#1 2020-04-07 14:56:34

ZurAz

Member

Registered: 2020-04-02

Posts: 5

VLC screen recording not working

Hi thank you everybody in advance for any help, I’m a newbie on Linux world and this excelect proposal of bunsnelabs is just amazing, I committed myself in promoting the use of Linux, the following is a detailed description on my installed OS and some of the hardware characteristics
that can help better understand if I have the right configuration or if I’m doing something wrong.

The problem I have is with the VLC screen recording tool, I’ve chosen different video codecs but it just doesn’t record the screen, what it does is just as if a screen shot is taken (with some codecs or video formats , others is just a black screen).

I used the Gtk Recordmydesktop but for this tool it takes a lot of time processing the video once is recorded.
Can someone help me about this issue, again, thank you.

VLC version is 3.0.8 Verinari

Kernel        : Linux 4.9.0-12-amd64 (x86_64)
Compiled    : #1 SMP Debian 4.9.210-1 (2020-01-20)
Distribution    : BunsenLabs GNU/Linux 9.8 (Helium)

-Processors-
Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D525   @ 1.80GHz        : 1795.38MHz

-Memory-
Total Memory        : 4040956 kB
Free Memory        : 298016 kB
MemAvailable        : 1042188 kB
Buffers        : 100404 kB
Cached        : 1083444 kB
Cached Swap        : 0 kB

-PCI Devices-
Host bridge        : Intel Corporation Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx DMI Bridge
VGA compatible controller        : Intel Corporation Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics Controller
Display controller        : Intel Corporation Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated

iMBeCil

WAAAT?

From: Edrychwch o'ch cwmpas

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 767

Re: VLC screen recording not working

^Here is a web page with lots of nice advises, notably one with 'cvlc' - a CLI version of VLC screen recorder. Perhaps, you should try this?

Furthermore, instead of VLC, you can use ffmpeg from CLI; the drawback is that you have to discover by yourself the screen capture coordinates (in pixels), but it is worth as there is no GUI, and it can record simultaneously both video and audio. More info about ffmpeg as a screen recorder.

Here is an example I use, for recording both video and audio, of particular part of my second screen:

$ ffmpeg -video_size 1918x930 -framerate 25 -f x11grab -i :0.0+2881,125 -f pulse -ac 2 -i default -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -preset ultrafast output.mp4

Please, see 'man ffmpeg' for particular option ... Notably, this command does not compress video (to be as fast as possible); I do transcoding to smaller files later, with

$ ffmpeg -i output.mp4 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -crf 0 output-smaller.webm
# or
$ ffmpeg -i output.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -preset veryslow output-smaller.mp4

(note: both are lossless compression).

As I understand, you don't want to do postprocessing i.e. transcoding (why?); in this case you have to adjust this part of the command:

-crf 0 -preset ultrafast   # change this

Again please see web page I have linked for ffmpeg, and 'man ffmpeg'.

I hope this helps.

---

Postpone all your duties; if you die, you won't have to do them ..

brontosaurusrex

Middle Office

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 2,464

Website

Re: VLC screen recording not working

Just a note: On really old/slow machines one can use faster codec like ffvhuff (and transcode in 2nd step if needed).

My old scripts (both ignore audio)
https://github.com/brontosaurusrex/buce … /screenrex (use x264)
https://github.com/brontosaurusrex/buce … eenrexHuff (use huffyuv)

ZurAz

Member

Registered: 2020-04-02

Posts: 5

Re: VLC screen recording not working

Very very useful, thank you very much!

twoion

-

Registered: 2015-08-10

Posts: 3,541

Re: VLC screen recording not working

Very very useful, thank you very much!

Instead of using VLC I would suggest to look into OBS https://obsproject.com/, it's a fully fledged streaming solution and it has many presets for capturing the screen, and audio, as well. It would be a way to get quick access to well tuned encoding presets.

ZurAz

Member

Registered: 2020-04-02

Posts: 5

Re: VLC screen recording not working

I'll try it when in my agenda there is some time available, thank you for the advice.

mguhlin

New Member

Registered: 2020-04-23

Posts: 1

Re: VLC screen recording not working

Definitely recommend OBS. It works great and makes it easy to record my screen/audio.

ZurAz

Member

Registered: 2020-04-02

Posts: 5

Re: VLC screen recording not working

Very very useful, thank you very much!

Instead of using VLC I would suggest to look into OBS https://obsproject.com/, it's a fully fledged streaming solution and it has many presets for capturing the screen, and audio, as well. It would be a way to get quick access to well tuned encoding presets.

Thank you, one of the requirements OBS official web describes is the OpenGL 3.3 or later but when I apply the command to know the supported version by Bunsenlabs it displays OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 13.0.6 so I'm confused, I think the 3.3 version is not supported.

ohnonot

...again

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 5,592

Re: VLC screen recording not working

Thank you, one of the requirements OBS official web describes is the OpenGL 3.3 or later but when I apply the command to know the supported version by Bunsenlabs it displays OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 13.0.6 so I'm confused, I think the 3.3 version is not supported.

That is graphics hardware and driver dependent.
I think there's a glxinfo command that will tell you which version your hardware/driver support.
The big question is whether it will also show you if a larger version of OpenGL would be suppported by the hardware but not by the current driver.