7 ms·

Screencasting with free software

84 points by edp 11y ago

chipperyman573 11y ago
I just use ShareX and enable sound recording in Task Settings -> Capture -> Screen recorder -> Screen recording options. Seems easier than downloading three separate pieces of software and recording each track individually then joining them...
- edp 11y ago
  Isn't ShareX windows only ? I tried to be platform agnostic in my post and I am using OSX myself.
  - j_s 11y ago
    ShareX is a Windows GUI wrapper around ffmpeg (when recording video of the screen). I think it makes sense to mention even platform-specific tools that can make ffmpeg command line parameter incantation easier!
iKlsR 11y ago
Blender can be used to edit your video, add small effects, overlay text, add audio, subs. See my old answer here https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video-editor-for-windows-that-can-insert-images-or-audio-at-arbitrary-points/2009#2009 https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video-e...
- baq 11y ago
  i second that, blender is actually a very good solution. ...but if you have any experience at all with the adobe suite, you'll be very confused, so beware.
Akkuma 11y ago
You could use OBS, Open Broadcaster Software, which is open source that has features geared toward streaming, but could ultimately prove more valuable than "simple" screencasting software. For instance, want to show your code always even when you're googling answers? That is very easy in OBS.
- DennisMoore 11y ago
  I second OBS. It works great for capturing windows and screens. The only issue I had with it is that Windows Media Player won't play the "Advanced Video Codec" that it records with, so I had to run it through Handbrake.
  - zokier 11y ago
    Advanced Video Codec, or AVC, is just another name for bog-standard H.264.
    - voltagex_ 11y ago
      I wonder if it's just the profile that WMP has problems with. I'd be interested in comparing the `mediainfo` output of both a Handbrake and a OBS encoded video - I suspect Handbrake is still extremely conservative with what it outputs (at the expense of a bit of quality)
  - delgaudm 11y ago
    On the flip side, I found that OBS brought my -- admittedly older -- MPB to its knees such that the app I was trying to show wouldn't perform. Huge lengths of video were frozen. Same on an older first-gen i7 Windows machine. I never did figure it out.
    - Akkuma 11y ago
      This is probably a configuration issue, although OBS has more issues OS X for a variety of reasons. I've ran OBS on my 10 year old PC while coding without much issue.
ChrisDutrow 11y ago
For me, the cost of having to go through all those steps and learn all those tools is significantly higher than the $300 or so cost of buying Camtasia. For me, it's not just the time cost, but the energy and cognitive resources consumed by not paying for the easy solution. ...just offering an opposing perspective, I respect your approach.
- narag 11y ago
  OBS can't be simpler and works great.
  - ChrisDutrow 11y ago
    Looks great, especially nice since I can put it on my linux machine which I prefer to use. How does it match up against Camtasia in terms of putting together a presentation? Like can you add text and fade in/out images on top of the video?
nakodari 11y ago
You can also use https://jumpshare.com https://jumpshare.com, which uses FFMPEG for screen recording. We built this app to help everyone be more productive. You can capture and annotate screenshots, record screencasts and audio clips, compose notes (in text, markdown, and code), and more.
reidrac 11y ago
If you're using Linux only like me, Kazam is unbeatable to capture your screen. I got similar results with ffmpeg, but Kazam is just dead easy to use. After that, in case you need some editing, I recommend Blender. It has a steep learning curve, but as long as you don't want to do really complex editing and your hardware is not too old, it is perfect and the results are great.
- mikegioia 11y ago
  This is really amazing, thanks for the recommendation. The fact that it can record not only my mic but my speakers is blowing my mind right now.
- unicornporn 11y ago
  Looks terrific, but also abandoned. Last stable update in late 2014.
0942v8653 11y ago
For some reason that OS X recording command line (pasted in directly) won't work for me. I'm using ffmpeg 3.0, the latest from Homebrew. It seems to be OK until I try to open it in QuickTime and it says the file is broken. I wonder if OS X 10.11 is the problem -- what version are you on?
- edp 11y ago
  It's because of the color profile used by avfoundation, quicktime requires a specific profile. You should be able to open the file with mpv/mplayerX or VLC. If you want to open it with quicktime or imovie, you need to reencode the file with a specific color space, more info on the ffmpeg wiki[0] (Using -pix_fmt yuv420p should be sufficient). Sadly, you cannot record directly in yuv420p with avfoundation. [0] https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#AppleQuicktime https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#AppleQuicktime
  - 0942v8653 11y ago
    Thanks a lot, that fixed it.
LargeCompanies 11y ago
Screenr.com used to be an amazing and awesome tool for cheap user testing/screen recording. I would embed their widget and then go to Mechancial Turk and pay each tester $1 to go through various steps they recorded using the Screenr widget. It worked like a charm and was inexpensive compared to say $50 a pop at usertesting.com. Does anyone know of any Screenr.com alternatives?
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  It sounds like Inspectlet might do what you need. It records DOM changes and mouse movement, rather than video, but watching recorded sessions feels similar to watching video.
- johnfran 11y ago
  You might really enjoy ilos Videos. A lot of Screenr users switched over to them. Their tag line is "Ridiculously Simple Screen Recording"
delgaudm 11y ago
On OS X, Quicktime player can also record the screen, or part of the screen. File > New Screen Recording. AFAIK by default, it will only record the mic and not the audio card output. I don't know of a free option to do that (does ffmpeg?), but I've found Rogue Ameoba's Loopback[1] to be invaluable to capture output from the soundcard and add it as an audio track in the Screencast [1] https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/ https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/
silveira 11y ago
I have been using gtk-record-desktop for many years. You can install it on Ubuntu simply with a "sudo apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop".
hendry 11y ago
I used to use a ffmpeg approach to make my screencasts [1], but now I use OBS. Great piece of software. I wrote some notes about it some time back http://dabase.com/blog/Screencasting_from_Archlinux_gotchas/ http://dabase.com/blog/Screencasting_from_Archlinux_gotchas/ and I think they've addressed all my issues. I publish my screencasts upon http://www.youtube.com/kaihendry http://www.youtube.com/kaihendry [1]https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0 https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0
jwildeboer 11y ago
I just press Alt+Ctrl+Shift R ;-) "screencast tool Gnome3 has already a screen recording functionality. Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+R recording will start. There should be a red icon on the message tray in the right-bottom corner of your screen. If the message tray is hidden, Super+M will activate it. Pressing the red icon will stop the recording. The video is saved in the Video directory on your home directory on webm format."
riskable 11y ago
I personally prefer SimpleScreenRecorder: http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/ http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/ ...Because it lets me record audio using the Opus codec. I also edit the videos using kdenlive: https://kdenlive.org https://kdenlive.org It all works pretty well. You can see examples of the end result in my YouTube channel: https://YouTube.com/riskable https://YouTube.com/riskable (mostly videos of modded Minecraft tips and HOWTOs; all totally harmless and no foul language)
pjdorrell 11y ago
This might be a bit out of date (2013), but it's what worked for me at the time using a not particularly high-powered computer running Ubuntu: http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencastsInLinux.html http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencasts... (recommended software SimpleScreenRecorder).
stirner 11y ago
On Linux, the audio recording and video recording can be accomplished with a single command: ffmpeg -f x11grab -video_size [w]x[h] -r [framerate] -i $DISPLAY -f alsa -i default ... Like the author, I've found that the x264 codec with the ultrafast preset does the best job of avoiding framedrops (which from what I've observed can be caused by either the CPU spending too long encoding or the disk spending too long writing data).

84 points by edp 11y ago

I just use ShareX and enable sound recording in Task Settings -> Capture -> Screen recorder -> Screen recording options. Seems easier than downloading three separate pieces of software and recording each track individually then joining them...

edp 11y ago
Isn't ShareX windows only ? I tried to be platform agnostic in my post and I am using OSX myself.
- j_s 11y ago
  ShareX is a Windows GUI wrapper around ffmpeg (when recording video of the screen). I think it makes sense to mention even platform-specific tools that can make ffmpeg command line parameter incantation easier!

iKlsR 11y ago

Blender can be used to edit your video, add small effects, overlay text, add audio, subs. See my old answer here https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video-editor-for-windows-that-can-insert-images-or-audio-at-arbitrary-points/2009#2009 https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video-e...

baq 11y ago
i second that, blender is actually a very good solution. ...but if you have any experience at all with the adobe suite, you'll be very confused, so beware.

Akkuma 11y ago

You could use OBS, Open Broadcaster Software, which is open source that has features geared toward streaming, but could ultimately prove more valuable than "simple" screencasting software. For instance, want to show your code always even when you're googling answers? That is very easy in OBS.

DennisMoore 11y ago
I second OBS. It works great for capturing windows and screens. The only issue I had with it is that Windows Media Player won't play the "Advanced Video Codec" that it records with, so I had to run it through Handbrake.
- zokier 11y ago
  Advanced Video Codec, or AVC, is just another name for bog-standard H.264.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    I wonder if it's just the profile that WMP has problems with. I'd be interested in comparing the `mediainfo` output of both a Handbrake and a OBS encoded video - I suspect Handbrake is still extremely conservative with what it outputs (at the expense of a bit of quality)
- delgaudm 11y ago
  On the flip side, I found that OBS brought my -- admittedly older -- MPB to its knees such that the app I was trying to show wouldn't perform. Huge lengths of video were frozen. Same on an older first-gen i7 Windows machine. I never did figure it out.
  - Akkuma 11y ago
    This is probably a configuration issue, although OBS has more issues OS X for a variety of reasons. I've ran OBS on my 10 year old PC while coding without much issue.

ChrisDutrow 11y ago

For me, the cost of having to go through all those steps and learn all those tools is significantly higher than the $300 or so cost of buying Camtasia. For me, it's not just the time cost, but the energy and cognitive resources consumed by not paying for the easy solution. ...just offering an opposing perspective, I respect your approach.

narag 11y ago
OBS can't be simpler and works great.
- ChrisDutrow 11y ago
  Looks great, especially nice since I can put it on my linux machine which I prefer to use. How does it match up against Camtasia in terms of putting together a presentation? Like can you add text and fade in/out images on top of the video?

nakodari 11y ago

You can also use https://jumpshare.com https://jumpshare.com, which uses FFMPEG for screen recording. We built this app to help everyone be more productive. You can capture and annotate screenshots, record screencasts and audio clips, compose notes (in text, markdown, and code), and more.

reidrac 11y ago

If you're using Linux only like me, Kazam is unbeatable to capture your screen. I got similar results with ffmpeg, but Kazam is just dead easy to use. After that, in case you need some editing, I recommend Blender. It has a steep learning curve, but as long as you don't want to do really complex editing and your hardware is not too old, it is perfect and the results are great.

mikegioia 11y ago
This is really amazing, thanks for the recommendation. The fact that it can record not only my mic but my speakers is blowing my mind right now.
unicornporn 11y ago
Looks terrific, but also abandoned. Last stable update in late 2014.

0942v8653 11y ago

For some reason that OS X recording command line (pasted in directly) won't work for me. I'm using ffmpeg 3.0, the latest from Homebrew. It seems to be OK until I try to open it in QuickTime and it says the file is broken. I wonder if OS X 10.11 is the problem -- what version are you on?

edp 11y ago
It's because of the color profile used by avfoundation, quicktime requires a specific profile. You should be able to open the file with mpv/mplayerX or VLC. If you want to open it with quicktime or imovie, you need to reencode the file with a specific color space, more info on the ffmpeg wiki[0] (Using -pix_fmt yuv420p should be sufficient). Sadly, you cannot record directly in yuv420p with avfoundation. [0] https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#AppleQuicktime https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264#AppleQuicktime
- 0942v8653 11y ago
  Thanks a lot, that fixed it.

LargeCompanies 11y ago

Screenr.com used to be an amazing and awesome tool for cheap user testing/screen recording. I would embed their widget and then go to Mechancial Turk and pay each tester $1 to go through various steps they recorded using the Screenr widget. It worked like a charm and was inexpensive compared to say $50 a pop at usertesting.com. Does anyone know of any Screenr.com alternatives?

rahimnathwani 11y ago
It sounds like Inspectlet might do what you need. It records DOM changes and mouse movement, rather than video, but watching recorded sessions feels similar to watching video.
johnfran 11y ago
You might really enjoy ilos Videos. A lot of Screenr users switched over to them. Their tag line is "Ridiculously Simple Screen Recording"

delgaudm 11y ago

On OS X, Quicktime player can also record the screen, or part of the screen. File > New Screen Recording. AFAIK by default, it will only record the mic and not the audio card output. I don't know of a free option to do that (does ffmpeg?), but I've found Rogue Ameoba's Loopback[1] to be invaluable to capture output from the soundcard and add it as an audio track in the Screencast [1] https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/ https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/

silveira 11y ago

I have been using gtk-record-desktop for many years. You can install it on Ubuntu simply with a "sudo apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop".

hendry 11y ago

I used to use a ffmpeg approach to make my screencasts [1], but now I use OBS. Great piece of software. I wrote some notes about it some time back http://dabase.com/blog/Screencasting_from_Archlinux_gotchas/ http://dabase.com/blog/Screencasting_from_Archlinux_gotchas/ and I think they've addressed all my issues. I publish my screencasts upon http://www.youtube.com/kaihendry http://www.youtube.com/kaihendry [1]https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0 https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0

jwildeboer 11y ago

I just press Alt+Ctrl+Shift R ;-) "screencast tool Gnome3 has already a screen recording functionality. Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+R recording will start. There should be a red icon on the message tray in the right-bottom corner of your screen. If the message tray is hidden, Super+M will activate it. Pressing the red icon will stop the recording. The video is saved in the Video directory on your home directory on webm format."

riskable 11y ago

I personally prefer SimpleScreenRecorder: http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/ http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/ ...Because it lets me record audio using the Opus codec. I also edit the videos using kdenlive: https://kdenlive.org https://kdenlive.org It all works pretty well. You can see examples of the end result in my YouTube channel: https://YouTube.com/riskable https://YouTube.com/riskable (mostly videos of modded Minecraft tips and HOWTOs; all totally harmless and no foul language)

pjdorrell 11y ago

This might be a bit out of date (2013), but it's what worked for me at the time using a not particularly high-powered computer running Ubuntu: http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencastsInLinux.html http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencasts... (recommended software SimpleScreenRecorder).

stirner 11y ago

On Linux, the audio recording and video recording can be accomplished with a single command: ffmpeg -f x11grab -video_size [w]x[h] -r [framerate] -i $DISPLAY -f alsa -i default ... Like the author, I've found that the x264 codec with the ultrafast preset does the best job of avoiding framedrops (which from what I've observed can be caused by either the CPU spending too long encoding or the disk spending too long writing data).