pAVrecord Video/webcam recorder (mpeg4, Theora, x264)

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Pelo

what is the input format for screencast capture ?

#41 Post by Pelo »

what is the input format for screencast capture, please ?

mcewanw
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Re: what is the input format for screencast capture ?

#42 Post by mcewanw »

Pelo wrote:what is the input format for screencast capture, please ?
Hello Pelo,

What do you mean by the "input format"? To make a screencast you just tick the x11grab checkbox. You can change audio type and video encoders to whatever you prefer, for higher or lower resolution capture, prior to that selection. I don't make any suggestion as to what would be the best settings since that is up to the user preference.

The screencast capability currently provided in pAVrecord is pretty basic. You could also try screencast using FFConvert, which adds some extra facilities, or something like Xvidcap or Drec, both of which I note you've used before. I might add to pAVrecord screencast capability eventually, but too much else to do at the moment alas.

Regards,

William
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mcewanw
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Getting better screencast quality

#43 Post by mcewanw »

EDIT: Note that I undertook the following using ffmpeg.sfs loaded in DebianDog and the result seemed reasonably good. I seem to have some problem using x264 in Slacko 6 beta for some reason, which I'll have to check again tomorrow. Last time I tried pAVrecord more generally in Precise 5.7.1 it seemed to work better (faster/smoother) than in Slacko 6 beta, but I have to double-check that yet in case it is just on this particular computer I'm using.

Hello again Pelo,

I did a bit experimenting and found that I could get good video quality in an x11grab screencast by choosing the following config options in pAVrecord:

Container for combined audio/video: avi (i.e. just left at default - maybe aac would be better for sound since using x264 video below but haven't tried)
Audio format: mp3, cbr, 32k (i.e. just left at default)
Selected video encoder: x264

But the important thing to get good video quality was to enter the following extra options into "Extra O/P options": -b:v 1000k
EDIT: For some (older?) installed ffmpeg version, you might instead need to use:
"Extra O/P options": -b 1000k"

That gives a 1000 kbps video bitrate rather than whatever the default ffmpeg uses is (none was provided by me in the program itself).

I'll probably add a video bitrate choice option in next version of pAVrecord.

NOTE: Once you have settings that work for you in the pAVrecord big config GUI, it is usually more convenient to shrink pAVrecord to its small GUI (row of record buttons) before starting the actual screengrab.
-----

You can also use FFConvert as a handy method for finding suitable preset values to use in pAVrecord.

What you do is start FFConvert and choose a preset in there that interests you (and press Apply button). Then Select Screen Capture in FFConvert, select a destination directory for the output file, select a Duration of say 10min (long enough to find what command was actually used), and start a screen grab running. While it is running open /tmp/ffconvert and you will find a file in there called x11grab.sh. Open that file in text editor (e.g. geany) and you will see the actual ffmpeg command FFConvert used (including parameters such as -b:v ... You can then copy such values into pAVrecord Extra I/P options or Extra O/P options as appropriate to get same quality as you achieved with FFConvert with the advantage of audio recording also working.

Hope that tip is of some use/help.

Regards, William
github mcewanw

mcewanw
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new version pAVrecord uploaded

#44 Post by mcewanw »

new version pAVrecord uploaded. Now version 9.0.2

Changes: Mainly just added a convenience feature added for multiuser system ($HOME as default save dir rather than /root). Also, for x11grab screencast made default video bitrate 1000k (i.e. -b:v 1000k). You can of course overwrite that value in the Extra O/P options entry box using that same "-b:v bitratek" output format.

Download from first post of this thread.

A new version of Precord has also been uploaded to match the changes.

William
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new version pAVrecord uploaded. Now version 9.0.3

#45 Post by mcewanw »

new version pAVrecord uploaded. Now version 9.0.3

Changes: hijack module capability expanded. Now using .hijack as addon module extension

Download the new pAVrecord from first post of this thread.

A new version of Precord has also been uploaded to match the changes.

William
github mcewanw

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Saborima
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in Tahr case

#46 Post by Saborima »

I tried pAVrecord-9.0.3.

Precise-550 ... OK

In case of tahr-5.8.3 (VLC, no ffmpeg), my control is never returned to pAVrecord from VLC.
I had to kill the following processes.

Code: Select all

sh -C rec "$TDIRFILE_DS1" "$DIRFILE1" "$DURATION1"
arecord -D plughw:0,0 -f cd -c 1 -d 0
sh -c avconv -y -f "video4linux2" -s 320x240 -i "/dev/video0" -r 30 -vcodec libxvid -aspect 4:3 -f avi
From this operation, audio file and video file have different time lengths.

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New version 9.0.4 of pAVrecord uploaded

#47 Post by mcewanw »

New version 9.0.4 of pAVrecord uploaded. Hopefully fixes the vlc/avconv related bug drawn to my attention by user Saborima. It only effected machines using avconv (which would hang on record) rather than ffmpeg as it turns out.
Saborima wrote: In case of tahr-5.8.3 (VLC, no ffmpeg), my control is never returned to pAVrecord from VLC.
Thanks for that very valuable report Saborima. I don't have vlc on my main system and normally use mplayer and ffmpeg etc, so good to have a test case using avconv, avplay and vlc. Unfortunately default puppy tahr comes with pae kernel, which my development computer can't handle. On my netbook, tahr loaded, but alsa system sound doesn't work on that particular netbook under tahrpup (nothing to do with pavrecord per se) and I haven't time to try and find the reason. However, I think the fix I've made to pavrecord in version 9.0.4 should hopefully fix the problem you had. I had made a single line mistake that only effected avconv users (ffmpeg users were fine). I would be grateful if you could test pavrecord 9.0.4 as thoroughly as you can in case there are any other issues for vlc/avconv combination that I am not aware of.

William
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#48 Post by Saborima »

mcewanw wrote:New version 9.0.4 of pAVrecord uploaded.
I tried 9.0.4 soon.

It works fine on tahr-5.8.3 with VLC and avconv !!

But I don't have microphone. only webcam.
and so I tested only Video file, combined MP4 file and the return of my control.
(pAVrecord produced soundless Audio file, too)

Thanks for fixing the bug.

Pelo

ah, thanks to helpers

#49 Post by Pelo »

"container for combined audio/video: avi (i.e. just left at default - maybe aac would be better for sound since using x264 video below but haven't tried)
Audio format: mp3, cbr, 32k (i.e. just left at default)
Selected video encoder: x264

But the important thing to get good video quality was to enter the following extra options into "Extra O/P options": -b:v 1000k
EDIT: For some (older?) installed ffmpeg version, you might instead need to use:
"Extra O/P options": -b 1000k"

That gives a 1000 kbps video bitrate rather than whatever the default ffmpeg uses is (none was provided by me in the program itself).

I'll probably add a video bitrate choice option in next version of pAVrecord." :D
PAVrecord with AmiPUP give awfull images... I try to improve that with your advices.
:D nettement mieux, Merci monsieur.
Last edited by Pelo on Fri 08 Aug 2014, 11:13, edited 1 time in total.

mcewanw
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Re: ah, thanks to helpers

#50 Post by mcewanw »

Pelo wrote:"container for combined audio/video: avi (i.e. just left at default - maybe aac would be better for sound since using x264 video below but haven't tried)
Audio format: mp3, cbr, 32k (i.e. just left at default)
Selected video encoder: x264

But the important thing to get good video quality was to enter the following extra options into "Extra O/P options": -b:v 1000k
EDIT: For some (older?) installed ffmpeg version, you might instead need to use:
"Extra O/P options": -b 1000k"

That gives a 1000 kbps video bitrate rather than whatever the default ffmpeg uses is (none was provided by me in the program itself).

I'll probably add a video bitrate choice option in next version of pAVrecord." :D
PAVrecord with AmiPUP give awfull images... I try to improve that with your advices.
Hi Pelo,

I'm no expert at how to get good image quality with ffmpeg, If you know of or can find a commandline that provides good quality, please let me know, and I should be able to incorporate that into the program or at least in the docs in terms of best parameters to use. Thanks in advance.

William
github mcewanw

Pelo

Minute ! i am cooking the video !

#51 Post by Pelo »

Minute ! i am cooking the video ! :wink:
Absolutely no problem. If I find the perfect settings, i will notice them here.
If the developer and the user work together, you shall see that things are improving very fast, taking account of obligations of the system to arrange with.
Thanks sir for yr assistance. :wink:
Fullscreen or not fullscreen ? Medor, frenchy Puppy's teacher tells you how to know window position to screencast
xwininfo, cursor position
Youtube dimensions are 852x480 I am trying to adjust my screencast
... on progress(e).....
You can post your video to youtube without modifying anything.
Gnome-Mplayer : x1, xv,gl, choose gl for settings here-below joined.
Attachments
MonChoix.jpg
screencast : i am satisfied by the result. Now the game is to lower the quality until i am no longer satisfied. The just necessary to earn MBs.
(86.13 KiB) Downloaded 501 times
h264.jpg
Audio was 2014_08_08_173549.ogg plus 2014_08_08_173549.avi encapsulated in youtube.avi: 5729 K
(41.83 KiB) Downloaded 513 times
Last edited by Pelo on Sat 09 Aug 2014, 03:45, edited 1 time in total.

Pelo

pAVrecord my settings aimed to You tube diffusion

#52 Post by Pelo »

pAVrecord my settings aimed to You tube diffusion
video
The video will be completed when my knowledge is improved.
I now test lower quality. for get the just necessary (for Pelo, indeed).
For screencastcapture, 10frames per second would be enough.
one minute = 60 seconds 35 frames per second are 35x60 per minute i.e 2100 images

10 frames are only 600. here is the main way to lower MBs.
screencasting only the necessary zone is the second way to earn MBs
Last edited by Pelo on Thu 14 Aug 2014, 09:29, edited 2 times in total.

mcewanw
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#53 Post by mcewanw »

Merci beaucoup, Pelo. I'll try out the settings you suggest and see how it goes.

As for capturing portions of the screen... yes, that was something I was looking into for a future upgrade (perhaps as a plugin).

FFConvert screencast also allows user to select screen portion or individual window, but as far as I remember I don't think it records the audio too (EDIT: quick glance at FFConvert x11grab routine suggests it perhaps does also capture audio, though didn't work for me when I tried it a while ago - my mistake probably. I note shinobar uses hw:0,0 in FFConvert as the sound card device; perhaps plughw:0,0 would work on my machine instead - I'll try that later. As in pAVrecord, you really need a way to select alternative sound devices than only 0,0). Like the method described by Médor, FFConvert also uses xwininfo to determine screencast window capture area, and I note the use of puppylover's pcurpos.

However, the main thing I'm interested in, for my own pAVrecord usage at least, in the nearish future, is to experiment with a motion detection plugin I'm hoping to write once I make some time for that. However, I'm currently sharpening up my gtk programming skills in C, and expect to be quite a while on that before returning to pAVrecord or one of my other gtkdialog-based apps. I will make a point of looking into adding screencast area selection though. Nice to see your Youtube of pAVrecord in action.

William
github mcewanw

Pelo

Good job, mcewanw

#54 Post by Pelo »

mcewanw , but te settings which are the best i found are your settings, it's enough.
Hum take a glance to Dpup drec (dpuprecord) by gposil (2009. Perhaps you are searching for something existing, needing only some improvements.
Furthermore Gposil had ffmpeg not so powerfull as nowadays.
Gposil has left...
Drec really works well, when it works (it was done for Dpup,)
Only minor changes will give it a new youth.
I sincerely thanks people as you mcewanw , who minds to users interest, which is to do something with a distro, not to make a distro.

Pelo

something strange : audio plus video

#55 Post by Pelo »

video hum 5MB
audio hum 1MB
when you push button to make the video, the result is much more than 6MB !
Why??? Avidemux sticks the two files making a new one about 6MB, not 10 !
Go, work on that ! :)
:arrow: :arrow: :arrow: i was with brand new puplet Slacko 5.6 Amipup (amiga look) which has pAVrecord as default.
I change to anotherone to try your new version of pAVrecord.

mcewanw
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Re: something strange : audio plus video

#56 Post by mcewanw »

Pelo wrote:video hum 5MB
audio hum 1MB
when you push button to make the video, the result is much more than 6MB !
Why??? Avidemux sticks the two files making a new one about 6MB, not 10 !
Go, work on that ! :)
An interesting observation, which I'll certainly look into for future upgrade Pelo. Thanks for your tests.

William

EDIT: It may prove difficult to duplicate your test. If it is possible for you to post the separate audio track and video track and also the version combined via pAVrecord and that combined via Avidemux, such that I could download them from somewhere, that would be useful. The only thing I can think of at the moment that could be causing the combined result to be larger than you expect is that I have not instructed ffmpeg to base the final duration on the shortest of the two input streams (audio and video). Working with your test files I could try the effect of the ffmpeg -shortest parameter to see if that fixed the issue, or if it introduced any unwanted side effects. The ffmpeg command that pAVrecord uses to combine the audio and video tracks is otherwise quite standard and commonly published on the Internet. It uses -acodec copy and -vcodec copy, which tells ffmpeg not to reencode either the audio or video tracks when merging, so no further processing of the audio or video tracks should be occurring.

I have looked at Drec code some time back. I believe it records the audio and video tracks all in one go without showing a preview window of what is being recorded. That is fine for screencasts, but pAVrecord was primarily designed for webcam video + sound capture, and I found no easy way to show the video being captured without keeping the audio and video tracks separate during recording whilst piping video output through ffplay. It is easy to do a screencast on the commandline of course, including audio, and Drec simply provided a frontend to that as far as I remember. pAVrecord is useful for my own needs, which are partly experimental in nature, but I wouldn't claim it is the most convenient nor best for x11 screen captures, though I am happy to try and improve it. To be honest, I've no personal interest in taking over Drec; I have far to many other projects I want to work on but have limited time. Maybe someone else would like to do that though, so it is good you bring that idea up.
Last edited by mcewanw on Sat 09 Aug 2014, 10:52, edited 1 time in total.
github mcewanw

Pelo

Puppy-es LXDE (by Nilson Morales)

#57 Post by Pelo »

The new version of pAVrecord is absolutely perfect, in my needs.
Good job, guys.
First try. nothing to change.
This audio video tool should be included as default.
I will tell it to Nilson (argentina y san Salvador. De facto the distro is for full South-America and people of mexico, honduras, y sus vecinos (neighborood)

What is PAVrecord used for (will be used) ? to make tutorials of how-to-do, either by translating existing ones (english and spanish) to french, either creating by screencasting what i do, with my french comments.
I you can provide us with a lovely girl with tendre voice to make comments more attractive, it would be the summum :)
Gracias para americanos, Merci pour les francophones, canadiens et africains.traduction ici
Attachments
LXDE.jpg
Information will be done in Puppy Linux Facebook site
(22.99 KiB) Downloaded 424 times
Last edited by Pelo on Mon 11 Aug 2014, 23:55, edited 1 time in total.

Pelo

pAVrecord istalled default french ToOpy and Triton

#58 Post by Pelo »

pAVrecord version 0.9.1 installe on Precise 5.4.3 ToOppy by Argolance. Before changing to newer, je teste la version en place cliquez ici
Attachments
ToOppy.jpg
(76.78 KiB) Downloaded 526 times
Last edited by Pelo on Mon 01 Sep 2014, 07:03, edited 3 times in total.

mcewanw
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some workarounds to improve x11grab screencast quality

#59 Post by mcewanw »

Pelo wrote:The new version of pAVrecord is absolutely perfect, in my needs.
Yes, it can provide good screencast results almost out of the box, but particularly if video encoder x264 is first selected. By default, with default provided .pavrecordrc config file, it then creates files with screencast framerate = 25 fps with video bitrate set at 1000 kbps.

However, it isn't yet perfect in that trying to change the framerate with entry box x11grab 'Output framerate (fps)' doesn't do what is expected, so attempts to reduce screencast recorded file size by using lower frame rate isn't working. For example, if you try x11grab Output framerate of 10 fps, you don't get that framerate in the recorded screencast video file. Why? Because I made a slight mistake in the code, such that the x11grab framerate entry box isn't working properly (I put the variable at output instead of input where it should be), which I'll fix in the next version.


In the meantime, there is a workaround. For x11grab framerate of 10 fps, put 10 as the value in that x11grab Output framerate entry box and ALSO in the Video Config entry box 'Extra I/P options' put:

Code: Select all

-framerate 10
Then you will correctly get a framerate of 10 fps for the x11grab screencast video, which for the same video bitrate means you get much higher quality frames for the same video size. If you wish, you can then trade that higher frame quality for lower video size by reducing the default video bitrate (which, as I said above, in x11grab screencast mode is currently set at 1000k (bps) by default). But at the moment, I haven't included an entry box for video bitrate (a bit of an oversight on my part...). So the workaround for that is to put the required video bitrate in the Video Config enttry box 'Extra O/P options'. For example if you want to use an output video bitrate of 256k instead of 1000k for x11grab capture, in 'Extra O/P options' put:

Code: Select all

-b 256k
Note that it is this video bitrate value which will determine the size of the recorded video (assuming the same encoder and recording length etc), not the frame rate. The frame rate, for a given video bitrate, will determine the quality of the frames (lower frame rate for a given video bitrate the higher the quality of the resultant frames).

I'll fix these errors of mine in next pAVrecord version, which I'll release very soon.

Cheers, William
github mcewanw

Pelo

framerate is ok, don't search high quality

#60 Post by Pelo »

framerate is ok, don't search high quality.
Youtube is the final destination (for my own) . my screen is 1600x900. youtube is 852x480.
MY choices are 1024x768 15fps result as HD in youtube. sound mono
and 852x480 which suits the screen of youtube, but does not appears as HD

For me Pavrecord is a very very fine tool, and they are not thousands, as some told us. Drecord is fine too for full screen capture. And xvidcap for precise job, just the window needed.

It will be impossible to get under 5MB per minute, i think. Merci messieurs (les gars = guys) for your useful work.

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