{"id":12811,"date":"2019-03-28T21:47:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T21:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/?p=12811"},"modified":"2019-03-28T21:47:44","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T21:47:44","slug":"how-to-record-your-desktop-video-and-audio-using-avconv-tool-in-ubuntu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appservgrid.com\/paw92\/index.php\/2019\/03\/28\/how-to-record-your-desktop-video-and-audio-using-avconv-tool-in-ubuntu\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Record Your Desktop Video and Audio Using \u201cAvconv\u201d Tool in Ubuntu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Libav<\/b>\u00a0is a set of cross-platform libraries and tools that are used to deal with multimedia files, streams and protocols, it was originally forked from the ffmpeg project. Libav includes many sub-tools like:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Avplay<\/b>: a video & audio player.<\/li>\n
  2. Avconv<\/b>: a multimedia converter plus a video & audio recorder from different sources.<\/li>\n
  3. Avprobe<\/b>: a tool that connects to the multimedia file stream and returns many useful information and statistics about it.<\/li>\n
  4. Libavfilter<\/b>: a filtering API for different Libav tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In this article, we\u2019ll explain how to record the Linux desktop\u2019s video & audio using the \u2018Avconv\u2019 program on\u00a0Debian<\/strong>\/Ubuntu<\/strong>\/Linux Mint<\/strong>\u00a0distributions.<\/p>\n

    Step 1: Installing Avconv Tool<\/h3>\n

    1.<\/strong>\u00a0avconv<\/b>\u00a0is a part from the \u201clibav-tools<\/b>\u201d package, which is available to install from the official repositories for all Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu and Mint, using following commands.<\/p>\n

    $ sudo apt-get update\r\n$ sudo apt-get install libav-tools\r\n<\/pre>\n
    \n
    \"Install<\/a><\/p>\n
    Install Avconv Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
    Note<\/strong>: Installing packages from default repositories, might give you a little older version of \u2018avconv<\/strong>\u2018 tool. Thus, we recommend you to get the latest version from the official git repository, as shown below.<\/p>\n
    $ sudo apt-get install yasm\r\n$ git clone git:\/\/git.libav.org\/libav.git\r\n$ cd libav\r\n$ .\/configure\r\n$ make\r\n$ sudo make install<\/pre>\n
    Note<\/strong>: You will have to run \u201c.\/configure \u2013help<\/b>\u201d in order to list all the available options for the configuration file and install codecs and libraries that you want, you will also need to do a lot of work in order to install the dependencies.<\/p>\n
    Also note, if you\u2019re used the compile-from-source way, you\u2019ll always have to use \u201csudo avconv<\/b>\u201d instead of \u201cavconv<\/b>\u201d to run the tool.<\/p>\n
    Step 2: Start Video Recording of Desktop<\/h3>\n
    2.<\/strong>\u00a0You\u2019re ready now, all what you have to do is to record your desktop video by issuing following command.<\/p>\n
    $ avconv -f x11grab -r 25<\/strong> -s 1920x1080<\/strong> -i :0.0 -vcodec libx264 -threads 4 $HOME\/output.avi<\/strong>\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Now let\u2019s explain the command in short:<\/p>\n
      \n
    1. avconv -f x11grab<\/b>\u00a0is the default command to capture video from the X server.<\/li>\n
    2. -r 25<\/b>\u00a0is the frame rate you want, you may change it if you like.<\/li>\n
    3. -s 1920\u00d71080<\/b>\u00a0is your system\u2019s screen resolution, change it to your current system resolution, it\u2019s very important to do this.<\/li>\n
    4. -i :0.0<\/b>\u00a0is where we want to set our recording start point, leave it like this.<\/li>\n
    5. -vcodec libx264<\/b>\u00a0is the video codec that we\u2019re using to record the desktop.<\/li>\n
    6. -threads 4<\/b>\u00a0is the number of threads, you may change it as well if you like.<\/li>\n
    7. $HOME\/output<\/b>\u00a0is the destination path where you want to save the file.<\/li>\n
    8. .avi<\/b>\u00a0is the video format, you may change it to \u201cflv\u201d, \u201cmp4\u201d, \u201cwmv\u201d, \u201cmov\u201d, \u201cmkv\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      3.<\/strong>\u00a0After you enter the command, the recording will start automatically as a process running from the terminal, in order to stop it, hit \u201cCtrl + C<\/b>\u201d keys inside the terminal window.<\/p>\n
      \n
      \"Record<\/a><\/p>\n
      Record Desktop Screen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
      4.<\/strong>\u00a0Now, you may run the file using VLC or any other multimedia player, or you may run it using \u201cavplay<\/b>\u201d tool which is a multimedia player from the same Libav package.<\/p>\n
      $ avplay $HOME\/output.avi\r\n<\/pre>\n
      Note<\/strong>: Don\u2019t forget to replace the destination file path. The recording\u2019s quality is pretty good.<\/p>\n
      \n
      \"Play<\/a><\/p>\n
      Play Recorded Video<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
      Here\u2019s a video that I\u2019ve recorded using the \u201cavconv<\/b>\u201d tool.<\/p>\n