
Show HN: Gifcap, a browser based client-side GIF screen recording tool - joaomoreno
https://gifcap.dev/
======
joaomoreno
Author here. Added some cool features like trimming and cropping, to make it
easier for you to nail on the particular area of your screen and keep the
recording to a minimum. Let me know what you think!

~~~
faitswulff
Hi, macOS / Firefox 74.0 user here. It will ask for permission and then fail
with this message:

    
    
        MediaStreamError { name: "NotFoundError", message: "The object can not be found here.", constraint: "", stack: "" }
        main.js:116:15
            oncreate https://gifcap.dev/main.js:116
    

[https://imgur.com/a/2pIsGto](https://imgur.com/a/2pIsGto)

~~~
faitswulff
I just figured it out. I have to go to macOS system preferences -> Security &
Privacy and permit Firefox to record the desktop. The OS-level permission
popup didn't open in focus for me.

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Klathmon
This is really cool!

I love how simple and straightforward the UX is. It was instantly obvious how
to use it, and it worked quickly and perfectly without any
modals/banners/ads/whatever.

I think a single sentence somewhere on the page after you stop the recording
telling you that you can crop by clicking and dragging, and you can trim by
moving the little time markers might help with discovery.

I didn't realize you could do either of those things until I read your comment
here.

~~~
joaomoreno
Thanks, great feedback! Created
[https://github.com/joaomoreno/gifcap/issues/9](https://github.com/joaomoreno/gifcap/issues/9)

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oefrha
I really loathe GIF for screen recordings: they are huge, they look terrible
due to the 8-bit color pallet and low frame rate (in a desperate attempt to
make them less huge), encoding is slow (in my experience at least, probably no
hwenc available?) and they are expensive to render. There’s hardly any reason
to use GIF when you can use a video instead — Imgur did exactly that with
their GIFV which is just an H.264 video IIRC.

Unfortunately there are still many places where only images are allowed (e,g,
GitHub README). HEIF is supposed to solve this problem but support is
apparently abysmal.[1]

Anyone aware of any progress on a replacement of GIF?

[1] [https://caniuse.com/#feat=heif](https://caniuse.com/#feat=heif)

~~~
greggman3
I find this particularly annoying. Back in the early 2000s I wrote some small
app to generate static webpages for photo collections to be put on CD because
OSes couldn't browse jpgs natively but browsers could. Now the problem has
gone the other way, my iPhone and Android save HEIF but I can't use those on
the web. I have to first go through a manual conversion process. It's like my
computers have regressed 20 years.

~~~
jacobush
GIFs are the new VHS - bad quality, bulky, slow - but truly ubiquitous.

~~~
jacobush
... and maybe a certain charm. My VHS collection implies there must be some
charm to VHS - and a grainy meme clip with 100% guarantee of no sound has a
certain charm too.

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greatgib
Very nice tool, but it would be great to be able to control the framerate, or
the speed, or the number of frame. Because in my case, when I test, the gif is
way too fast. It would be nice that it goes at least at the same speed as the
real user. Thanks

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capableweb
Neat idea but it doesn't work for me. Not sure if it's because of my browsers
(Brave Browser) or my operating system (Arch Linux) or because of my window
manager (AwesomeWM). No matter if I select record entire window or one window,
I end up with a GIF that has the right duration but it's only black.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Probably hardware vs software screen buffer issue.

~~~
capableweb
Other applications work (at least recordmydesktop, maim and screensharing in
zoom). Also tried running compton which used to fix screensharing in zoom
before Zoom solved it built-in.

Any ideas how I can troubleshoot this "hardware vs software screen buffer
issue" so we could track down the issue?

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ionwake
This is good please set frame rate choice also add webm if you can

~~~
rkeene2
I agree a video codec would be much better -- curious as to why animated gif
was chosen in the first place ?

~~~
Insanity
Because they are everywhere and lots of people still use them. Or that would
be my guess anyway, I'm not the author.

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zalo
Nice UI; I really like the timeline view!

I would highly recommend adding .webm export (since Browser-based .webm
encoding strongly correlates with the ScreenCapture API). If you'd like an
example, you can reference my take on this:
[https://gifcorder.com/](https://gifcorder.com/)

There's also an Emscripten implementation of Gifsicle which you can use to
reduce the size of the .gif (at the cost of color depth and encoding time).

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justusthane
This is awesome, thanks! I was looking for something like this just yesterday.

That said, the GIFs it outputs seem pretty huge in filesize. Have you
considered other output formats?

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h43z
Shameless plug. I did something similar.
[https://screenrecord.43z.one](https://screenrecord.43z.one) (no gif
conversion though) but additionally it allows you to share you desktop
recording via webrtc if you want.

I tried to keep the UI as simple and friendly as possible.

~~~
animalnewbie
Its not shameless, it's webm and hence smaller. Great.

EDIT: Any way to record the mouse cursor?

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renke1
Very cool. Is there some kind of library so one can integrate this into one's
own application easily?

Also, slightly related, Google Mail (and probably other products) has a
"Report issue" feature, where I can take a screenshot of the current tab (and
even crop it), is that in any way related (technology-wise)?

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axtg
Pretty cool Joao, works fluent! Now for instruction videos where e.g. typing
is involved, I'll prefer ScreenToGif still (e.g. because of frame speed and
export options (webm, mp4), but if it's to record a video on screen or
something quick, this works just as easy, if not easier.

~~~
XCSme
I think webm and mp4 support can be easily added to this tool, I submitted a
feature request:
[https://github.com/joaomoreno/gifcap/issues/8](https://github.com/joaomoreno/gifcap/issues/8)

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davidcollantes
Safari is a modern browser, but this doesn't work on it. Perhaps changing the
description to the specific browsers supported(Chrome, Firefox, etc.) would be
best?

ADDENDUM: Thought that maybe just detecting the browser is best, showing a
notice that the tool doesn't work with it.

~~~
mcny
Maybe Safari is no longer a modern browser.

~~~
samstave
I loathe safari. I use Brave and only switch to FF when something doesn’t work
in brave.

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duxup
I seriously just was thinking I needed this to send some customer's some demos
/ examples of changes I'd made to web apps and etc... this is great.

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XCSme
That's neat!

I also didn't know about the cropping feature until I read other comments, I
thought it didn't support cropping.

~~~
XCSme
I submitted a feature request to convert output to mp4 instead of gif:
[https://github.com/joaomoreno/gifcap/issues/8](https://github.com/joaomoreno/gifcap/issues/8)

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VadimPR
This is great! Thanks a lot.

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kickthellama
licecap?

[https://www.cockos.com/licecap/](https://www.cockos.com/licecap/)

Been around for about 10 years, from the guy who created Winamp.

~~~
dominotw
thats not browser based

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animalnewbie
I know it's not really "amazing" because lots of software allow you to record
screen but it's great that you made it too damn simple. That said, a
suggestion to consider webm because 5.6mb for 7secs isn't probably
justifiable.

side note: if you're on windows, win+g is a great new tool for the same.

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LockAndLol
It's a GIF. Hence the name Gifcap...

~~~
animalnewbie
Thanks, that solves the size problem for me!

~~~
LockAndLol
You're welcome, maybe you won't demand features from a tool that's obviously
not made for your needs. Hell, maybe you'll consider forking the project,
renaming it and implementing the feature you seek instead of being passive-
aggressive.

