DejaView: a personal virtual computer recorder

Abstract

As users interact with the world and their peers through their computers, it is becoming important to archive and later search the information that they have viewed. We present DejaView, a personal virtual computer recorder that provides a complete record of a desktop computing experience that a user can playback, browse, search, and revive seamlessly. DejaView records visual output, checkpoints corresponding application and file system state, and captures displayed text with contextual information to index the record. A user can then browse and search the record for any visual information that has been displayed on the desktop, and revive and interact with the desktop computing state corresponding to any point in the record. DejaView combines display, operating system, and file system virtualization to provide its functionality transparently without any modifications to applications, window systems, or operating system kernels. We have implemented DejaView and evaluated its performance on real-world desktop applications. Our results demonstrate that DejaView can provide continuous low-overhead recording without any user noticeable performance degradation, and allows browsing, search and playback of records fast enough for interactive use.