Record a video of your page load

WebPageTest Announcements
1

As of today, you can record a video of what you page looked like while it was loading through WebPagetest. The numbers don’t always tell the whole story (and the business guys tend to be more visual anyway) so it has proven very useful for us in understanding what various changes “feel” like.

It’s still in a pretty rough state and you can only work with the videos on Windows (they are really avisynth video scripts) but there has been a fair amount of interest in it so I decided to release it as it is while I work on polishing it up more.

The video recording only shows up on the test page if you are logged in so if you don’t see it as an option just hop over to the forums page and register/log-in. After you run a test the video will be available for download on the screen shot page of a given test (yeah, it’s still pretty rough).

More details here: [url=http://blog.patrickmeenan.com/2009/09/recording-video-with-webpagetest.html]http://blog.patrickmeenan.com/2009/09/recording-video-with-webpagetest.html[/url]

As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated (I did say it was still rough, right?)

2

hmm that looks nice, to bad it’s windows only atm :frowning:

3

Hi Pat,

I just had a look at the video created … it is impressive.

Couple of questions.

Would it be difficult to overlay a timer somewhere in the image? (my guess is yes) … that way no matter the playback speed / capture rate you can tell if it is slowmo etc

Is this available to test / use by me? Are there some undocumented settings that can be set in urlblast.ini with the latest pagetest.dll? If so is it possible to vary the capture rate / duration etc?

I noted that all of the source is available. I am not a programmer, (web architect) but have access to most tools (and programmers to help me a little :slight_smile: ) … should I go this route?

Appreciate all of the effort you have put into this

Best
Steve

4

Actually a timer is fairly easy to overlay and I have a script that does it for the single video mode (the side by side script already does it). I attached the script here (I’ll upload it to the scripts thread when I get a chance to grab a screen shot). Just drop it in the same folder as video.avs and it should just work.

Timer script:[attachment=25]

That’s one of the cool things with the AVISynth scripts, it’s essentially only limited by your imagination.

For hosted installs I’ll be packaging up an updated release in the next week or so that has the video features exposed as there are updates in URLBlast, pagetest and the php web code.

Thanks,

-Pat

5

Again fantastic news. I can’t wait.

The UI people will love slowmo video playback of the page rendering.

It seems to me that only that we could possibly payback you and the community is to host a public server in Sydney. I will ask the question and see what the answer is like.

Steve

6

I just added a few scripts to the script swap section. The timer script above as well as a slow-mo (1/5 speed) version of the timer script: http://www.webpagetest.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=53

Thanks,

-Pat

7

I been using the feature for a while but just wanted a clarification. Does the video represent what the user would be seeing based on the loading? I am trying to measure the feel or user experience.

8

Yes, generally (assuming they have similar conditions to what the test was configured for). It will vary based on location, bandwidth, etc.

9

Hi guys,
Just wanted to say a big thank you for this feature - it’s amazing, especially since it’s free. It really helps understand how the page loads and users are affected. I really hope this remains a free project, and you should put up a donate button or something so that people can contribute to keep this running.

Thanks!