Screencast not producing files

Question

I'm using Gnome 3 on 12.04 and trying to create a screencast. I start the screencast using the Ctrl-Alt-Shift-R shortcut and the red light appears in the bottom right corner. I go about my business then press the key combination again when done. The problem is that the screencast file gets generated maybe 1 out of 10 times.

Is there a log file I can look at to determine the issue? How about a settings file?

UPDATE:

I did some additional testing. What's happening is that the screencast does work but it appends the new video to the existing file. Even if the file is renamed or moved to trash. Emptying trash does not create a new file either. Not sure where the video gets recorded to then.

The only reliable way I've found to have a new file created is to log out of the session and log back in.

Is this expected behaviour? Is there a way to force screencast to create a new file every time Ctrl-Alt-Shift-R is pressed?

Answer 1

As a triage for this (until it gets fixed upstream) you can reset gnome shell (which doesn't log you out, close applications etc) do the following:

After stopping your recording press ALT + F2 then type r and press ENTER.

This will reset gnome shell (and thus close the file handle).

Answer 2

It appears that Gnome 3 is not closing the file after you press Ctrl+Alt+Shirt+R the second time to stop the recording.

Pressing the same sequence again causes the new video data to be appended to the still open file. If you delete the file, Gnome 3 still does not close the file and continues writing to the now deleted file. The video data essentially goes nowhere. (I think that it is being written to the disk, but as part of a file that has already been marked as deleted.)

Answer 3

If you couldn't figure out, I suggested going around using Ffmpeg command for screencast. One of commands could be

ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 25 -s 1024x768 -i :0.0 -vcodec huffyuv screencast.avi

More example is at Ubuntu Wiki ffmpeg