reKordmydesktop

Notice: I am preparing a universal graphical installer in order to be able to install it as a regular app (accessible via K-menu, with it's own icon), so check back again soon!


ReKordmydesktop is a frontend to recordmydesktop aiming at the ease of use.

If I have to give one simple instruction, then it is that you don't have to go beyond the first tab (Common Settings) unless you now what you want! Encoding and advanced settings are there because someone may need them, not because they are necessary for a good capture!

I believe programs like recordmydesktop are very important for the Linux desktop, especially when they come with a friendly yet powerful gui. A user can use them to create presentations, visual guides and demos more illustrative and impressive than ever before. An important ally to that task is the theora encoder which delivers superb quality video while keeping a low bitrate. At top of that the ogg format ensures that the produced file is suitable for streaming.

I did my best to implement all the functionality provided by recordmydesktop
plus some enhancements:
- Click and grab a specific window to capture it.
- Straightforward use of pause.
- Added timed capture. It can be stopped or paused of course.
- Most settings available through checkboxes or sliders.
- Offers the option to open the resulted video when the recording ends with your
favorite player.
- It remembers your settings so you don't need to set them every time.

ReKordmydesktop requires from you to have installed on your system:
- recordmydesktop
- kommander (Usually comes with KDE.)
- xwininfo (Although not necessery it is recommended. It is used to determine by
a single click a specific window to capture).

Some hints:
- If you choose to grab a specific window don't forget to use the "grab window"
button prior the recording!
- ReKordmydesktop can understand all error codes produced by recordmydesktop and
will show them at the StatusBar if they occur.
- ReKordmydesktop isn't designed to interact with many instances of
recordmydesktop running simultaneously. The program itself will protect you
from that. You can trick it by starting a recording through the program's
interface and then starting a second, parallel recording from the command
line. I discourage it strongly though.
- If you are wondering why mplayer and vlc don't appear on the players' list, I
couldn't make them start without freezing reKordmydesktop for as long as they
are running. I didn't want such behaviour in my program.
ReKordmydesktop will detect Kaffeine, xine, totem, noatun, Kaboodle, Kmplayer,
Kplayer, codeine, ffplay.
- If you think reKordmydesktop takes too much time to start or close you are
probably right. That happens because it reads/saves your settings.
- I did my best but some bugs may have escaped my super vision! Please report
them to my email or the program's page on kde-apps.org or adslgr.com.
The worst-case scenario would be to leave recordmydesktop recording at the
background. If you suspect this (which really should not happen anyway) you can find it out easily by runing:
$ pidof recordmydesktop
If it returns a number then recordmydesktop is indeed running. If that
shouldn't be the case (ie because you exited reKordmydesktop) use that
command to terminate it:
$ killall -9 recordmydesktop

ReKordmydesktop 0.99.1 was build and tested against:
- Kommander 1.2.1 (KDE 3.5.6)
- recordmydesktop 0.3.3.1
- xwininfo 1.0.2

[size=6]To run it just extract it and click reKordmydesktop-0.99.1.kmdr![/size]


PS. Of course such a program should be demonstrated through a video! Here you go:
http://www.andmarios.com/attachments/reKordmydesktop.ogg

- Everytime reKordmydesktop closes kills recordmydesktop if still running in order to avoid potential problems.