HOWTO: Recording videos of your screen (screen video capture)

Latest revision as of 19:08, 18 November 2012

[edit] Recording videos of your screen (screen video capture)

[edit] Introduction

This article explains how to capture videos of your screen (you might want to post a video on YouTube, for instance). The two applications I have used are XVidCap (http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net/) and recordMyDesktop (http://recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net/about.php), both of which support audio recording as well as video recording so that you can create audio-visual tutorials and examples. Both applications are in Portage while only recordmydesktop is also in Entropy, both have Man pages, and you can also enter "xvidcap --help" and "recordmydesktop --help" in a Terminal window for information.

[edit] XVidCap

Enter "xvidcap" in a Terminal window to launch the GUI, which is self explanatory (hover your mouse pointer over the buttons to see the tooltips). I have some success with XVidCap but the Stop button often does not work and I have to click on the GUI's Close Window button to stop it recording. A file called e.g. test-0000.mpeg is created in my home directory; I can watch it using a multimedia player such as MPlayer, or convert it to another file format using ffmpeg.

[edit] recordMyDesktop

recordMyDesktop works better for me. To install it you may choose one of the following depending on whether you use Portage or Entropy to maintain your system:

Portage:

    # USE="encode" emerge -1v libtheora
    # emerge -1v recordmydesktop
    # emerge -1v gtk-recordmydesktop

Entropy:

    # equo install recordmydesktop gtk-recordmydesktop

You can use recordMyDesktop without a GUI front-end by launching it from the command line in a Terminal window (just enter "recordmydesktop", and press Ctrl-C to stop recording). However if you want a GUI, there are two alternatives: gtk-recordmydesktop and qt-recordmydesktop. You can choose to install either as both are in Portage. As you can see above, I plumped for gtk-recordmydesktop, and an icon gtk-recordMyDesktop was automatically installed under K Menu > Multimedia (alternatively you can launch it from the command line by entering "gtk-recordMyDesktop" in a Terminal window). The online user documentation for recordMyDesktop is good (see the URL above). recordMyDesktop creates a file with the default filename out.ogv in my home directory (you can select another filename with gtk-recordMyDesktop if you want). This file is an ogg container containing video encoded using the theora video codec and audio encoded using the vorbis audio codec. I can watch it using a multimedia player such as MPlayer, or convert it to another file format using ffmpeg.

[edit] Convert output file to other formats

To convert the output of xvidcap and recordMyDesktop to other video formats I use ffmpeg. For example, to convert the output file of recordMyDesktop to a Flash Video file I would use:

    $ ffmpeg -i ~/out.ogv ~/Desktop/SL_tutorial.flv

Read the ffmpeg Man page for all the options available.

[Article last modified by darthlukan on 22 August 2011.] [Article created by Fitzcarraldo on 22 September 2008.]