Screen Capture with VLC 2.07 and Windows 7

[Dand]

By the way: Here is an image of how the cursor is split up row by row.



It is rohuezos cursor with a slight modification. I resized it to 32x32 pixels hoping that that would help... It did not... As you see every row is pushed aside and not lined up correctly under each other... Instead I get a kind of line...

[Dand]

Hey Dand,

I'm writing a little howto for the VLC GUI so you can set those values... I'm on my Mac right now so I can't take Windows screenshots... Basically, you have to go to Media->Stream->Capture Device, then on Capture Mode on top select Desktop, change frame rate to 15,00 f/s, check Show more options, the MRL and the Edit Options are the first part of the Command lIne, here you can add the :screen-mouse-image=<path> after :live-caching, click Stream. Another dialog popsup, you should see screen://, click next, add a file on the part on top by clicking Add, don't worry about the file extension. Click the button with the screwdriver and wrench beside the selected Profile (leave the default for now), go to the tab Video Codec, here you can change the Width and Height of the recording area and scale(between 0.001 and 1, e.g. 0.50 means half the screen size). Go to the Audio Codec tab and disable if not audio is desired. Click Save, click Next. Under Generated stream output string you will see the second part of your command line. When you click Stream the screen recording begins immediately, open some windows, do stuff for a couple of minutes, then click Stop on the VLC GUI. The recording stop and you can open up the file specified above for the recording...

I will make a nicer tutorial with more info to help you and others... Good luck!

Thanks rohuezo, thanks a lot for your help!
Unfortunately I did not have quite the luck you wished for me...
Well, anyway I learned something. Sofar I had tried this by going to 'Media>Open Capture Device' and now I found the codec screen size settings there too after I tried your method.
I get good video output (with both methods) but still this corrupted pointer graphics (with both methods). I guess the overlaying layer where the pointer is written is not controlled from the codec settings...

Thanks for helping!

[Dand]

Now I'm just about to give up. VLC has crashed several times during this testing. A restart of the computer has not been enough to get it going again so I have uninstalled and reinstalled a couple of times and now it crashed again... I think I quit now... I'll go and have one of my home brewed IPAs...

[rohuezo]

Not Media->Open, use Media->Stream

[rohuezo]

Hey guys,

I made a how-to document and video to see if we are all on the same sheet of music. My system is a Windows 7 64-bit with 16GB RAM and Intel i7 CPU 3.4GHz VLC version 2.0.5.

1. Here is the link to the How-To PDF https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/350 ... th_VLC.pdf
2. Here is the link to the How-To video https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/350 ... LC_GUI.mp4

Next I will write a How-To for Command Line, which has more parameters as the ones provided by the GUI.

Hope I could help someone, and feel free to distribute the document and/or the video.

Best regards,

[Lotesdelere]

1. Here is the link to the How-To PDF https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/350 ... th_VLC.pdf
2. Here is the link to the How-To video https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/350 ... LC_GUI.mp4

For both links I'm getting a:

Error (404)
We can't find the page you're looking for.

[rohuezo]

I know, me too! Its taking forever to upload those simple files to dropbox... I'm new to this forum, can I upoad here instead?

[Lotesdelere]

No, you can't attach files to posts but you can use an external free hosting service such as TinyUpload.com or EmbedUpload.com.

[rohuezo]

Ok, I used my own hosted server:

1. Here is the link to the How-To PDF https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/350 ... th_VLC.pdf
2. Here is the link to the How-To video https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/350 ... LC_GUI.mp4

BTW, I used the same instructions to create the How-To video, that's why you will see, at one point, boths mouse pointers with yellow bubble on the recording inside the recording...

Best regards,

[Lotesdelere]

Thanks for this
One thing though: IMO the resolution of the video is too large (1920*1080) which is making impossible to read the menu items you are clicking on when it's played on a small screen, for instance a 768 height screen of a laptop.
Maybe you should consider to do it again at a much lower resolution, say 800*600, to be sure the menus can be read on any computer

[rohuezo]

Thanks for this
One thing though: IMO the resolution of the video is too large (1920*1080) which is making impossible to read the menu items you are clicking on when it's played on a small screen, for instance a 768 height screen of a laptop.
Maybe you should consider to do it again at a much lower resolution, say 800*600, to be sure the menus can be read on any computer

I guess I have been using big monitors for too long now! I didn't consider the lower resolutions... Will make a lower resolution one, thanx for the tip! What about the content?

Best regards,

[rohuezo]

I made a lower resolution How-To video (800x600) to better see the menu items I select during the tutorial:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/350 ... 00x600.mp4

Best regards,

[doctek]

Here's a video of what my video captures look like showing the cursor (I used a large blue arrow so it's easy to see) shearing. Hopefully, someone will figure this out.

http://youtu.be/94br2rO74vA

A common denominator *may* be that we that are having this problem are on laptops (I think we both are - we have the same screen size.) and perhaps that's part of the problem.

[rohuezo]

Here's a video of what my video captures look like showing the cursor (I used a large blue arrow so it's easy to see) shearing. Hopefully, someone will figure this out.

http://youtu.be/94br2rO74vA

A common denominator *may* be that we that are having this problem are on laptops (I think we both are - we have the same screen size.) and perhaps that's part of the problem.

Hi doctek,

the video is "private" and cannot be viewed ...

Can you post the exact same mouse image you use so I can try it out on my system?

Best regards,

[doctek]

Sorry, I'm still a bit clumsy with youtube. Doh! Should be public now.



Hopefully, the above will share my cursor. If not, look here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o8ps1cmgcn1d2rw/blcurs.png

Thanks again for your efforts!

[doctek]

Suspecting this might be a problem unique to at least a few laptops, I tried out screen capture on a desktop system using the same batch file. The desktop runs exactly the same version of W7, is a 64 bit system, etc. The screen resolution is 1600x900. Same cursor file, same file locations, same batch file, same version of vlc. Of course, the video display system is different - probably the big factor, but I don't know for sure.

Worked perfectly!

This doesn't answer the question of, "Why doesn't it work on at least some laptops?", but it at least shows me a way to get my videos made: just do it on the desktop system.

Conclusions:
- The instructions for having a cursor in a vlc screen capture are valid and correct.
- If they don't work on your system, it's because they don't work on your system. If you figure out why not, please let everyone know.

[doctek]

There was another possible conclusion that occurred to me after my last posting. Maybe the 16:9 aspect ratio is magic?!

And indeed it is! If the arguments --screen-left=0 --screen-top=0 --screen-width=1280 --screen-height=720 are included after :screen-fps=5.000000, then the cursor is properly captured and shows up as expected in the resulting video.

This is a much more satisfactory conclusion! It works at last!!

[Clementoni]

A big Thanks to rohuezo !!!

thank you dude, now I can capture my desktop, but what bothers me is that the mouse pointer flashes when I make a catch there a way that it does not flash?

[doctek]

How embarrassing! I came back to this to refresh my knowledge of how to do the screen capture and it didn't work! changing the -- in the above to : makes it work. So --screen-left=0 becomes :screen-left=0, etc. Hope this makes things clearer!

[rohuezo]

Hi guys,

be advise of the following information concerning destop recording and VLC media player:

Using my scripts (bat-files) to record my desktop I found out the following:

Last known version where "everything" that I use on my screen recording (logos, marquee, mouse) works is: 2.0.8
The following versions record but I cannot longer see my mouse pointer: 2.1.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 2.1.4, 2.1.5
The following versions crash VLC media player when attempting to record the desktop: 2.2.0, 2.2.1

I also tried GUI, Command Line, and API with the same results. My system is Windows 7 (x64) i7-3770 CPU 3.40 GHz, 16 GB RAM. I downloaded the x64 version of all the VLC media players mentioned above from: http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/ to test them on my system.

Regards,

[szlul]

Hi, I have a very similar problem and could not solved after trying different solutions for couple of hours. Basically, VLC can detect the mouse pointer and everything seems fine during record. However, when I play the recording mouse pointer is invisible while it is steady and it looks like a white line or a string while moving... Please let me know if you know how to solve this issue...

[szlul]

I realized that when i decreased the screen resolution of my PC then VLC screen capture works fine with the mouse pointer but I want the high resolution recording. So, I tried starting with low resolution, start recording than changed to higher resolution from Desktop during recording. That time I can keep the mouse pointer but loose some portion of the screen due to resolution conflict in between VLC and later changed PC resolution. If you know a way to overcome this please let me know. I am using Windows 8 woth VLC 2.1.4. I do not want to upgrade VLC to newer version since then when I start recording VLC directly crashes...

[szlul]

Oh okay so the when I decreased the resolution from 1366x768 to 1360x768 mouse pointer worked fine too! I can live with that little resolution decrease I am just posting if this helps someone else...

[doctek]

Glad it's working for you. I posted a response earlier, but I don't see it on the forum? Thanks for posting the follow-up.

[rohuezo]

Hi guys,

here is an update on the state of the screen recording capabilities in VLC media player.

be advise of the following information concerning destop recording and VLC media player:

Using my scripts (bat-files) to record my desktop I found out the following:

Last known version where "everything" that I use on my screen recording (logos, marquee, mouse) works is: 2.0.8
The following versions record but I cannot longer see my mouse pointer: 2.1.0, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 2.1.4, 2.1.5
The following versions crash VLC media player when attempting to record the desktop: 2.2.0, 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.2.3, 2.2.4

I also tried GUI, Command Line, and API with the same results. My system is Windows 10 (x64) i7-3770 CPU 3.40 GHz, 16 GB RAM. I downloaded the x64 and win32 versions of all the VLC media players mentioned above from: http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/ to test them on my system.

Regards,