Recording desktop session

In preparation for a presentation for an OSS Seminar at CIAST this 25 Feb, a demo of the desktop is required. KUbuntu comes with several desktop recording packages.

• istanbul
• ffmpeg
• KRecordmyDesktop
  

KRecordmyDesktop
KRecordmyDesktop is a KDE application to record desktop session. Command to install is

sudo apt-get install krecordmydesktop recordmydesktop

Then run the program from a terminal (CLI).

$ krecordmydesktop

At the panel, right click the KrecordmyDesktop and start recording. This will save the session as an .ogg file. Most Linux movie players can use the .ogg file.

I found that the KRecordmyDesktop did not have any delay to start/end recording. This resulted in having to use the recordmydesktop program directly.

The recordmydesktop
This is a program that can record a desktop and save it on the fly OR when the recording ends. Frontends to this is the KRecordmyDesktop and grecorgmydesktop.

Recording can be done at the command line which saves to the file out.ogv by default;

recordmydesktop --no-sound -delay 3 -o filename

The default control keys during a record session:

1. Pause / Resume recording - Ctrl+Alt+p
2. Stop recording - Ctrl+alt+s

More details can be found at recordmydesktop.

Viewing in AVI
To convert the .ogg to .avi install ffmpeg or mencoder. The tools are run at a terminal to convert the .ogg file.

The ffmpeg

Step 1: Install the program. Include the dependency files of libavdevice52 libimlib2.

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

Step 2: Start the converter. The -target, -r and -s is optional.

ffmpeg -i kdesession.ogg -target vcd -s vga -r 52 kdesession3.avi

The mencoder
Alternative encoder is mencoder (used with mplayer).

Step 1: Install mencoder.

sudo apt-get install mencoder

Step 2: Convert the .ogg file to .avi with no sound effects.

mencoder kdesession.ogg -ovc lavc -nosound -o kdesession3.avi

There are lots of configuration options in ffmpeg and mencoder from the help files.