Making screencasts with RecordMyDesktop

What I learned today — 28 August 2018

Today I made some screencasts and after I couldn’t get Kazam working on Ubuntu 18.04 (with Python 3) I settled on RecordMyDesktop, apparently the only real alternative out there. RecordMyDesktop is simple and easy to use and recording the voice over with the built-in microphone just worked.

After selecting the screen area to capture, just hit “Record”.

Handy keyboard shortcuts

• Ctrl + Mod1 + p : Pause/Unpause
• Ctrl + Mod1 + s : Stop

Mod1 usually corresponds to Left Alt.

Converting the .ogv file to .mp4 with ffmpeg

Converting the output of the recording to .mp4 format is very easy:

ffmpeg -i ~/out.ogv -crf 18 my_screenscast.mp4