
Screencasting with free software - edp
http://edouard.peller.in/2016/03/12/screencasting-with-free-software.html
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Akkuma
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
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.

~~~
delgaudm
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
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.

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iKlsR
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-e...](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video-
editor-for-windows-that-can-insert-images-or-audio-at-arbitrary-
points/2009#2009)

~~~
baq
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.

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delgaudm
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/)

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reidrac
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
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.

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silveira
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".

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hendry
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)

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riskable
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)

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stirner
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).

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jwildeboer
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."

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chipperyman573
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...

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edp
Isn't ShareX windows only ? I tried to be platform agnostic in my post and I
am using OSX myself.

~~~
j_s
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!

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pjdorrell
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/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencasts...](http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencastsInLinux.html)
(recommended software SimpleScreenRecorder).

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nakodari
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.

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ChrisDutrow
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
OBS can't be simpler and works great.

~~~
ChrisDutrow
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?

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0942v8653
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
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
Thanks a lot, that fixed it.

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LargeCompanies
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
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.

