Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

[Posted December 29, 2008 by jake]

Over at Computerworld, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols tries to find a way to make screen videos in Linux. One of the main issues he ran into was creating videos in a format that Windows and OS X would handle. "After a number of attempts, I finally found my answer in Google Code: WinFF. Despite the name, this is actually an open-source front end to FFmpeg that works with both Linux and Windows. This program, by Matthew Weatherford, solved all my video conversion woes. It's straightforward, easy to use (once you have the appropriate video codex libraries installed) and does the job. Best of all, the program understands all the various flavors of AVI, so converting my OGVs into basic Microsoft-compatible AVIs was a breeze."

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 29, 2008 20:33 UTC (Mon) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

The best way to share a screencast is to 1) shoot it with xvidcap, and 2) upload it to YouTube. You needn't do anything with mencoder at all.

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 29, 2008 20:41 UTC (Mon) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

As a zillion folks commented back to the article... recordmydesktop and istanbul work marvellously. I myself have used both for a number of screencasts.

Now the easy way

Posted Dec 29, 2008 21:17 UTC (Mon) by muphry (guest, #12160) [Link] (4 responses)

Since he could not get vnc2swf to work on Ubuntu I tried that and it just works. Here's the many steps:

- enable Remote Desktop
- install pyvnc2swf
- start vnc2swf
- click start
- fumble about on your desktop
- click stop

Result: an swf file ready to play, even with an accompanying html.

... eh, and indeed even better

Posted Dec 29, 2008 21:29 UTC (Mon) by muphry (guest, #12160) [Link]

I actually did not know or try recordmydesktop until just now. It is REALLY easy and far more precise than vnc2swf.

Conversion to .flv if you must

Posted Dec 29, 2008 21:38 UTC (Mon) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

If you have to have .flv, ffmpeg makes it really easy to convert almost anything to .flv:

ffmpeg -i whatever.{whatever} -f flv -acodec mp3 -ar 22050 -ab 64k -ac 1 whatever.flv

Feel free to use -s flag and change the size, -b flag to change the video bitrate, and the -r flag to change the frame rate. On newer setups, I've had to replace mp3 above with libmp3lame I think.

Now the easy way

Posted Dec 29, 2008 22:00 UTC (Mon) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

Yeah, but then you end up with an SWF.

Now the easy way

Posted Dec 30, 2008 9:32 UTC (Tue) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link]

I'm sure that the article reads "I was able to get pyvnc2swf working on Ubuntu, but I had no luck with openSUSE and Fedora". I parsed that sentence and think it makes your point moot. Do you have any suggestions how the author should have got pyvnc2swf to work in openSUSE or Fedora?

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 29, 2008 21:41 UTC (Mon) by bas (guest, #7043) [Link]

I've always used ffmpeg's x11grab input in the past. Works great, and can output any popular video format you desire.

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 29, 2008 21:48 UTC (Mon) by Klavs (guest, #10563) [Link] (1 responses)

to my knowledge - the flv's I create work fine with both OS'es :)

I wrote about it on my blog - but only in danish - so I'll just summarize here, if it could be of any use :)

1) I use gtk-recordmydesktop. for recording sound (recorded after the video) I use audacity and as the signal/noise ratio is too louse on my Dell laptop, I have to use my wives IBM/Lenovo portable and then use audacity to clean up the audio. Works like a charm.

2) I edit the video, to add informational text (with a black, partially transparent background) with kino.
Kino can export to flv, but sadly I couldn't make it export to a high enough resolution.
I haven't had the time to research what it would take to write a new export profile.

I record the audio track, after the video, to avoid the audio track being more confusing than necessary for the audience :)
Unfortunately kino does not support replacing the audio track :(

3) To replace the sound track I use this:
mencoder -audiofile your-new-soundtrack.wav your-current-movie.mpeg -o video_with_new_sound.avi -ovc copy -oac copy

I exported to mpeg (from kino) - as I needed to convert it to flv in the end, and ffmpeg does not support ogg theora :(

4) To convert my movie to flv I used the following command:
ffmpeg -i video_with_new_sound.avi -b 2028k -y -s 640x480 -ar 44100 -r 30 -ac 1 -acodec libmp3lame view_with_new_sound.flv

source:http://forums.liveleak.com/showthread.php?t=1716

I hope it's of any use :)

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 29, 2008 22:43 UTC (Mon) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

Hmmm, the ffmpeg I'm using understands .ogv videos just fine. Using the previously mentioned recipe, I use ffmpeg to convert from .ogv to .avi and .flv.

If I want to convert to .ogv I use ffmpeg2theora.

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 29, 2008 21:48 UTC (Mon) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link] (3 responses)

Maybe the real lesson here is that tools exist to do almost anything, but
it's really hard to find the one you need.

Derek

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 30, 2008 10:54 UTC (Tue) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link] (1 responses)

I would say that the real lesson here is that there are still some 'basic' activities which are still surprisingly immature on Linux compared as to what one could expect: in the comments SJVN explain that recordmydesktop (which seems to be the 'preferred solution' apparently) didn't work for him on Fedora or openSuse..

[ For other users, it worked on Fedora so apparently YMMV ]

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 30, 2008 17:32 UTC (Tue) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

He starts off by saying there aren't any desktop recorder programs for Linux... and that he has to used hacked up solutions... and then describes how he had problems with them... and how this one worked on that distro but not the other. He completely leaves out the two most common programs made specifically for desktop recording... and says in a comment that those didn't work for him so he didn't mention them. I don't buy it.

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 30, 2008 13:03 UTC (Tue) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

That might be a job for a wiki - a collection of usage cases matched with the best tools to do it. (I know that there are lots of wikis and things for this, but that shifts the problem from finding the tools to find the wiki. But if say Canonical hosted something like this it would be really useful.)

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 30, 2008 16:40 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link] (2 responses)

Oftentimes, it just seems that Vaughan is yet another Windows user semiranting about the daily hiccups HE has with Linux. Pfft.

swf? You gotta be kidding me, closed format. Don't like ogv? Use ffmpeg/mencoder/whatever, stop whining. Or install ffdshow on Windows.

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 31, 2008 7:22 UTC (Wed) by dank (guest, #1865) [Link] (1 responses)

Nah, he's a good guy. People who make good lists of the problems
they ran into are very useful. Think of it as QA.

Recording the Linux desktop -- the hard way (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 31, 2008 17:31 UTC (Wed) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link]

But you still need to filter the real bug out of that "Q&A". Both xvidcap and recordmydesktop(-gtk) provide an UI, which is what I would think of when he says "full-featured". I seem to remember that xvidcap produces MPEG-2 or AVI, so the only thing that is left is that recordmydesktop produces only OGV and it is not like OGV would be uncommon (Wiki[mp]edia uses it for their video content). Having the wrong player software on Windows is no excuse to point the finger at Linux programs, IMHO.