Video processing

Notes about recording and post-processing video on Linux.

Video editors

• avidemux - tool for processing video streams. Plenty of filters of all kinds. A bit outdated for newer formats.

• Handbrake - multiplatform video converter simple to use and quite reliable.

• Openshot - included with ubuntu, fairly basic and simple video sequence editor.

• Blender - Excellent tool that also has video sequence editor with all sorts of tricks. My notes here

Screencast: Screen recording on Linux

Several tools can do that. Here is the list and my comments:

avconv

This is a versatile command line tool. It works OK, except I am sometimes getting chopped audio. Must be synchronization issue.

avconv -f alsa -ac 2 -i default -f x11grab -r 30 -s 854x508 -i :0.0+144,24 -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -crf 0 -threads 0 -acodec pcm_s16le cap6.mkv

BTW, before avconv there was ffmpeg used for this. Most options compatible.

Vokoscreen

A nice tool, lets to mix several audio feeds, such as the computer sounds and a microphone. However, issues with choppy audio again. No wonder, because uses avconv for recording.

Recordmydesktop

A nice command line tool. However, it cannot easily mix audio sources. Sample command here:

recordmydesktop --width 1920 --height 1200 --full-shots --fps 15 --channels 1 --device hw:1,0 --delay 10

gtk-recordmydesktop

This is a GUI frontend for recordmydektop

Kazam

A simple and minimal video capture software. Can mix audio sources. Does the job for me.

Other options

These are not free, and rather for OSX/Windows than Linux. However, quite popular:

• Camtasia
• Screenflow

Webcam

Borderless webcam

How to display a borderless webcam feed on the screen:

mplayer -tv driver=v4l2:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0 -vo xv tv:// -geometry "99%:90%" -noborder -ontop

Another example, HD size video, with window handle so it can me moved:

mplayer -tv driver=v4l2:width=1280:height=720:device=/dev/video0 -vo xv tv:// -geometry "45%:1%" -ontop

Cheese

A very simple and limited webcam image and video preview and capture tool.