The tool comes with basically all the features you need in a screencast app: record the entire screen (with multi-monitor support), record a fixed rectangle, follow the cursor, record OpenGL applications (which can be used to record games), record audio input (PulseAudio, JACK and ALSA), options to scale the video, to record (or not) the cursor, to pause/resume the recording and so on. It even has experimental live streaming support.

SimpleScreenRecorder is a Qt screen recorder for Linux which, despite its name, comes with more features than other similar tools. The application is very easy to use and the default settings should be enough for most cases, so usually you won't need to change any settings.

Using it, you can record the entire screen (with multi-monitor support), record a fixed rectangle, follow the cursor or record OpenGL applications (can be used to record games).

A quick update: a while back we wrote about 'fixing' the GTK-RecordMyDesktop videos for uploading to YouTube and other video sharing websites. Well, I don't know what did it but today when I've recorded a video with GTK-RecordMyDesktop and uploaded it to YouTube, it worked with no further tweaking (using Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat with up-to-date packages). What's sure is that it wasn't because of GTK-RecordMyDesktop as there were no recent updates to this applications.

As a sample video, see the PyWO video (it has been recorded with GTK-RecordMyDesktop and uploaded as an .ogv to YouTube).

RecordMyDesktop is a desktop screencasting software application for Linux. It comes with different GUIs for Qt, GTK, KDE (RecorditNow).

RecordMyDesktop had a problem (actually it still does): a libtheora update broke it and it no longer works, making the video unplayable, even with VLC. However, there is a fix for this (the video will work in VLC and can be uploaded to YouTube, etc.): adding the "--v_bitrate 2000000" paramterer. Here is how to use it:

RecordItNow is an Linux application similar to RecordMyDesktop, but for KDE, designed for recording your desktop. It has more features than qt-recordmydesktop, thus if you are using KDE, you should really give it a try. Another great thing about RecordItNow is that it supports plugins (see below).

Even though up until today I didn't have a single KDE library installed on my computer, I decided to test RecordItNow anyway, since I will most likely install the new KDE 4.3.4 which was released today.

Krut is a screen recording tool written in Java thus cross-platform (works on Windows, Linux and Mac) which can be used to make video tutorial, screen casts, presentations and so on. The recorded video files are saved in quicktime .mov format.

Krut requires no installation, and you can launch the application by simply running the KRUT.jar file.


Some additional features:

- Timer-controlled recording
- Moveable recording areas during recording
- Preview of ongoing recording
- Optional mouse pointer recording
- Record/Playback at 2 different frame rates
- Highly accurate audio-video synchronization

Byzanz is a Linux program that lets you capture your screen but not in a video but in an animated GIF image. This is very useful for tutorial or presentations and you will definitely explain better using an image than in words when describing an action. You can use it to capture a whole your desktop, a window or a region you select.

sudo apt-get install byzanz

metacity --replace

compiz --replace