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Recording video of desktop while testing through Test Runner

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While running tests using Test Runner, you can enable a number of diagnostic data adapters in test setting which collect various types of data from the test machine. When you create a bug from Test Runner then logs from these adapters are attached to bug which are helpful for developer to reproduce the bug. Video recorder is one of the diagnostic data adapter that records the video of the desktop of test machine. Sometimes people find it difficult to make video recorder work as it has some pre-requisites that must be fulfilled to make it work successfully.

My this post is intended to explain pre-requisites of Video Recorder diagnostic data adapter so that you can use it without any issues.

Pre-requisites of Video Recorder Data Collector:

·         Install Window Media Encoder: Please install Window Media encoder from here. Please note that you’ve to install 32 bit version of Windows Media Encoder irrespective of you’ve 64bit / 32 bit operating system installed on your computer.

·         Install Window Media Encoder hotfix (Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or Windows 7 only): If you are running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or Windows 7 as the operating systemthen you need to install support update for window media encoder from here. To apply this hotfix on a computer that is running Windows Vista or higher, you must right-click the hotfix package executable file and then click Run as administrator. If you just double click and then click on Continue on UAC dialog then that installation won’t be successful because of limitations with hotfix executable.

·         Enable Desktop Experience (Windows Server 2008 only): If you are running Windows Server 2008 as the operating systemthen you must install Desktop experience using the Server Manager. Please follow the steps listed here to do this. You must restart your computer after installing Desktop experience.

There are 2 additional steps you need to take care if you’ve enabled Video recorder diagnostic data adapter for Remote Role :

·         Run Test Agent as a process: Test Agent must be set up to run as a process instead of a service. Please follow the steps listed here to run test agent as a process.

·         Desktop session must be active: Desktop session of computer that is running an agent must be active always. It shouldn’t be locked / have an active screen saver / minimized in case of TS sessions.

Once you are done with above pre-reqs then please refer to this article for help on creation of test setting with required diagnostic adapters enabled and assigning it to a test plan so that you can use it for your manual testing.