recordmydesktop (1) - Linux Manuals
recordmydesktop: record desktop sessions to an Ogg-Theora-Vorbis file.
NAME
recordMyDesktop - record desktop sessions to an Ogg-Theora-Vorbis file.
SYNOPSIS
recordmydesktop
[
Options
]^
filename
DESCRIPTION
Generic Options:
Sound Options:
of a linux desktop session. The default behavior of recording is to mark areas that have changed(through libxdamage)
and update the frame. This behavior can be changed (option
--full-shots
) to produce a more accurate result
or capture windows that do not generate events on change(windows with accelerated 3d context)
but this will notably increase the workload.
recordMyDesktop doesn't have a commandline interface.
After startup, it can be controled only through the following signals:
SIGUSR1
causes the program to pause if it's currently recording, and vice-versa.
SIGTERM
causes normal termination of the recording.
SIGINT
also causes normal termination.
SIGABRT
terminates the program and removes the specified output file.
This signals can also be delivered on the application, with the use of
shortcuts.
See
--pause-shortcut
and
--stop-shortcut
, on the
Misc.
section
of
Options
bellow.
~$ recordmydesktop
which will produce a fullscreen recording named out.ogv
while a command like:
~$ recordmydesktop foo.ogv
will write output to foo.ogv
Since version 0.3, encoding will happen right after the recording finishes.
While this behavior saves a lot of CPU, you can revert to the old one by entering the --on-the-fly-encoding switch.
To specify a region for recording you can type this:
~$ recordmydesktop -x X_pos -y Y_pos --width WIDTH --height HEIGHT -o foo.ogv
where X_pos and Y_pos specify the offset in pixels from the upper left
corner of your screen and WIDTH and HEIGHT the size of the window to be recorded(again in pixels).
If the area extends beyond your current resolution, you will be notified appropriately and nothing will happen.
Notice also, that if any option is entered you have to specify the output file with the -o switch.
If you try to save under a filename that already exists, the name will be post-fixed with a number (incremented if that name exists already)
To normally end a recording you can press ctl-c.
(which will send a
SIGINT
to the program).
For further manipulation of the end result look at the
OPTIONS
and
NOTES
sections.
EXIT STATUS
0 is success
Non-zero means an error occurred, which is printed in stderr.
The following error codes indicate the nature of the error:
1 Error while parsing the arguments.
2 Initializing the encoder failed(either vorbis or theora).
3 Could not open/configure sound card.
4 Xdamage extension not present.
5 Shared memory extension not present.
6 Xfixes extension not present.
7 XInitThreads failed.
8 No $DISPLAY environment variable and none specified as argument.
9 Cannot connect to Xserver.
10 Color depth is not 32, 24 or 16bpp.
11 Improper window specification.
12 Cannot attach shared memory to proccess.
13 Cannot open file for writting.
14 Cannot load the Jack library (
UNUSED SINCE 0.3.8
).
15 Cannot create new client.
16 Cannot activate client.
17 Port registration/connection failure.
OPTIONS
Image Options:
Encoding Options:
Misc Options:
If no other option is specified, filename can be given without the -o switch.
USAGE
ENVIRONMENT
Display environment variable, specifying X server to connect to.
NOTES
Also when using that option the -x,-y,--width and --height options are relative to the specified window area.
An easy way to find out the id of a window, is by using the
xwininfo
program.
Running a command like :
xwininfo | awk '/Window id:/ {print $4}'
will give you only the id of the window(which should look like this: 0x4800005)
More conviniently you can put all that in the command that launches recordMyDesktop like this:
~$recordmydesktop --windowid $(xwininfo | awk '/Window id:/ {print $4}')
So
if you are doing the encoding on the fly
,it's better to start with default values and manipulate
the end-result with another program.
An excellent converter is the
vlc
media player, which can perform a variety of transcoding
operations, either using the graphical interface, or the commandline for more flexibility.
vlc is a complex piece of software, so you should consult it's documentation, before
using it.
An example follows, which will resize a recording named out.ogv to 512x384:
vlc -I dummy out.ogv vlc:quit --sout "#transcode{ vcodec = theo, width = 512, height = 384 }:duplicate{ dst = std{ access = file, mux=ogg, dst = \"out_512x384.ogv\" }}"
If you wish to change the video quality you can append the
--sout-theora-quality=n,
with
n
in the range
[1,10]
e.g:
vlc -I dummy out.ogv vlc:quit --sout "#transcode{ vcodec = theo, width = 512, height = 384 }:duplicate{ dst = std{ access = file, mux=ogg, dst = \"out_512x384.ogv\" }}" --sout-theora-quality=3
which will give a file of a video quality 18 (in a range of 0-63), thus appropriate for web-publishing.
Another option is
ffmpeg2theora
, which despite its name is also a theora to theora converter.
Changing the quality of a recordng with it, can be as simple as :
ffmpeg2theora infile.ogv -v 3 -a 4 -o outfile.ogv
It can even perform resizing on the size of the recording, or change the overall duration.
BUGS
Does not record 3d windows, if --full-shots isn't specified.
Saving 65536 files with the same name, will result in upredictable behavior,
which might manifest as an endless loop, or a segmentation fault.
AUTHORS
John Varouhakis(johnvarouhakis [at] gmail.com)