Abstract: Useful metadata can be embedded directly into dynamically rendered content in a way that is minimally perceptible to a viewer. Objects to be rendered for an application, such as backgrounds and gameplay elements for a gaming application, can have their appearance modified in order to embed specified metadata. The modifications can impact the color, patterns, configuration, or other aspects of the objects. The metadata can include any data useful for identifying a state, context, or configuration for the presentation of content, such as the state of a game at the time of rendering, as well as information about the player or device corresponding to a device-specific rendering of the content. A video segment including a representation of the rendered content can be analyzed to quickly identify and extract the metadata, which can help to quickly obtain the information needed to perform certain tasks, such as debugging or issue spotting.

Abstract: Techniques for multiple-stage crash reporting are described herein. In particular, in some cases, a first stage may include reporting of crash metadata. Also, in some cases, a second stage may include reporting of crash artifact data, such as a crash dump file, error logs, server logs, client logs and/or other data. The crash artifact data may, in some examples, be provided after the crash metadata. By employing multiple stages for reporting of crash-related information, the time required to notify and provide at least some crash-related information to users may be reduced, without requiring the omission of any desired reporting information. Additionally, the use of multiple stages may help to ensure that a notification of the occurrence of the crash and associated metadata are consistently reported, even when crash artifact data uploads fail.