Easy screen & game recording under Linux

[Julius]

Just came across this great tool to record videos under Linux:
http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/

My experience with capturing game videos in Linux has been really poor... but this one *just works*tm
Very high performance too, hardly noticed an impact on gaming when recording at 1366x768 on my 4 year old laptop.

[Akien]

Yeah it's really cool, I'm using it when recording OpenDungeons videos

[smcameron]

I gave it a shot.. failed to record audio, but otherwise seemed ok. Did slow my game down to less than 30fps (normally getting 30fps is no problem on this laptop).


youtu.be/luyRnrlw780

[Julius]

odd that the sound didn't work. Did you try another application? Sound from VLC for example recorded perfectly on my laptop with Kubuntu15.04

[qubodup]

Thanks for letting us know!

I made a short comparison between SimpleScreenRecorder (SSR)'s opengl recording vs. ffmpeg x11grab and glc-pulse. Plain `glc-capture -p` was used as well as capwin-pulse (ffmpeg) and glc2mp4 from https://github.com/qubodup/ogatools/ .

0. System

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

Distro        4.0.7-2-ARCH x86_64
Mainboard     FOXCONN A7GM-S 2.0
CPU           AMD Phenom(tm) 9550 Quad-Core Processor
              4 x 2200 MHz, 64-bit
RAM           7.8G
Video         Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
              Cape Verde PRO [Radeon HD 7750 / R7 250E]
OpenGL        4.4.13397 Core Profile Context 15.20.1013, GLSL 4.40
GCC           gcc (GCC) 5.1.0

Catalyst (proprietary) drivers. 2x 1080p screens connected, recorded on one 1080p screen at 1080p windowed mode without borders/window decoration (awesome wm).

1. Recording:
All methods had slightly noticeable framerate reduction during recording.
ffmpeg method causes audio output to become noisy for a minute or two, althought recorded audio in the video file is not affected.
SSR has the most complicated setup of the three but has better feedback as to whether it is recording or not. The step-by-step interface is somewhat weird (especially without tabs at the top).
Neither glc nor SSR (opengl) were able to record steam games (tested with Borderlands 2). Probably my fault.

2. Output:
ffmpeg: 594M .mkv
glc: 1.2G .glc file. Conversion via glc2mp4 (ffmpeg) created 29M .mp4 file
ssr: 45M .mkv

Frame rate:
ffmpeg: horrible https://youtu.be/YQPgCmsY8Vw
glc: good https://youtu.be/9ka7zq2-dGg
ssr: good https://youtu.be/8SIglMsAd2Y

GLC makes the video darker, which is why glc2mp4 manipulates the output gamma value. I didn't notice this with SSR or ffmpeg.

3. Consequences
I will continue using glc for 3D games (rare) and might try SSR again if I run into performance issues with some game or if there is new hope for Steam game recording or if I get tired of the glc2mp4 step duration.

Here's a video of SSR's UI:

youtu.be/PLq1gZmiE68

[Julius]

Awsome, can we make a blog post out of that?

I tried recording two steam games now (Nuclear Throne and Geometry Wars3) and both recorded perfectly fine. Maybe it is related to the less than perfect AMD drivers?

[Roots]

I've tried a few different solutions, and my preferred screen recorder is now Kazam.
https://launchpad.net/kazam

It's powerful and easy to use. The GUI is also very pleasing and intuitive. It does encoding on the fly as well, which I really love. You can easily set the capture frame rate and record the audio from the mic or speakers (both which you can disable).

For video editing, I use OpenShot. Like Kazam, it is powerful and easy to use. I love working with it.
http://www.openshot.org/

Here's a couple different videos that I created with these tools this year.

youtu.be/2EX9K1kCF0M


youtu.be/2Su31AWg3t4

[charlie]

I found Kazam to be the most straightforward solution. At the time Simple Screen Recorder did not work for me, but that was last year. Things may have changed since then.