Creating Stream Captures
To perform offline analysis of your graphics application, you need to capture stream files. For stream capture, you can choose between two applications to capture from:
- Graphics Frame Analyzer – capture from here using theAddbutton on the home screen.
- Graphics Monitor – set the dropdown menu toSave Streamto trigger a capture of a stream file.
NOTE
If you are using a launcher, select a
Launcher
option from the dropdown menu. If no launcher option is chosen, Intel® GPA will not hook to your application correctly and you will likely see an error.To capture frames on your local system, use Graphics Monitor:
- Run the Graphics Monitor on your target system.
- Launch the graphics application as described in Launching an Application, remembering to selectSave Stream. The application will start running with the System Analyzer HUD enabled. The stream file will record all movement and metrics for your game until you exit the application.
To capture frames on your local system, use Frame Analyzer:
- Open Frame Analyzer.
- Select theAddbutton.
- Navigate to the Metal tab.
- Select Save Stream or Launcher Save Stream from the dropdown menu.
All the captured frame and trace files are saved on your analysis system. By default, you can find them in the Intel® GPA home directory. On macOS*, the default home directory is
/Users/%USERNAME%/Documents/GPA
.The filenames consist of two fields: the name of the game executable and the capture date and time, in the format
<executable name>_<date_time>.stream
. For example: StateManager_2011_02_17__11_25_14.stream
. This two-field format allows you to capture many frames/traces in a short amount of time without typing a name and overwriting the previous capture file. You can sort these files by date_time in Frame Analyzer, to see the newest files first.