How to create a screencast?

Question

How can I create a screencast on Ubuntu? What applications are available?

The app I'm looking for has ideally all of these features:

1. Can record in a format that can be played back easily on any platform and/or accepted by youtube or another popular video site
2. Can record just a window (instead of the whole screen), possibly selecting it with a mouse click
3. Can start recording after a configurable delay (e.g., I launch the app and have time to do arrangements to my desktop/window before actual recording starts)

Answer 1

gtk-recordmydesktop

Adds an easy to use graphical icon on the GNOME toolbar to make a pleasure use and configure the audio and video capture and screencast application recordMyDesktop.

xvidcap

A screen capture enabling you to capture videos off your X-Window desktop for illustration or documentation purposes. It is intended to be a standards-based alternative to tools like Lotus ScreenCam.

Video can be saved in MPEG or AVI files format.

Answer 2

This is what I use to make screencasts, the cli command that comes with recordmydestkop

recordmydesktop --width 1920 --height 1200 --full-shots --fps 15 --channels 1 --device hw:1,0 --delay 10

The delay 10 gives me 10 seconds to "prepare" my desktop before it starts recording. When I'm done I hit ctrl+c, then it starts encoding the file.

I have a dual display, and the width/height argument lets me focus recording on one of my monitors. By adjusting this value I can also record onto my second monitor.

Other pointers:

• Install screenkey for a slick overview for screencasts.
• Ubuntu Screencast Team

Answer 3

I like Byzanz; it records your activity as a GIF file.

It's pretty light and works well, especially for putting a shorter screencast on a webpage or in an email.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/byzanz
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install byzanz

For further information:

How to create animated GIF images of a screencast?

Answer 4

kazam is a good application for this purpose.

It gives you a delay before recording. Recording is done in HD and the output is in .mkv format which is accepted for YouTube so there is no need to convert and re-render.

Answer 5

Tibesti

Tibesti Screencaster is a program for Ubuntu that allows you to record your screen and your microphone and/or audio out sounds.

To install add the PPA ppa:ackondro/tibesti (How to add a PPA) and then install tibesti from the software center.

Alternatively, open a terminal and paste:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ackondro/tibesti
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tibesti

Answer 6

Have a look at Wink.

• Download (freeware; Windows and Linux).
• Wink UserGuide.

There are two tutorial projects created in Wink which you can view. Use the Help, View tutorial menu options to render and view them before you start using Wink.

Features as told on their website:

• Freeware: Distributed as freeware for business or personal use. However if you want to redistribute Wink, you need to get permission from the author.
• Cross-Platform: Available for all flavours of Windows and various versions of Linux (x86 only).
• Audio: Record voice as you create the tutorial for explaining better.
• Input formats: Capture screenshots from your PC, or use images in BMP/JPG/PNG/TIFF/GIF formats.
• Output formats: Macromedia Flash, Standalone EXE, PDF, PostScript, HTML or any of the above image formats. Use Flash/html for the web, EXE for distributing to PC users and PDF for printable manuals.
• Multilingual support: Works in English, French, German, Italian, Danish, Spanish, Serbian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified/Traditional Chinese.
• Smart Capture Tools: Capture screenshots automatically as you use your PC, based on mouse and keyboard input (great time saver and generates professional captures).
• Performance/Quality: Creates highly compressed Flash presentations (few kbs to few hundreds of kbs, much smaller than competing commercial products) ideal for using on the web.

Tutorials:

• Youtube Basic steps, Wink 2.0 Tutorial
• maketecheasier.com

Answer 7

You can also use ffmpeg to create a screencast. Example:

ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 25 -s 1024x768 -i :0.0 /tmp/output.mpg

Notes:

• 0.0 is your display.screen number of your X11 Server. You can get the number with echo $DISPLAY
• -r = frames per second
• -s = resolution

Answer 8

How to create an animated (GIF) screenshot

Added bonus with this approach is that you can post the screencast without embed tags on any forum that includes animated GIFs as embedded like this

The answers prior to mine have clearly answered how to create a video screencast. Now if you just want to show an animated screenshot, essentially an extremely short screencast in an image format (GIF, and not more than ~10 sec), it's also easy.

First create a screencast of what you want to show in the animated GIF. Then follow the instructions below...

You'll need Gimp, mplayer (WARNING! NOT mplayer2) and mencoder. Issue the following commands to install them.

sudo apt-get install gimp
sudo apt-get install mplayer
sudo apt-get install mencoder
sudo apt-get -f install

Alternatively, you can install them from the Synaptic package manager that comes with Ubuntu.

The following command breaks your screencast into a number of jpeg or png (based on which command you choose) images:

mplayer -ao null -ss 0:0:33 -endpos 2 eagles.avi -vo jpeg:outdir=Desktop/animated
mplayer -ao null -ss 0:0:33 -endpos 2 eagles.avi -vo png:z=9:outdir=Desktop/animated

Where, -ss 0:0:33 tells mplayer where you begin (0 hours, 0 minutes, 33 seconds), -endpos 2 tells mplayer where to stop (2 minutes), z=9 sets compression level for the output png images to 9, Desktop/animated is the directory (~/Desktop/animated/) where you want the images to be output to.

You can also tell mplayer where to stop, as a specific time, like so:

mplayer -ao null -ss 0:0:33 -endpos 0:1:12 eagles.avi -vo jpeg:outdir=Desktop/animated
mplayer -ao null -ss 0:0:33 -endpos 0:1:12 eagles.avi -vo png:z=9:outdir=Desktop/animated

Now you have the images, but you need to combine them into a single, animated GIF. This is really simple:

• Start Gimp > File > Open as Layers > browse to the directory (~/Desktop/animated/), Ctrl+A to select all images, and click 'Open'.

• Simple hit Shift+Ctrl+S or go to File > Save As... and name the image as 'animated.gif' > hit 'Save' > check 'Save as Animation' radio button > hit 'Export' > in the next window, simply hit 'Save' unless you know what you are doing.

That's it. You have your animated GIF ready!

Here's an example:

PS: I am not very comfortable with the terminology when it comes to this kind of stuff, but I hope I am clear nevertheless. :)

SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhJtyblE_D0

Answer 9

Check out this article about Screenkey

It turns your key strokes into highly readable subtitles overlaid on the recording. It seems like it would be incredible for tutorial and training type videos about CLI-based topics.

Not positive it fits all the original criteria, I will try to update later.

It's on Launchpad here

Answer 10

This bash script is based on ffmpeg. It calculates the required resolution and record your desktop in high-definition.

Xaxis=$(xrandr -q | grep '*' | uniq | awk '{print $1}' | cut -d 'x' -f1)
Yaxis=$(xrandr -q | grep '*' | uniq | awk '{print $1}' | cut -d 'x' -f2)
ffmpeg -f x11grab -s $(($Xaxis))x$(($Yaxis)) -r 25 -i :0.0 -sameq ~/Video/output.mkv

Change the filename to your taste. This script can be found on github here.

Answer 11

Kdenlive is a free open-source video editor for GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, which supports DV, AVCHD and HDV editing. Kdenlive relies on several other open source projects, such as FFmpeg, the MLT video framework and Frei0r effects.

http://www.kdenlive.org/features

Answer 12

After trying everything, this is the solution I came up with:

Note: The tool ffmpeg has been depreciated and is replaced by anconv

First install the required codecs:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Use the following command to record the screencast:

avconv -f alsa -i pulse -f x11grab -r 30 -s 1280x800 -i :0.0 -vcodec libx264 -acodec libmp3lame myscreencast.avi

Change -s 1280x800 to whatever resolution you like.

more examples

all screen with given resolution and sound

avconv -f alsa -i pulse -f x11grab -r 30 -s 1024x768 -i :0.0 -acodec pcm_s16le -vcodec libx264  -threads 0 output.avi

all screen with mouse following and sound

avconv -f alsa -i pulse -f x11grab -show_region 1 -follow_mouse 100 -r 10 -s 960x540 -i :0.0+10,200 -acodec pcm_s16le -qscale 0 -threads 0 output.avi

Detailed options I know are following

• -f: input file format
• -i: input file name
• -r: fps (Frame Per Second)
• -s: frame size (width x height)
• -i :0.0+10,200: size of squared area to follow You can tuneup these options to play more...

Some more commands are available on http://www.step4wd.com/tips/recording-screencast-in-ubuntu-linux/ although the tip is not well written.

Answer 13

Using Ubuntu 11.04 natty on my laptop I've tried xvidcap, gtk-recordMyDesktop, and tibesti. Only tibesti lets me easily pick whether to record from the screen or microphone or both. Highly recommended.

Answer 14

I just installed RecordItNow http://www.piotrkrzyzek.com/screencasting-in-linux-with-recorditnow-pulseaudio) and Kazam.

RecordItNow seems more complete that Kazam as you can set the recording size. However, both seem primitive compared to this ScreenFlow shown in this tutorial on making screencasts: http://www.codeschool.com/code_tv/screencasting.

Answer 15

Vokoscreen: A new screen casting tool for Linux

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vokoscreen-dev/vokoscreen
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install vokoscreen

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