Hi all, I want to do some screen recording on my linux desktop. And like a normal-functioning member of society, I decided to do it the hardest way and learn ffmpeg CLI to do it. Why? well, something about using underlying tools and customizing their usage excites me.

I have already started doing this, and I am finding I have to do a lot of trial and error to get things right. Before I dive deeper, I want to ask: Am I limiting myself in doing this? Is there anything I could be missing out on taking this route, or something that ffmpeg could not do on its own that a dedicated solution can?

What will I use this for exactly? well, things like recording a video game as I play it (which I suppose will require hardware acceleration to be of viable quality), or recording a tutorial (requiring voice input from mic), things like that.

  • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
    6·
    3 hours ago

    I don’t know whether it would be impossible to do, but using OBS would be much easier both on the short and long term

    • m4m4m4m4@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 hour ago

      Actually there’s some support for Wayland. Tried it last year, but had to do serious rummage trying to make it work. For starters I can recall it spitted a video but the command throwed an error at the end and could not understand why. Also i seem to recall the video stopped way after finishing the command.

      Even had to recompile all of ffmeg to add support for wayland recording (though Gentoo makes this really easy). One thing for certain is that Gentoo’s ffmpeg stable version is fairly behind from upstream’s so that could have had a hand on it too.

    • matcha_addictOPEnglish
      1·
      41 minutes ago

      what do screen recording softwares for wayland use under the hood then?

  • anamethatisnt@lemmy.world
    7·
    5 hours ago

    As long as you make yourself some aliases for your common ffmpeg commands including flags I’m sure it’s gonna work out fine. Using something like OBS is gonna make it a lot easier of course.

    • matcha_addictOPEnglish
      2·
      5 hours ago

      does OBS just do everything with ffmpeg, or does it introduce extra functionality?

  • solrize@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 hours ago

    I don’t know of such limitations and I’ve done some screen recording that way. But yeah the CLI options are confusing. The wiki (trac.ffmpeg.org) and libera irc channel #ffmpeg both help.