How to "RecordMyDesktop"...

[Mike Walsh]

Afternoon, kiddiwinks.

Now, then. I know many of us like to be able to record what happens on our desktops, for various reasons. SimpleScreenRecorder is a very well-known app for doing just this, developed by Maarten Baert. Several compilations have been posted on the Forum at various times, and some of the more recent Pups have it installed by default, OOTB.

I use it myself, to great effect. But did you know that there's something even simpler in the repos of the Ubuntu-based Puppies (Tahr, Xenial.....even good old Precise)?

It's called (very aptly!) 'RecordMyDesktop'. Simple.....and obvious. Apparently, it's been there for years.

I came across it, earlier this afternoon, while I was perusing an article on HowToGeek. They mentioned it was available in the Ubuntu repos, so I decided to investigate. Here it is, in the Xenialpup PPM:-



Two parts to it; the base app itself, and a GTK+ graphical 'front-end'. It only takes moments to install, and, when finished, you have a Menu Entry for RecordMyDesktop. Clicking on it gives you this:-



Nothing to it. You can set the video and sound quality, as a percentage. You can select a 'region' of your screen to record; if this isn't selected, it records full-screen by default. You can choose where to save it, and under what name.....and there's the 'Record' button.

The 'Advanced' settings give you a few more options, under four different tabs; 'Files', 'Performance', 'Sound' & 'Misc'.



Two tips. Under the 'Sound' tab, change that 'DEFAULT' to 'default'; ALSA won't find it unless you do. And change the frequency from 22050 to 44100 Hz.

When it's finished, it spends a wee while encoding it; by default, the output is labelled with the .ogv extension (the Ogg Video format):-



There's an option to compress it, under the 'Performance' tab; I haven't yet tried this, although, apparently, you shouldn't bother. You degrade the video quality dreadfully if you do. You'll find it runs well over the 100% mark before it quits; this seems to be quite normal. I've got it installed in Xenialpup, Tahr 6.05, and Tahr64, and it's the same in all of them. When finished, unless you've specified differently before recording, the file will be in /root by default.

It plays back in most of our media players quite happily; VLC, MPlayer, and SMPlayer, too.

It seems quite a useful little app, and certainly works very well. I'm going to try uploading to YouTube in a bit, and see whether the .ogv format is accepted or not.

Edit:- Yep, the .ogv format is accepted by YouTube with no fuss whatsoever.

Well worth a look.


Mike.

[rufwoof]

SneekyLinux : recordmydesktop

[Mike Walsh]

Deleted - hit the 'Submit' button twice!

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, ruffers.

Yeah, I found that myself, shortly after writing this post! Sod's law, ain't it? Explains it quite well, mind you...


Mike.

[Limbomusic]

Wow ! Awesome app - never knew it existed. First -(ok, second) try:

http://helledussen.com/huhey/test.html mkv
http://helledussen.com/huhey/test2.html mp4
---edit: recorded on a Dell vostro1000 from 2005---
Thanx I make a lotta really lame musicvideos for my lame keyboardmusic - so this will definitely come in handy !

Cool if u share other gems of software u come across.

[Pelo]

Used a lot by Ubuntu (forum ubuntu). hum hum hum our little Puppy has many alternatives.
Try recordMyDesktop. The more video users, the more i will enjoy,
Sneeky Linux tutos are clones one of each other. Make us tutos, easier to understand than written ones. French users will understand only by watching the movie, even if comments are like chinese (I easily read English, but spoken its really hard for me)

[Mike Walsh]

Afternoon, all.

I've produced a .pet package of RecordMyDesktop. As stated above, it's generally available through the repos of any of the 'buntu-based Pups; remember to install 'gtk-recordmydesktop' in addition to 'recordmydesktop', or otherwise you'll be stuck with command-line operation!

The reasons I've put together a .pet of this are two-fold. One, I run various Pups that are not 'buntu-based, and (as I've stated many times before) I like to adhere to the Puppy maxim of 'choice in all things'. I happen to think this is a pretty neat screen-capture tool; I know many of you prefer SimpleScreenRecorder, but to me, this produces a smoother, less 'jerky' output. I've tested this in Slacko 5.7.0 & Slacko 5.6.0, and it works perfectly.

The other reason I put this together is because I've recently started using greengeek's 'VoxPup', based on Upup Raring (with experimental voice control). Okay, I know what you're thinking; 'Isn't this a 'buntu-based Pup?' Indeed it is.....but what y'all need to remember is that Upup Raring was based on Ubuntu 13.04 'Raring Ringtail', which was one of the intermediate, short-term versions between the LTS (Long Term Support) releases, which are supported for 5 years. The short-term releases are only supported for 9 months, before the repos are archived, and become basically inaccessible to the public.

The upshot of this is that Raring's repos went off-line years ago (probably before I even joined the Forum), and no longer connect, much less function. So, my 'Raring' has been set up entirely with .pet & SFS packages. And it works pretty well, too!

I've assembled this using all the necessary packages from the Precise repos.....itself in imminent danger of the repos being archived, since it went EOL back in April this year. TBH, I'm astonished they're still 'up-and-running', so I've been 'stocking up' 571 with various 'goodies' while I still can.....

I really can't see these still being online after 'Artful Aardvark' goes on release in a few days time..!

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RecordMyDesktop works entirely with open-source codecs; it produces a file in an OGG 'container', utilising Theora for the video component, and Vorbis for the audio. The output goes to a file in /root called 'out.ogv' (you can of course name this anything you want to; it will still have the .ogv extension - for OGG). It plays back happily in both VLC and SMPlayer. I can't entirely figure out whether this makes use of ffmpeg, or libavutils, etc (or whether it's entirely handled by Python); the available documentation doesn't make this at all clear. FFmpeg is usually available via the PPM, if required.

Do remember, as I stated above; the 'encoding' session which takes place after closure very often runs on to well over 100%, as reported by the progress bar. This appears to be perfectly normal; just be patient! I admit it does seem to take rather longer in the Slackos than it does in the 'buntus.....but it still gets there (eventually!) Perhaps something 'extra' is required, although the terminal doesn't report anything missing. It does, however, function as intended.

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I've only to discover whether YouTube will accept .ogv video files; I'll keep y'all posted on this score. (EDIT:- Yep, YouTube's quite happy with .ogv extension files.)

The .pet for this is available from here:-

http://www.mediafire.com/file/boao458ii ... 1-i686.pet

Feedback would be appreciated on this one, if anybody decides to give it a whirl.....

Enjoy.


Mike.

[greengeek]

Hi Mike, I'm keen to see if this can work for me on a Slacko 5.6 derivative as I have problems with SSR not letting me record audio via "loopback". (No idea yet how I would set up Gtk-RMD to do it but that is tomorrow's challenge...).

However, I got the following response:

Code: Select all

#This is the command given at initialization:
recordmydesktop -o /root/out.ogv --fps 15 --channels 1 --freq 22050 --v_quality 63 --s_quality 10 --workdir /tmp 

#recordMyDesktop stderror output:
recordmydesktop: error while loading shared libraries: libjack.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

What would you recommend as the best package to load in order to cure this?
cheers!

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, GG.

Um. Blimey, I don't really know!

I've not yet really experimented that much with the settings yet, since it seems to work OK with an external USB sound card I bought originally for the old DELL (the 3.5 mm socket for which is getting very worn.) I've had problems with the Compaq's sound for ages; it always sounds really slow & distorted on recording playback (although everything else works fine.....plays back streaming radio and personal music tracks fine!)

I thought I'd try it on the Compaq, and it seems to work nicely.

I'm not really the person to ask about JACK; Smithy was trying to explain to me about JACK the other day, but I simply cannot get my head around the settings. In RecordMyDesktop, there is a section under the Advanced->Sound tab where you can set it to work with JACK, I know.....but it's no use asking me how you do it.

Sorry I can't be of more help with that one. If you do manage to get it set up and running, let me know how you achieved it, would you?

Just out of curiosity, why d'you want to record audio via 'loopback'? Isn't that, um, kind of self-defeating?


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

@greengeek:-

GG, see if these will help. I'm in 570 at the moment; I installed JACK here following Smithy's advice the other day, although I still can't get it to run properly. This is all the JACK stuff I can find in /usr/lib.....

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/11dc7b6f

Let me know if they do any good for ya. Constructing the RMD package entailed quite a 'lib hunt', but, thankfully, that's all it was. No 'symbol_lookup_errors', or owt like that, fortunately.

Like you, I'm quite a dab hand at tracking stuff down by now.....and running several other Pups, I can usually 'borrow' stuff from another Pup where it is working..! Running a big 'kennel' definitely has its advantages...


Mike.

(BTW:- D'you happen to remember whether Mochi Moppel ever got guvcview to work in 560; I remember you and he 'chewing the fat' over this one a while back..? I had quite a successful day of it yesterday, getting more than one outstanding project finally resolved. Have a look here:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=111710

I was putting this together for 570, originally.....but I've found that anything which works in 570 invariably runs fine in 560, too.)

[greengeek]

Hi Mike, thanks for the jack libs - I have started testing with them and it got me past my initial problem but after that I fell into a pit of vipers from which I could not successfully extricate myself (mostly libpopopt wrong version or something...) but I will get back to that at some other time to research further..

Just out of curiosity, why d'you want to record audio via 'loopback'? Isn't that, um, kind of self-defeating?

The sound card in my laptop lacks any kind of hardware "mix" control so there is no way for me to record an audio stream coming in via browser. This means I am unable to record audio from programmes like skype or Linphone etc.

SFR offered a "soft" mixer option for alsa which allowed the user to "loopback" the sound coming out of the speakers into the pcm record stream (or something like that - I'm probably butchering the reality of how it works).

Anyway - it allows me to use mhwaveedit to record audio, but I also wanted to occasionally record the contents of the screen video along with the audio but couldn't find a way to make SSR accept the loopback audio. For some reason today SSR works perfrctly with the loopback audio so I am really pleased.

However, there is obviously quite a lot of interaction between various audio and video utilities so I need to track what it was that was previously stopping SSR recording audio.

If I can get Record my desktop running it might be a better alternative.

I shall keep persisting.

[greengeek]

I've tested this in Slacko 5.7.0 & Slacko 5.6.0, and it works perfectly.

Also - just wondering if your testing was done on a fresh (no savefile) boot of 5.6 and 5.7?
cheers!

[Mike Walsh]

Had you considered getting an external sound card (which plugs into a USB port)? I bought one myself, last week, for the old Dell lappie.....'cos the 3.5 mm headphone socket's so worn it's almost unusable now.....and in the living room, I normally run an extension lead to an RCA adapter lead, direct into the hi-fi, and play-back through that.

I got one of these:-

https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Headpho ... B00NMXY2MO

.....although the market's full of similar products. I came across a rather futuristic-looking model a little while ago:-

https://www.amazon.com/External-Adapter ... B01KMXB1TI

7.1 surround sound, and dual input/outputs for both headphone & mike. For that price, it's not at all a bad buy.....except it's totally OTT for the simple use to which I want to put it (which was to replace the 3.5mm headphone jack socket, without stripping 'er down and soldering a new one in place).

I could have done that, but I'm getting kinda lazy in my old age..!

-------------------------------------------------------

Use the 'Multiple Sound Card Wizard' to select the appropriate card, then in Retrovol's 'Config window', under the 'Hardware' tab, enter the appropriate card details, hit 'Apply', and you should have the correct set of sliders for that external card showing. They don't normally have as many sliders to play with as your internal card.....but they get the job done. And, more importantly, most of 'em are just Plug'n'Play, and work OOTB with Linux.

Worth a look, perhaps.....and, er, no; just so's you know, I didn't try them out with a 'virgin' boot. P'raps I should have done!


Mike.

[soniabu]

The product is good. The only problem is that the sound has the background buzz of the disc or the PC fans.
Unfortunately, this boredom can also be heard with background music. Same problem with Simple screen recorder.
A pity.
Sonia

[rufwoof]

I've had better experiences by recording sound and video separately. I did even have a short video of a clapper board that I used to add in at the start. I like audacity for its background noise filtering option (highlight a bit of quiet sound track and use that as the filter to apply to the whole track ... and the likes of computer whirring in the background is gone). Good for amplifying/attenuating also, to get the volume level 'just right'.

Then use something like OpenShot to merge them back together again (use the clapper part to align the two, then cut that out once the two (video/sound) are aligned.

[ITSMERSH]

Had this already available for and used in LazY Puppy (Lucid based).

LP2_GtkRMD038.sfs

LP2_GtkRecordMyDesk-0.3.8.1-tahr.sfs

Don't know about the versions beyond Tahr but Tahr's version still is at 0.3.8 (0.3.8.1).

[Mike Walsh]

@ RSH:-

Essentially, you'll find it's version 0.3.8.1 throughout the entire Linux ecosphere.

Reading between the lines here on the project's webpage at Sourceforge, the project pretty much ground to a halt some 10 years or so ago. There's been no development on RecordMyDesktop for the better part of a decade.....and I doubt there ever will be again, since multiple other applications have essentially 'taken its place' (like SimpleScreenRecorder, which uses PulseAudio.....itself in standard use throughout the mainstream Linux desktop world).

It's only 'holdouts' (like us!) who haven't 'conformed' to the expected 'standard'.....and thus have to develop all these 'workarounds' for audio stuff.

Keeps us out of mischief, I suppose.....


Mike.

[ITSMERSH]

Hey Mike.

I know there's a topic somewhere you'd made about how'd you make those interesting GIF images shown in your signature.

Can you please point me to it?

Re: pulse audio

I don't like it, as I never did get it to work. I seem to recall RecordMyDesktop was using Jack Audio (at least the Lucid version)?

[Mike Walsh]

@ RSH:-

Are you talking about the actual 'scrolling LED display' itself? That's the only part you have to get done elsewhere, plus a visit to ezgif.com to fine-tune the image the way you want it. The rest was just careful, painstaking work using Mooi's 'PhotoScape', running under WINE for all the background image work, followed by working in the GIMP to put it all together, and embed the GIF in the background image.

To make your 'scrolling LED 'message'', head over here:-

http://wigflip.com/signbot/

There's a limit to the number of characters you can have in a single 'message'; as you can see from my sig, I have two. You can only embed a single GIF image into a PNG/JPG with the GIMP, so I actually did some very clever editing and construction in the GIMP, in order to be able to sit two images side by side in the Signature Control Panel using the Forum's BB code. The end result being that the two images appear as one.....

In total, there's probably about 3½ hrs work there, including scouting around on YouTube to find a tutorial for using the GIMP to embed GIf images into another static image.

-----------------------------------

To recap:-

Visit http://wigflip.com/signbot/ to create the scrolling 'message'.

Then visit https://ezgif.com/ to edit the scrolling GIF(s) you've just created. You can resize, change the speed they run at, alter the appearance (colour, contrast, brightness, greyscale enhancement, etc.....just about everything you can think of, really); stuff like that.

Then you need to construct your backgrounds, using your preferred graphics editor. You can probably do all this with Inkscape/the GIMP; I only use PhotoScape because

a) It's really versatile, and full-featured, and
b) I got so handy using it under Win XP that when I switched to Puppy, I was very pleased to find out it's one of the relatively few Windows apps that runs in WINE with no loss of functionality.

Finally, use the GIMP to 'embed' the GIF image into your static 'background' image. You may find this 'GIMP Toots' video quite informative!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnwFBx5hkv0

Let us know if any of that helps.


Mike.