. In such cases, a workaround is to disable the unsupported graphics card.
  5. Select and rearrange displays is currently not supported. If the order of the screens on the RC Host are rearranged, they appear in the RC viewer using the physical order. That means, the right-hand screen is in the left of the window and vice versa.