Windows Tweaks: One Screenshot Per Second & A Volume-Muting Hotkey

The Mute Hotkey

To set up a hotkey that would quickly mute or unmute the computer sound, I followed advice to download NirCmd.  I unzipped it to an out-of-the way folder. I right-clicked on nircmd.exe and created a shortcut called Toggle Mute.  I right-clicked it > Properties.  On the extreme right end of the Target line, after the closing quotation mark, I left a space and then typed "mutesysvolume 2" (without quotation marks).  Then I clicked on the Shortcut Key space and hit Ctrl-0 (that is, the zero on the numeric keypad), which happened to be two apparently unused, relatively adjacent keys (therefore easy to find and do with one hand).  I clicked on Change Icon and put this in the box:  "%SystemRoot%\System32\SndVol.exe" -- and then clicked OK (not Browse).  I just left the shortcut there in the NirCmd folder, since all I needed from it was the keyboard shortcut.

Lots and Lots of Screenshots

Inspired by that experiment with NirCmd, I created a batch file to give me an alternative to video screen capture software.  As long as audio wasn't required, I figured that a series of screenshots would give me better resolution and a smaller cumulative file size than a video would do.  That would suffice for a slideshow.  If I wanted to make a video of it, I could just stretch out the screenshots for as long as I needed to talk about them and draw arrows and such on them.  The batch file was as follows:

:: Shotshooter.bat

:: No guarantees. May screw up your system. Proceed at your own risk.

:: Captures a series of screenshots.
:: See http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html for info on NirCmd.exe.

:: Takes 3600 screenshots, one per second (1000 milliseconds) = one hour.
:: To kill the program sooner, use Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) > Processses > nircmd.exe > End Process

:: Screenshots are named by date and time.:: IrfanView provides a fast way to play back results.

D:
md \Screenshots
cd "D:\Installation\Start Menu\Programs\Tools\DOS and Batch Files\Multifunction\NirCmd"

nircmd.exe loop 3600 1000 savescreenshot D:\Screenshots\scr~$currdate.yyyy-MM-dd$-~$currtime.HH_mm_ss$.png