How do I caspture my screen with VLC player on Mac?

[VideoEthernet]

Hello,

I have version 2.2.0 under Mac OS X 10.9 I try to capture a video of what is on the screen.

I go:
1. open VLC media player
2. go to the menue next to "VLC" and choose "capture device = opt+R"
3. from the for tabs I choose "recording"
4. underneath the 4 tabs I choose "Screen"
5: Screensize 1280x1024)
Frames per Sec: 24 (I am in Europe, Germany)
I check mark "record audio: input (integrated)
I check mark "stream/save:"
6. I click on "preferences"
and check mark "show stream locally" and choose "File" and choose a destination and give the file a name and click ok (window closes and I am back in window of step 5
7. I click on "open"
8. I get a loop of VLC player windows...

and now? I found guides where they talk about a record button. There is no such button.

[betruek]

Have you tried use the Video menu? Click Video at the top of the screen, and select Snapshot. The pre-defined hot-keys is in

MAC OS X: Command+Alt+s,

Windows,Linux, and Unix: Shift+s.

If you want to change the hot-keys go to Preferences → Interface → Hotkeys and set Take video snapshot. Then write the hot-keys you want.

After you have tacked a snapshot you may want to see it.

[no_se]

I would not activate "show stream locally" in that case

[VideoEthernet]

In VLC 2.2.0 when I click on video from the menu, all the drop down menu options are grey. When I try the shortcut instead cmd+alt+s I get a "bonk" sound.

Also, I am not trying to make a picture of my desktop, I want to make a video clip of what I do on my desktop.

This must be very easy and I am very stupid, otherwise I would expect you had done a guide about it. I find several on the internet, that all have functions that are not present in this version (probably older versions?). - or maybe most people don't know about the screen capture feature in VLC.

Couldn't you make a guide with screenshots of the several steps?

[VideoEthernet]

Here is what I have

after the last window and clicking open, it usually gives me a loop of opening VLC windows getting smaller towards the background. Now after I changed the language to english, it just does nothing after clicking open.

EDIT: ok, no attachments, so I can't show you what I did...

[VideoEthernet]

Have you tried use the Video menu? Click Video at the top of the screen, and select Snapshot. The pre-defined hot-keys is in

MAC OS X: Command+Alt+s,

Windows,Linux, and Unix: Shift+s.

If you want to change the hot-keys go to Preferences → Interface → Hotkeys and set Take video snapshot. Then write the hot-keys you want.

After you have tacked a snapshot you may want to see it.

What you are doing is a snapshot. This is a picture, a photo of the desktop.
What I want is a video, a movie, a film of the desktop.

I can't believe there is no one, who knows how to use the screen-capture feature (i.e. make a video-clip of what you are doing on the desktop).

[cluelesscoder]

Yeah, can't figure it out either. I can get to the point where I have a .ts file, but it won't open. Alternatively, I can watch a screen repeat over and over. Like you, the video tab is all greyed out.

Steps:
1. File -> Open Capture Device
2. In the menu, click the Streaming/Saving checkbox and go into the settings. I select the file. I've tried numerous formats.
3. The video starts running. After a bit, I click stop.
4. Try to open the file in anything, and I get "can't recognize the format" messages. Tried this with the default, Quicktime, MP4, etc. And also tried to do a conversion from the .ts file I was getting.

Seems like we should open a bug report, eh? See for this for a list of bugs with screen in them; add capture to narrow it down a bit.

[alpinestars69]

i just did the step by step that is at the top of the page from -VideoEthernet- & i can't even describe how my computer freaked out fully to you. it just started flashing several different colors, diff. words on the screen rotated being highlighted, i got a new mouse cursor on the screen with every flash (several at same time & counting) nothing seemed to be working so i had to force quit vlc.

any idea what was going on??

[alpinestars69]

i just found out a very easy way to do this. use quick time, it is the way that it should be. what i mean is vlc over complicates things & quick time player does not

[dfuhrmann]

I agree, if you want to have an easy way to record your desktop into a file, just use Quicktime.

VLC is useful though if you want to do more fancy things with this video, like streaming it on the fly to another device for instance.

[shalinar]

Performing thread necromancy to provide an answer because this thread is one of the top Google results for using VLC to screen capture on Mac and I can't believe no one here figured it out!

The only step you have to do after the ones OP listed is go to Playback > Record. Then when you're done recording, just go back to Playback and uncheck Record.

There you have it!

EDIT: some people were talking about hotkeys, the hotkey for Record is command+alt+R