Comments on: HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 15:28:43 +0000

This sounds like a great idea. It could be a good way to add content for a video blog, or just a normal blog.

Thanks

/me goes to make some videos to post to his blog

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 16:34:17 +0000

No problem - I’m glad you liked it

And thanks for reminding me about your blog - you have some excellent content

By: Ken Baker

Ken Baker — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:48:24 +0000

Great article! I just installed Ubuntu 6.06 myself and would like to create videos for instructional purposes as part of my contribution to the Linux conspiracy. I’ll give this a try.

By: Ken Baker

Ken Baker — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:50:11 +0000

And I’ll be back on Ubuntu in about an hour.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 21:26:43 +0000

Once your videos are completed perhaps we can host them for you on our new site tuxvids.com for everyone to see? Just contact us. We can also link back to this article so that others who want to create videos of Linux can post their vids as well. Just use the contact form on the site get in touch.

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 21:32:57 +0000

Ken - You’re welcome! I’m glad it helps - although, I have to give credit to the great members at LQ for helping me out in the first place

Dennis - Sure. Thank you for letting us know! I was thinking of making a video of XGL in action.. But, my laptop isn’t good enough to handle XGL and the recording software at the same time

[edit] I almost forgot - if you’re using the vidtut.sh script with an older (or newer!) version of pyvnc2swf, you will need to edit it so that the version number matches that of your installed copy.

By: Karsten König

Karsten König — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 21:54:58 +0000

It’s propably a nice idea, but suggesting the use of swf under linux while there is no uptodate shockwaveplayer and a yet not so good working (*sniff*) open source alternative

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 22:00:28 +0000

I know - but it is one of the only working methods of making videos on Linux.

The Gnash project is improving, and I’m sure it will not be long before we have a FOSS Flash player. But, until then, we will have to stick with what is offered to us..

By: Jay MacDonald

Jay MacDonald — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 23:27:37 +0000

I’m trying this on Breezy and it crashes. When I just try the command to do the recording I get:

jay@cochrane:~$ python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N -S “arecord -c 2 -f cd -t wav voice.wav” localhost:0
Using pygame 1.6
open /dev/sequencer: No such file or directory
usage: vnc2swf.py [-d] [-n] [-o filename] [-t {shape|video|vnc}] [-e encoding] [-N] [-C clipping] [-r framerate] [-S subprocess] [-P pwdfile] [host[:display] [port]]
jay@cochrane:~$

Anyone know how to fix this?

Jay

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 23:35:18 +0000

Hi Jay - Try the following command instead (it doesn’t include the option for sound input, but is more compatible across distros):

x11vnc -localhost -viewonly -wait 10 -defer 10 & python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N -S localhost:0

I hope that works

By: Jay MacDonald

Jay MacDonald — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 23:49:14 +0000

I was able to make that work (note: remove the -S as well), however I do want to record sound for a demo.

Oddly enough when I just run “arecord -c 2 -f cd -t wav voice.wav” it records fine.

Is it a pygame setting or something?

Jay

By: Fadi

Fadi — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:49:09 +0000

great tutorial man!

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 01:28:26 +0000

Jay - It looks like it is a pygame setting, as it is trying to communicate with /dev/sequencer, which is not in the script.. So it must be a setting in pygame’s conf files. Have you tried ‘man pygame’ to see what comes up? There should be something there explaining what to do (or, something along the lines, at least). You could always add the sound later, by recording it separately (using arecord) and then adding it to the swf with a flash editor.
Let me know if you manage to fix it
Fadi - Thank you!

By: Jeff Cobb

Jeff Cobb — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 02:31:38 +0000

Istanbul recorder works as well (On Ubuntu look in the Add Remove Applications applet…I am making a movie of this posting as I write this..and as a bonus it saces the video as an ogg theora file, nice and Linux friendly (and no need for flash, a no-no under 64-bit anything)…just an idea….

Nice hack though, I do like the thought that went into it (nice thinking outside the box)…

By: Andrew Kornak

Andrew Kornak — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 07:43:39 +0000

Have you considered “wink”? I found this little tool when I needed to provide a tutorial. It works on
multiple platforms. I installed it on my Fedora desktop. Should work on any modern Linux with GTK 2.4 or
higher. It also creates “swf” files. Here’s the link:

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/download.php

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 09:17:48 +0000

And with all the searching I did on this, I didn’t find either of those two apps.. Heh!

Thank you both for letting me know about those - I have installed Istanbul via Synaptic, and it does exactly what I was trying to accomplish.. That serves me right for not searching the repositories either!

Nice hack though, I do like the thought that went into it (nice thinking outside the box)…

Thanks… This just emphasis how great FOSS is - there’s always a workaround, no matter how complex

By: mzilikazi

mzilikazi — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 13:19:15 +0000

Let’s also not forget Cinelerra. It can do screencaptures in MPEG or Quicktime and more.

http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

Forget the flash!

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 15:10:54 +0000

Ah well.. They say you learn something new every day, right?

By: Abe

Abe — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 17:34:37 +0000

This blog is for the birds. It doesn’t have any specifics or more details for variuos distros.

Has any one tried it on Kubuntu 6.06 LTS?

adept can’t find x11vnc, so I downloaded x11vnc-0.8.1. gcc was not installed, so I installed it.
When I run ./configure it give me the following error

#./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install… /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane… yes
checking for gawk… no
checking for mawk… mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)… no
checking for gcc… gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name… configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log’ for more details.

Since I am not a developer, so much for that.

This is such a hot application it should be robust and detailed enough for anyone to be able to installed and use it. Why isn’t????

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 21:12:21 +0000

Ubuntu variants are an exception to the rule - they do not bring gcc, gPP (replace ‘PP’ with two plus signs - Wordpress is removing them), make, and other tools necessary to build the packages. I haven’t provided specifics because you can’t possibly expect me to go through every single distro and describe how to use its package manager to download x11vnc. I think you’ll find that building and installing x11vnc on most other distros will work - as I said, Ubuntu and its variants are an exception because they do not bring the tools required to build packages out of the box.

Try ’sudo apt-get install gPP’ (remember to replace the ‘PP’), and then try compiling it. Make sure you ’sudo apt-get install make’ as well.

so much for that

I’m glad you’re so appreciative of my post and the help above….

This is such a hot application it should be robust and detailed enough for anyone to be able to installed and use it. Why isn’t????

Because, although this may be a ‘hot’ application, it is another FOSS application - some of them have great, extensive documentation, and others have barely any. To be honest, x11vnc is one of the apps which have pretty good documentation. If you don’t like its interface and how difficult it is to install, then perhaps you could learn the language it is coded in and help the developers to improve it?

By: Jeff Cobb

Jeff Cobb — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 03:50:01 +0000

J_K9; Relax there is a guy like this on every forum who thinks the world owers them something. As a matter of fairly ironic fact, he represents the polar opposite of the hacker “thinking outside the box” mindset I was referring to earlier; if *he* can’t figure it out, it *must* be defective…sigh.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 03:55:37 +0000

Cool, keep up the great work!

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 09:13:30 +0000

Jeff Cobb - Hi. Yes, I may have gone a little over the top.. I should be used to those kind of people by now. Oh well.. Letting off steam every once in a while can’t be bad for you Hehe..

Jeff - Thanks

By: Pavel Mlcoch

Pavel Mlcoch — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 10:33:46 +0000

I tried byzanz instead, and its very easy for use and install. Output is gif image.

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 11:10:17 +0000

Thanks for mentioning yet another app! Wow - I really need to improve my Googling skills

I’ve found that Istanbul Desktop Session Recorder is quite good, but slows down my laptop more than this method.. I’ll have to try the other ones as well to see how they compare

By: E@zyVG

E@zyVG — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 15:09:32 +0000

Cool one. I will give this a try.

By: rahl

rahl — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 16:51:36 +0000

Very cool. Will attempt to replicate (If possible)

By: fireedo

fireedo — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 17:32:45 +0000

hmm…i got this error :

Using pygame 1.7.1release
usage: vnc2swf.py [-d] [-n] [-o filename] [-t {shape|video|vnc}] [-e encoding] [-N] [-C clipping] [-r framerate] [-S subprocess] [-P pwdfile] [host[:display] [port]]
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Fabrice Bellard
configuration: –prefix=/usr –mandir=/usr/share/man –libdir=/usr/lib –enable-shared –enable-mp3lame –enable-libogg –enable-vorbis –enable-theora –enable-faad –enable-faac –enable-xvid –enable-x264 –enable-a52 –enable-pp –enable-gpl –enable-gprof –enable-amr_nb –enable-amr_wb
libavutil version: 49.0.0
libavcodec version: 51.9.0
libavformat version: 50.4.0
built on Jul 1 2006 11:34:46, gcc: 4.1.0 (SUSE Linux)
voice.wav: I/O error occured
Usually that means that input file is truncated and/or corrupted.
Using pygame 1.7.1release
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/hikmah/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py”, line 234, in ?
if __name__ == “__main__”: main(sys.argv[1:])
File “/home/hikmah/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py”, line 153, in main
fp = file(v, ‘rb’)
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ‘voice.mp3′
mv: cannot stat `/home/hikmah/tutorial1.swf’: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `/home/hikmah/voice.wav’: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `/home/hikmah/voice.mp3′: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `/home/hikmah/tutorial1.html’: No such file or directory

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 19:29:06 +0000

Eazy@VG and rahl - Thanks. I hope it works for both of you

fireedo - That’s quite odd… Try the following command (copy and paste it):

x11vnc -localhost -viewonly -wait 10 -defer 10 & python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N

Let me know if that works

By: Chad

Chad — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 20:48:54 +0000

sweet! can i use this in mac os x?

By: rohun’s blog » Blog Archive » Links for 7/02/06

rohun’s blog » Blog Archive » Links for 7/02/06 — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 21:05:54 +0000

[…] HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop - Great idea [via digg] […]

By: F. H.

F. H. — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 21:53:59 +0000

Thanks

By: knithx

knithx — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 22:22:27 +0000

Cool, very cool.

By: Leonardo

Leonardo — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 22:32:31 +0000

Hi,
Do you mind if i translate the article and publish it in my blog? Of course i would give the credit to you and link back to your blog; I would like to have this in Spanish, so others who dont speak English can have a look at it. Also i would adapt it to Arch Linux ( www.archlinux.org ) as that is the distribution i use.

Regards,
Leonardo

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 00:32:30 +0000

Chad - You can, but you would have to use a different VNC server for it (and thus the script would need to be modified to work). Any VNC server compatible with OS X will be fine.. Then, take a look at the current commands (either in the script or the single command in comment 29), and modify them to suit your VNC server. It *should* work - please let us know how it turns out.
Oh, and you will probably need to install Python on OS X

F.H. & knithx - Thanks! I’m glad you liked it

Leonardo - Claro que si! I’m bilingual Of course you may translate it.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 00:42:28 +0000

I’m quite doubtful that x11vnc will work properly with XGL due to the new rendering model. But I’d be pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong.

By: Rajiv Battula

Rajiv Battula — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 00:57:05 +0000

hey thanks man. This is a really easy setup, unlike the ones I’ve found around the web. Great Job!

By: Gargoyle99

Gargoyle99 — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 01:16:01 +0000

Robert,
x11vnc does work with XGL only not as smooth as one would hope

By: Savadeep Speaks! » So easy is it to make a Linux desktop video!

Savadeep Speaks! » So easy is it to make a Linux desktop video! — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 02:54:39 +0000

[…] It was until today that I was a man unaware of the ease at which a Flash video of a Linux desktop running X can be made! But fear not, I will tell you about the article I read that informed me of this task of ease. […]

By: jldugger

jldugger — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 04:16:59 +0000

Ironic that you haven’t made a recording of the steps you took to install and possibly run it

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 05:13:24 +0000

Ubuntu 6.0.6 base install, needed just a couple of tweaks to get this working:

1) sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

2) change double quotes in vidtut.sh to single quote..
From:
“arecord -c 2 -f cd -t wav voice.wav”
To:
‘arecord -c 2 -f cd -t wav voice.wav’

Pretty cool tool. Thanks.

By: eredicatorX

eredicatorX — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 06:01:46 +0000

Thanks man this looks like it will do the trick for what I need but I am havin a little problem.
FC4 uptodate w/ X11vnc from yum install….. probably my problem….
I tried the script and the code you posted for Eazy and rahl
x11vnc -localhost -viewonly -wait 10 -defer 10 & python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N

Both out put the same stuff it starts the X11 server and then

03/07/2006 14:59:10 Default visual ID: 0×23
03/07/2006 14:59:11 Read initial data from X display into framebuffer.
03/07/2006 14:59:11 X display :0.0 is 32bpp depth=24 true color

FrameBuffer Info:
width: 1280
height: 1024
scaled_width: 1280
scaled_height: 1024
indexed_color: 0
bits_per_pixel: 32
depth: 24
red_mask: 0×00ff0000 00000000111111110000000000000000
green_mask: 0×0000ff00 00000000000000001111111100000000
blue_mask: 0×000000ff 00000000000000000000000011111111
red: max: 255 shift: 16
green: max: 255 shift: 8
blue: max: 255 shift: 0
mainfb_bytes_per_line: 5120
rfb_fb_bytes_per_line: 5120
format: ZPixmap
byte_order: LSBFirst
bitmap_pad: 32
bitmap_unit: 32
bitmap_bit_order: LSBFirst
main_fb: 0xb7ab8008
rfb_fb: 0xb7ab8008

03/07/2006 14:59:11 setting up 32 cursors…
03/07/2006 14:59:11 done.
03/07/2006 14:59:11 Autoprobing TCP port
03/07/2006 14:59:11 Autoprobing selected port 5902
03/07/2006 14:59:11 created 40 tile_row shm polling images.
03/07/2006 14:59:11 fb read rate: 19 MB/sec
03/07/2006 14:59:11 screen setup finished.
03/07/2006 14:59:11
03/07/2006 14:59:11 WARNING: You are running x11vnc WITHOUT a password. See
03/07/2006 14:59:11 WARNING: the warning message printed above for more info.
03/07/2006 14:59:11
03/07/2006 14:59:11 The VNC desktop is localhost:2
PORT=5902

ps -ef | grep vnc shows this…
erin 26899 1 0 14:59 pts/14 00:00:00 x11vnc -localhost -viewonly -wait 10 -defer 10

and I can telnet to 5902 and get a little output so I know it is running but I never get teh graphic to start the recording???
can I issue a command to make it happen? or is there a typical reason that the small GUI doesnt pop up?　

Thanks
E./

By: fireedo

fireedo — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 06:18:50 +0000

x11vnc -localhost -viewonly -wait 10 -defer 10 & python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N

The only word that I can say is WOW!!!……..it’s now work…..thanx a lot and this is really nice and great job…..well done

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 06:50:27 +0000

Nice tutorial!

By: Matt Farley

Matt Farley — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 07:08:46 +0000

You can also host your .swf videos for free on our site: http://www.eefoof.com/ Free hosting for flash, videos, images, etc. And we share ad revenue with uploaders.

By: xaez

xaez — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 07:43:54 +0000

Awesome, thanks!

By: Gerald Cortez

Gerald Cortez — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 07:51:33 +0000

Nice article.. I submitted this to Digg.com..

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 08:22:05 +0000

Robert - What Gargoyle99 said. It works, but it was quite choppy when I tried it on my laptop - I’ll try it on my desktop at home and see what happens
Rajiv Battula - Thanks! Glad it helped
jldugger - I would have made a video of this.. But, my laptop isn’t powerful enough to make it as smooth as I would have liked. Hehe..

Doug - Thank you for the tweaks! I was wondering what was wrong I’ll add them in as soon as possible - thanks.

eredicatorX - Hi. This may sound stupid, but are you sure you’ve extracted pyvnc2swf and placed it in your home directory? Please show the full output (’./vidtut.sh > output’ will do it), because what you’ve posted looks like what we get when it works
fireedo, Jon and xaez - Thanks for the kind compliments.

Matt Farley - Thanks for posting about eefoof.. I’ll try to help spread the word!

And, finally, thanks Gerald - it looks like it got onto the front page

Now that I’ve caught up with everyone’s comments… I’m going back to sleep

By: DJM.

DJM. — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 08:28:22 +0000

I notice there is a typo …

In the script as shown in the article we have this line:

python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N -S “arecord -c 2 -f cd -t wav voice.wav” localhost:0

==> doesn’t work. The two quotation marks don’t seem right.

But when I replaced the quotation marks ( ” ) with simple hyphens ( ‘ ) it seemed to work:

python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N -S ‘arecord -c 2 -f cd -t wav voice.wav’ localhost:0

Regards,

DJM.

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 08:32:36 +0000

Thanks DJM. - Doug also mentioned that, and I have just changed it

By: James Hall

James Hall — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 08:49:20 +0000

Nice

By: Herd

Herd — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 09:17:46 +0000

Hi!

By: eredicatorX

eredicatorX — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:20:30 +0000

“eredicatorX - Hi. This may sound stupid, but are you sure you’ve extracted pyvnc2swf and placed it in your home directory? Please show the full output (’./vidtut.sh > output’ will do it), because what you’ve posted looks like what we get when it works”

Yep did this tar -xvzf downloads/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2.tar.gz while in my home dir and it created this folder…. pyvnc2swf-0.8.2

Yep cept the line at the top I got that said I needed to install pygame and tkinter …. well not install just it could not find them. I installed them and then I got this

built on Apr 1 2006 03:02:33, gcc: 4.0.2 20051125 (Red Hat 4.0.2-8)
voice.wav: I/O error occured
Usually that means that input file is truncated and/or corrupted.
Using pygame 1.7.1release
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/erin/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py”, line 234, in ?
if __name__ == “__main__”: main(sys.argv[1:])
File “/home/erin/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py”, line 153, in main
fp = file(v, ‘rb’)
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ‘voice.mp3′
mv: cannot stat `/home/erin/tutorial1.swf’: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `/home/erin/voice.wav’: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `/home/erin/voice.mp3′: No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `/home/erin/tutorial1.html’: No such file or directory

When I run the one liner of code you gave the program opened but …. it opens now and I can use the program…

Thanks this is going to be very helpfull.
Regards,
E./

By: web design uk

web design uk — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:41:08 +0000

I’ve always wondered how they do this.

Thanks a lot

By: ppma

ppma — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 11:33:11 +0000

Nice, thanks a lot, I was looking for something like Camtasia for Linux for making video tutorials.
^_^

By: El Weblog de macada » Archivio » Graba videos de tu escritorio en flash!!

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 12:35:49 +0000

[…] Save this script as ‘vidtut.sh‘ in your home directory. Not only will this script record a video of your desktop, it will also record any input via a microphone and add it as sound to the resulting flash file. If you don’t want it to record audio input, simply mute MIC input in your sound manager - alternatively, you can use the command I’ve mentioned in comment #29 beneath this post. […]

By: HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop at LifeParticles.com

HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop at LifeParticles.com — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 12:46:56 +0000

By: HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop - TechEnclave

HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop - TechEnclave — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 14:10:14 +0000

[…] Have you ever wanted to take a video of your sleek desktop, with your customised icons, window manager, GKrellM, and whatnot? Or make a video of cool XGL effects? Or a video tutorial to teach a few friends how to use a certain application? If you have, then this tutorial is for you. Because Linux does not have a native screen recording application (well, it has xvidcap, but that can be difficult to set up), we have to use a workaround - namely using VNC to transmit the data of our X server to ourselves. I won�t bore you with the gory details, as there are many other sites which can do this for me - and they�re only a Google search away. This method will create a Flash video of your desktop, which you can then edit to your liking. What will I need for this?Not much (but don�t download any of the extra apps yet):A Linux distribution, with an X server. I am using Ubuntu 6.06 TLS in this example;The latest version of x11vnc;The latest version of pyvnc2swf (the Python version). If you have Ubuntu or another distro with fairly large repositories, installing x11vnc is a breeze. All I had to do to install it was: $ sudo apt-get install x11vnc If the above command (or the one for your distro) worked, and x11vnc is now installed, please continue to the next step: Extract pyvnc2swf - if not, carry on reading. It looks like you will need to build x11vnc from source, as your distro does not have it in its repositories. First of all, download the latest version of it. Then, extract it using the following command: $ tar xzf x11vnc-versionnumber.tar.gz Now, let�s install it. $ cd x11vnc-versionnumber/ $ ./configure $ make $ make install You�re done! For the detailed guide visit : HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop at J_K9 @ Linux […]

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 15:34:09 +0000

eredicatorX - “When I run the one liner of code you gave the program opened but …. it opens now and I can use the program…”

So you got it working then? Glad to hear it

By: BR-Linux.org

BR-Linux.org — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 17:31:47 +0000

Como gravar um vídeo em flash do seu desktop

Se você já teve interesse de gravar um vídeo demonstrando algum aspecto do seu desktop ou mesmo um tutorial em vídeo de algum aplicativo, veja este interessante artigo explicando como gravar um vídeo em flash do seu desktop Linux, usando o VNC e um

By: DJM

DJM — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 17:57:12 +0000

Something else I noticed … And it’s a potential security hole, IMHO.

Your script leaves the “x11vnc” running after the recording is done. And in my case on SuSE 10.0 “x11vnc” complains about there being no password set (which happens to be true in my case …).

In other words:

After recording is done that “x11vnc” process which is still running could invite potential local attackers (other users on the same machine) to try out a VNC connection onto your session … Look mum, no password!

The parameter “-localhost” does limit such connection attempts to local users, but still this is no real safety. IP addresses can be faked and other local users could do a lot of BS to your desktop while you are away …

Probably it would be a good idea to change above script so that “x11vnc” forces the user to specify and use a password before recording can be started, e.g. use the “-passwdfile” parameter somehow.

I in my case added this line at the end of the “vidtut.sh” script:

kill `pidof x11vnc`

(these are forward hyphens … you will find this above the “TAB” key on US keyboards)

The “pidof” program checks the Process-ID (PID) of “x11vnc” and returns a number, this number is then handed over to the “kill” program as argument. Result: Any running instance of “x11vnc” that belongs to you is being killed at the end of the script. Another way to do this would be the “killall” program, e.g. “killall x11vnc” …

Just to make sure nobody messes with my desktop while I am away ….

Regards,

DJM. / Switzerland, Europe

By: Bian

Bian — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 19:06:09 +0000

Very Very Cool!

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 19:29:03 +0000

Hi DJM,

“Your script leaves the “x11vnc” running after the recording is done.”

I hadn’t realised… I thought it was killed once the recording was over. I should check things like that before I post..

“The parameter “-localhost” does limit such connection attempts to local users, but still this is no real safety. IP addresses can be faked and other local users could do a lot of BS to your desktop while you are away …”

IP addresses can be faked, but the average hacker would not do any damage by making the source address 127.0.0.1. And, if locking the screen with a password is not an option, or some other method of physical security (like locking the door to the room containing the PC), then you really need to rethink your physical security strategy. If a hacker has physical access to your computer, you have better things to worry about than an unpassworded VNC server running but only accepting connections from localhost
However, I see your point, and that is a good idea. I’ll test it out and add it to the tut Thanks.

By: DJM

DJM — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 19:48:47 +0000

> If a hacker has physical access to your computer
> you have better things to worry about than an unpassworded VNC server
> running but only accepting connections from localhost

Never underestimate the average BOFH who is hiding amongst your coworkers and oh-so-beloved “colleagues” and “friends” at your workplace and elsewhere

At my workplace we have plenty of Linux and Unix workstations and servers, and often enough plenty of people know several user account and their passwords on several machines. Usually this is no problem … But leaving an open VNC session which is connected to your desktop is an open invitation for some BOFH action

One of my “n00b” coworkers once left his desk, leaving his brand-new KDE desktop unprotected and unlocked. What we did: We took a screenshot of his desktop, then moved all the *.desktop files and icons away, we removed all KDE panels, we removed the taskbar and all the other stuff, and then replaced the wallpaper with the screenshot we had taken before. It was all just a matter of a few seconds to do that.

When he came back he wondered why oh why KDE “would not react” anymore … He didn’t realize that he was clicking on a screenshot all the time and that the icons were “dead” simply because they weren’t there anymore in the first place

After 50 or so reboots (bad bad Windows habits … A reboot doesn’t solve anything on Linux! He should have taken a look at his ~/.kde config files …) we told him to check is wallpaper …

What did he learn? He changes his password every 2 days or so and *NEVER* *EVER* leaves an open login or X11 session anywhere when he goes away.

Mission accomplished

DJM. / Switzerland, Europe

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 20:21:36 +0000

Very nice. This will come in handy when recording some video of my OpenGL applications for class.

Thanks.

By: JP

JP — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 21:15:40 +0000

Great tutorial, my only concern is how to change to lower the screen resolution in x11vnc, my output swf gets really slow…

By: المعرفة للجميع » Record Videos Of Your Desktop

المعرفة للجميع » Record Videos Of Your Desktop — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 22:10:16 +0000

[…] Complete Story […]

By: DJM

DJM — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 22:11:46 +0000

Using different screen resolutions without messing up your X11 config:

You don’t have to use “x11vnc” if you don’t want to … I mean, you can just as well use a “real” VNC session running locally on your machine somehow somewhere.

Let’s assume you have the package “tightvnc” on your machine (other packages such as “realvnc” should work in a similar way):

First, define your VNC password via the “vncpasswd” command.

Now there should be a new folder in your home directory: ~/.vnc
Let’s go in there: “cd .vnc”

Do a “ls -al” and check what files you got there. There should be a file named “xstartup”. Mine looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
# xsetroot -solid grey
# xterm -geometry 80×24+10+10 -ls -title “$VNCDESKTOP Desktop” &
# twm &
wmaker &
# xfwm4 &
# openbox &
# blackbox &

As you can tell this script would launch the “WindowMaker” environment; but other environments are available as well, I just need to add / replace the “#” comments.

So, now: When I launch VNC I can specify the size of the screen I want:

vncserver -depth 16 -geometry 800×600

Above command would give me a virtual X11 session with a 800×600 resolution, and due to my settings in “~/.vnc/xstartup” (see above) I’d have “WindowMaker” as my GUI environment, and not KDE or GNOME (you can specify this as you wish, just comment / uncomment the appropriate lines above). The resolution can be randomly picked, e.g. you could also specify unusual stuff such as “960×500″ … whatever size you need or want.

Now, as for recording videos: All that is needed is a slight variation to the original script that was posted here. Let’s call it “vidtut_vnc1.sh”:

#!/bin/sh
#

python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N -S “arecord -c 2 -f cd -t wav voice.wav” localhost:1

ffmpeg -i voice.wav -ar 22050 voice.mp3
python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py -o tutorial1.swf -a voice.mp3 tutorial.swf
mv ~/tutorial1.swf ~/tutorial.swf
rm ~/voice.wav
rm ~/voice.mp3
rm ~/tutorial1.html

So instead of connecting to your real X11 session the script above will connect to the virtual desktop “localhost:1″. Voice recording is still done locally, as the sound device is independent of the GUI.

So, let’s put it all together:

- you login to your real X11 session, e.g. KDE
- you open a terminal
- you type this command and specify a password: “vncpasswd”
- you launch VNC: “vncserver :1 -depth 16 -geometry 800×600″
- you connect to that virtual desktop: “vncviewer localhost:1″
- in that virtual environment, you open another terminal
- now launch the variation of the original script: “vidtut_vnc1.sh” (as listed above)

==> Voila, you are recording in a smaller / different desktop environment, whatever you specified as “-geometry” for the “vncserver” command. And you didn’t have to mess with your real X11 configuration files.

PS: As you can tell I *LOVE* this stuff and I’ve been playing around with it quite a lot

Regards,

DJM.

By: Like Your Work » Blog Archive » links for 2006-07-04

Like Your Work » Blog Archive » links for 2006-07-04 — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 00:24:31 +0000

[…] HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop at J_K9 @ Linux (tags: screencasting screencast ubuntu) […]

By: sks78

sks78 — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 00:54:13 +0000

Good tutorial. Wilh all of the others referenced, maybe you should consider reviewing them all?

By: beligum

beligum — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 10:01:52 +0000

You may want you check out ScreenKast at http://sourceforge.net/projects/screenkast
It’s brand new and is the first real screen capturing program for GNU/Linux.
Moreover, you can use it to share your captured tutorials on http://captorials.com

By: Sidnak » Blog Archive » Record Videos Of You Linux Desktop

Sidnak » Blog Archive » Record Videos Of You Linux Desktop — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 14:09:48 +0000

[…] JK_9 Linux site walks you through the steps using Ubuntu. […]

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 22:28:52 +0000

Great tutorial, easy to follow. Definatly a good way to record videos. The comments are also a good read for additional tips and tricks.

By: Hannes

Hannes — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 08:02:19 +0000

Hi
I am using your solution and it is workung fine. I would like to translate it to german and post it on my webite with credits and link to you and this site. Do you mind offering a german version?
Many Thanks Hannes

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:36:51 +0000

Hannes - Go ahead!

By: ulefr01

ulefr01 — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 14:31:45 +0000

I get :
ulefr01@franz4-ubuntu:~$ ./vidtut.sh
###############################################################
#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@#
#@ @#
#@ ** WARNING ** WARNING ** WARNING ** WARNING ** @#
#@ @#
#@ YOU ARE RUNNING X11VNC WITHOUT A PASSWORD!! @#
#@ @#
#@ This means anyone with network access to this computer @#
#@ will be able to easily view and control your desktop. @#
#@ @#
#@ >>> If you did not mean to do this Press CTRL-C now!! #0.0
Press [q] to stop encoding
size= 68kB time=8.7 bitrate= 64.0kbits/s
video:0kB audio:68kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.000000%
Using PIL 1.1.5
Reading mp3 file: voice.mp3…
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/ulefr01/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py”, line 234, in ?
if __name__ == “__main__”: main(sys.argv[1:])
File “/home/ulefr01/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py”, line 155, in main
info.reg_mp3blocks(fp)
File “/home/ulefr01/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/movie.py”, line 106, in reg_mp3blocks
MP3Reader(self.mp3).read_mp3file(fp, length, nsamples, seeksamples)
File “/home/ulefr01/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/mp3.py”, line 174, in read_mp3file
assert (h & 0×00060000L) == 0×00020000L, ‘!Layer3′
AssertionError: !Layer3

By: ulefr01

ulefr01 — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 14:37:26 +0000

redone , because it was incomplete
ulefr01@franz4-ubuntu:~$ ./vidtut.sh
###############################################################
#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@#
#@ @#
#@ ** WARNING ** WARNING ** WARNING ** WARNING ** @#
#@ @#
#@ YOU ARE RUNNING X11VNC WITHOUT A PASSWORD!! @#
#@ @#
#@ This means anyone with network access to this computer @#
#@ will be able to easily view and control your desktop. @#
#@ @#
#@ >>> If you did not mean to do this Press CTRL-C now!! #0.0
Press [q] to stop encoding
size= 68kB time=8.7 bitrate= 64.0kbits/s
video:0kB audio:68kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.000000%
Using PIL 1.1.5
Reading mp3 file: voice.mp3…
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/ulefr01/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py”, line 234, in ?
if __name__ == “__main__”: main(sys.argv[1:])
File “/home/ulefr01/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py”, line 155, in main
info.reg_mp3blocks(fp)
File “/home/ulefr01/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/movie.py”, line 106, in reg_mp3blocks
MP3Reader(self.mp3).read_mp3file(fp, length, nsamples, seeksamples)
File “/home/ulefr01/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/mp3.py”, line 174, in read_mp3file
assert (h & 0×00060000L) == 0×00020000L, ‘!Layer3′
AssertionError: !Layer3

By: Lucas

Lucas — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:56:09 +0000

Hey folks!
Use the easy one : Istanbul. It rocks!

By: kubunter

kubunter — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 07:54:15 +0000

There is NO reliable and easy way to record your desktop in Linux today… or at least in (k)ubuntu. (or maybe there is but I don’t find it)

1) xvidcap crashed on me all the time and creates video that can’t be viewed in Windows without extra codecs. Plus video speed is crapy, going too fast with some settings and loosing frames. Sound does not work properly, at least in KDE with arts.

2) istanbul has the right type of GUI but generates yellow mouse cursor rubbish and poor image quality. Plus video speed is also crapy, going too fast and loosing frames.

3) screenkast is way to complex and requires yoy to install an vncserver, even if you don’t want to export your desktop. Way too complex GUI and no sound support.

4) This pyvnc2swf is ok for web presentations, but using a SWF out put format? I want to have a mpeg (divx mp4a or somthing I can change with ffmpeg).

Is there a way not to depend on windows (not even in ‘postproduction’) to grab some screen activity to a simple video (not flash) file?

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 01:33:59 +0000

Have you tried Cinelerra? Apparently that records to .mov and MPEG formats, and more. If not, try one of the other ones mentioned here which record to a format editable in a Linux video editor.

By: kubunter

kubunter — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 12:35:21 +0000

I did try cinelarra… but did not want to compile under my kubuntu installation (I mean configure was ok, but the compilation end up in error half way)

I am using a patched version of ffmpeg, I found instructions here:
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/06/

I found a deb package, but now I only find how to generate it:
http://www.howforge.com/rebuilding-ffmpeg-to-create-screencast-in-ubuntu

By: aj

aj — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:52:52 +0000

for some reason, my swf comes out REALLY choppy, as in its missing alot of frames. I followed the instructions verbatim and ran the script and didn’t get the GUI box that I’m supposed to. Instead, I ran this:

x11vnc -localhost -viewonly -wait 10 -defer 10 & python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N

And got the GUI and it created the tutorial.swf and tutorial.html but it comes out really choppy. Can anyone put the finger on what I’m doing wrong? Thanks in advance

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 23:45:09 +0000

How powerful is the machine you are doing this on? It could be quite choppy if you’re using a laptop or desktop which isn’t very powerful. That could be the cause of the choppiness

By: aj

aj — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:50:50 +0000

J_K9 - i have an amd 3400 (3.0 ghz) with 1gb ram and a 7200rpm harddrive. its not the hardware. i also have the latest kernel (2.6.18).

By: J_K9

J_K9 — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 13:42:00 +0000

aj - Hmm… Could it be the latest kernel that has caused a problem? I don’t know. Try removing x11vnc completely and reinstalling it. I’m really not sure what it is - sorry
Try one of the other players that have been mentioned, and please let us know whether the choppiness persists there or not

By: David’s Blog » cool piece of software

David’s Blog » cool piece of software — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 00:14:12 +0000

[…] http://wolphination.com/linux/2006/06/30/how-to-record-videos-of-your-desktop/ […]

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 06:17:07 +0000

I have the same problem with the choppy record on my HP ZD8060US.

Im running OpenSuSE 10.1 fully updated w/ xgl/compiz & gnome

Laptop:

P4 3.2ghz
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 @ 400mhz
ATI Mobility Radeon X600 PCI Express

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 18:07:49 +0000

FYI, it looks like the Assertion Error on mp3.py line 174 if from a version of ffmpeg compiled without –enable-lameMP3 support.

In other words, the wav to mp3 conversion is probably not really working. Test my playing the mp3 file with mplayer and look at what comes after “Selected audio codec:”. it should be [mad] and not [raw].

Atleast that is what I found. So, if you have another way to convert the wav file to mp3 format, use that instead of ffmeg or build ffmpeg with the mp3 support.

By: Ed

Ed — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:01:30 +0000

Plain beautiful. Simple and very useful.

By: Linux Unix » HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop

Linux Unix » HOW TO: Record Videos Of Your Desktop — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:45:34 +0000

By: Aubrey Island

Aubrey Island — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 23:18:45 +0000

I am using a site (DivvyThis.com) and am going to making tutorals on Ubuntu for my site. Just so everyone knows, I’m using dapper.

I changed the ”’s on “arecord…” and got this to work…. Just so you know! On Dapper btw.

#!/bin/sh
#
x11vnc -localhost -viewonly -wait 10 -defer 10 &
python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/vnc2swf.py -o tutorial.swf -N -S ‘arecord -c 2 -f cd -t wav voice.wav’ localhost:0
ffmpeg -i voice.wav -ar 22050 voice.mp3
python ~/pyvnc2swf-0.8.2/edit.py -o tutorial1.swf -a voice.mp3 tutorial.swf
mv ~/tutorial1.swf ~/tutorial.swf
rm ~/voice.wav
rm ~/voice.mp3
rm ~/tutorial1.html