What's a good free desktop screen recorder?

On Mon, 12 Nov 2018 21:54:33 -0600, Ant wrote:

Well, I don't want to download the whole video. Just parts of the very
long and huge live streams.

Hi Ant,
I usually see you over in the iOS groups.
Good to see you on the Windows freeware section of Usenet!

Lots of ways to accomplish what you want, but, if you do use the youtube-dl.exe
that Mayayana seems to be hinting at, you'll need to know _how_ to install
it (which isn't intuitive).

To save you the effort (which is what Usenet is all about), and since
I'm not about imaginary solutions like so many others are, here are
my hard-won reproducible real-world notes on exactly how to install
the command line youtube download utility successfully.

01. Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86)
https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/down...s.aspx?id=5555
02. Upate Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package MFC Security Update
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down....aspx?id=26999
03: Get ffmpeg
http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/
http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win...n64-static.zip
Put the three executables in the same directory as the youtube-dl.exe
ffmpeg.exe
ffplay.exe
ffprobe.exe

The -x is what needs ffmpeg although you can set it to
-x, --extract-audio = Convert video files to audio-only files
(requires ffmpeg or avconv and ffprobe or avprobe)

You can also just point to the FFMPEG directory:
--ffmpeg-location PATH = Location of the ffmpeg/avconv binary;

04. Then get the right youtube-dl.exe that uses Visusal C & not python!
https://youtube-dl.org/
http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html
https://yt-dl.org/downloads/2018.08.28/youtube-dl.exe
05. Check the hash!
---------------------------
Checksum information
---------------------------
Name: youtube-dl.exe
Size: 7955964 bytes (7 MB)

SHA256: 935D5FD32932BF0A6D842F28E168D84F7FC674CD995A5A4646 D9A70145B6B255

---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
06. Then download a video as an OPUS file:
youtube-dl.exe http://whatevervideourl.com
07. Download a video as an MP4 file:
youtube-dl.exe -f 18 http://whatevervideourl.com
08. Download and extract just the audio as an M4A:
youtube-dl.exe -f 140 http://whatevervideourl.com
09. Download and extract just the audio as an MP3:
youtube-dl.exe -x --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 0 http://whatevervideourl.com
10. Download the videos in a playlist text file:
youtube-dl.exe -ciwo "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -a myPlayList.txt
Where the myPlayList.txt simply contains a list of URLs, one per line

As Mayayana noted, you have other options, e.g., to download
the offline installer for camstudio.

To always add value to every thread, here's my list, so far, of the
free tools you _can_ use, in order of best to worst but this order is
super preliminary until more data is known about the shenanigans they pull.
o camstudio
o vlc
o apowerrec
o debut
o dvdvideosoft
o ezvid
o flashback
o goplay
o obs
o gamedvr
o sharex
o smartpixel
o tinytake
o icecream
o screenomatic

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| Read the article first.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamStudio
|

Second post: I do wonder about the diagonal
image. The program is small, simple and easy to use.
VLC plays the resulting AVI files fine. But if I
use VLC to convert to mp4 or if I load it into
Avidemux, in both cases it shows up as a diagonal
image. The video seems to work. It just displays
skewed at about a 45 degree angle. I've never
seen anything like that before.

If you don't set the video codec, recording
is in BI_RGB, which isn't particularly standardized.

FFMPEG has a number of RGB formats, where no
compression is done, and pixels are arranged in
particular ways/orders. Since FFMPEG likely produced
the output, you'd expect (but wouldn't always be right)
the FFMPEG tool to consume that material too.

You can run your video through FFMPEG and use another
CODEC like MJPEG for a quick and dirty conversion.
I didn't waste time on this. There's no audio, so
why would I care ?

CamStudio is a dumpster fire. I tried it on
Windows 10 and I can't do a damn thing with audio.
Not a thing. I'm getting some video recording, so
that's not a problem. Even if I can't get a decent
capture rate from "CamStudio_Setup_2-7_r316".

(I screwed up the caption a bit - the Microsoft Video 1
CODEC captured the video pane on the bottom of the picture.)

https://i.postimg.cc/8zdKK40c/camstu...o-no-audio.jpg

The source material is my standard video for test
recording, in case you were worried about my
"sense of taste" :-/ If you can fix the lip sync on
that, you can fix it on anything.

Paul

In message , Arlen_Holder
writes:
[]
To save you the effort (which is what Usenet is all about), and since
I'm not about imaginary solutions like so many others are, here are
my hard-won reproducible real-world notes on exactly how to install
the command line youtube download utility successfully.

01. Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86)
[]
05. Check the hash!

Thanks for that.
From how you've presented them, those appear to be steps that have to be
performed in sequence - i. e. you have to do all five of them.
[]
06. Then download a video as an OPUS file:
youtube-dl.exe http://whatevervideourl.com
07. Download a video as an MP4 file:
youtube-dl.exe -f 18 http://whatevervideourl.com
08. Download and extract just the audio as an M4A:
youtube-dl.exe -f 140 http://whatevervideourl.com
09. Download and extract just the audio as an MP3:
youtube-dl.exe -x --audio-format mp3 --audio-quality 0
http://whatevervideourl.com
10. Download the videos in a playlist text file:
youtube-dl.exe -ciwo "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -a myPlayList.txt
Where the myPlayList.txt simply contains a list of URLs, one per line
[]
But in contrast, those appear to be _alternatives_, so I wouldn't have
continued the number sequence.

Also:
When you say "download ... command http://whatevervideourl.com", does
whatevervideourl.com have to be the URL of the actual video itself, or
can it be the URL of the containing webpage (such as a YouTube page)? If
it has to be the actual video component, does anything you've done in
steps 01 to 05 help you actually find what URL to use?
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Q. How much is 2 + 2?
A. Thank you so much for asking your question.
Are you still having this problem? I'll be delighted to help you. Please
restate the problem twice and include your Windows version along with
all error logs.
- Mayayana in alt.windows7.general, 2018-11-1

In message , Ant
writes:
Thanks to everyone who answered.

OBS: Free, but darn complicated for a newbie. I was trying to record a
live video stream on a web page, but kept getting its whole web page as
shown in my https://imgur.com/a/vdu33on screen captures. I only wanted
the video part (no black (area/border)s, web page, etc. I must be
missing something as newbie.

It would probably have been good if you'd said in the first place that
you wanted to capture a streaming video. Using a screen capture utility
isn't the best place to start if that's what you're after. The stream
capture utilities others have mentioned are much better ways of doing
that. Probably the command-line ones are best (they're nearly always
more versatile), but for a relatively simple GUI, I find DownloadHelper
captures a fair number. However, I use it in a pre-revolution version of
Firefox - I think it's still available with the current version, but I
don't know how well it works. Of course, as you might expect, although
it _is_ available for Chrome, it doesn't work for YouTube, since Chrome
and YouTube are both Google products and (if I read it right) they made
it a condition of listing it in the Chrome add-on store that it didn't.
[]
Bascialy, I just need a free simple recorder from my desktop (not just
streaming videos).
[]
As a newbie, you probably didn't gather that using a screen recorder
isn't the best way to capture streaming video. If you want to use a
screen recorder for _other_ things (your "not just"), such as making
tutorials, recording a chat session, or similar, then I hope the thread
has been useful/interesting (it has to me).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Q. How much is 2 + 2?
A. Thank you so much for asking your question.
Are you still having this problem? I'll be delighted to help you. Please
restate the problem twice and include your Windows version along with
all error logs.
- Mayayana in alt.windows7.general, 2018-11-1

Ant wrote:
Thanks to everyone who answered.

OBS: Free, but darn complicated for a newbie. I was trying to record a
live video stream on a web page, but kept getting its whole web page as
shown in my https://imgur.com/a/vdu33on screen captures. I only wanted
the video part (no black (area/border)s, web page, etc. I must be
missing something as newbie.

CamStudios seem to have a malware in its installer file.
https://virusscan.jotti.org/en-US/fi...job/ydbrecqpne,
https://www.hybrid-analysis.com/samp...6c47392c691215,
etc. confirm it. I will avoid that!

Bascialy, I just need a free simple recorder from my desktop (not just
streaming videos).


Ant wrote:
With no limitations and can handle live videos on screens to record in
web browsers. Also, it has to work well on a decade old updated 64-bit
W7 HPE SP1 PC with 6 GB of RAM and ATI Radeon 4870 video card (512 MB of
RAM).

At this point, Youtube-DL is looking better and better. Even
if it means downloading the whole thing.

1) Doesn't use a lot of CPU during download.
2) Downloads faster than RT. A 12 hour conference
might download in 4 hours. The video is broken into
pieces and downloaded in parallel.
3) Doesn't ruin lipsync like screen capture does.

Youtube-DL works with a ton of websites. Even my local
news channel is in the list of tested sources for capture.
The tool does a lot more than just Youtube.

While there is a feature request filed with Youtube-DL to
support "interval capture", it's too hard to work out the
details, which is why the developer hasn't implemented it.
The developer works with "byte offsets", and there is
no guaranteed mapping between a particular point in time,
and how many bytes have already been played at that point.
Lots of video is VBR and unpredictable that way.

*******

You can always boot Linux and do it there. Windows has
GDIgrab, Linux has X11grab, so both platforms support
ideas like this. An example would be Simple Screen Recorder.

https://www.ubuntupit.com/15-best-li...ose-on-ubuntu/

Paul

On 12/11/2018 22:41:20, Mayayana wrote:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

That seems to be only screen capture, not
video capture.


Any comments?


Comments? I downloaded it and tried it. There's no
video. And the webpage Monty linked doesn't
mention video. No one needs special software
for screen capture. I just use Ctrl + Prt Scr and
paste it to Paint Shop Pro. I guess there was
a misunderstanding about the difference between
video and images.

CamStudio looks like the best to me so far,
except for the glitch of VLC converting it to
diagonal when it converts to mp4.

Have you tried Handbrake for conversion?
https://handbrake.fr/

--
mick

Paul wrote:


You can always boot Linux and do it there. Windows has
GDIgrab, Linux has X11grab, so both platforms support
ideas like this. An example would be Simple Screen Recorder.

https://www.ubuntupit.com/15-best-li...ose-on-ubuntu/

SimpleScreenRecorder is pretty good.

It seems to have a means to timestamp the video and
audio stream, and it did a better job of maintaining
lipsync.

On the minus side, there were a couple non-monotonic
audio timestamps, which causes the capture to hiccup
a bit. But on the plus side, it otherwise seemed
to keep things aligned.

You might look at your audio chip, and if the "native"
clock rate is 48KHz, select 48KHz for capture/playback
choices, so no re-clocking is going on at the hardware
level. I didn't thoroughly test means to correct the
hiccup, but perhaps with a bit of work you can
bring it under control.

It's also possible it had something to do with Pulseaudio,
so who knows...

Paul

mick wrote:
On 12/11/2018 22:41:20, Mayayana wrote:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

That seems to be only screen capture, not
video capture.


Any comments?


Comments? I downloaded it and tried it. There's no
video. And the webpage Monty linked doesn't
mention video. No one needs special software
for screen capture. I just use Ctrl + Prt Scr and
paste it to Paint Shop Pro. I guess there was
a misunderstanding about the difference between
video and images.

CamStudio looks like the best to me so far,
except for the glitch of VLC converting it to
diagonal when it converts to mp4.

Have you tried Handbrake for conversion?
https://handbrake.fr/


The CODEC in question, is BI_RGB.
The problem can be seen in the top picture.
I've seen this before, working with FFMPEG.

https://i.postimg.cc/8zdKK40c/camstu...o-no-audio.jpg

It wouldn't surprise me to see all tools render it like that.

Paul

"Paul" wrote

| Second post: I do wonder about the diagonal
| image.

| If you don't set the video codec, recording
| is in BI_RGB, which isn't particularly standardized.
|

I tried the Microsoft option and it was the same.
The Intel options crashed. There's not much value
in an AVI file. It's just too big. So maybe the OBS
is the best option? Since I mainly use XP I'm not
going to bother trying that one.

I'm surprised that it's so hard to find one decent
program. As I mentioned above, I had this in
WordPro for free, 20 years ago.

| The source material is my standard video for test
| recording, in case you were worried about my
| "sense of taste" :-/

Not at all. I just figured you must be the guy
who was hired to film Harvey Weinstein in
compromising positions. Though I do find myself
helplessly curious to see that wisp of a dress
right-side-up.

"Ant" wrote

| But if you just want to take a video of a video then
| why not get something like youtube-dl or download
| helper? The former seems to be able to download
| just about any video.
|
| Well, I don't want to download the whole video. Just parts of the very
| long and huge live streams.

If it's not *too* long, another option would
be Avidemux, which is a free program that's
an editor for video. You can snip it, resize,
rotate.... all sorts of things. But it takes some
work to get the hang of it. The interface is not
very intuitive.

There are also programs to capture streams as
you play them, but I've never tried any of those.
I've never even seen a video play in my browser.
If I can't download and save it then it's not
important enough for me to see.

"Paul" wrote

| CamStudio is a dumpster fire.

Some more interesting research.... Found EZVid.
The installer didn't install the program files! It tried
to call my ISP. I'm getting a crash course in sleazy
shareware scams of 2018.

But in dissecting the EZVid installer I found files
named "bytescout*". I looked that up and found
they came from a company that gives away various
things. The have a screen capture program using
their own DLLs. It's only about 2 MB. Saving as
WMV seems to work and play fine, but converting
to mp4 had the same diagonal problem.
WMV is OK for Windows. It's compact.

The only limitation I see in a quick check is that it
says for personal use only.

In alt.windows7.general Arlen_Holder wrote:
On Mon, 12 Nov 2018 21:54:33 -0600, Ant wrote:

Well, I don't want to download the whole video. Just parts of the very
long and huge live streams.

Hi Ant,
I usually see you over in the iOS groups.
Good to see you on the Windows freeware section of Usenet!

Yeah, and Linux too.


Lots of ways to accomplish what you want, but, if you do use the youtube-dl.exe
that Mayayana seems to be hinting at, you'll need to know _how_ to install
it (which isn't intuitive).
....

But I will have to download the whole video which I don't want. I just
parts of the desktop and live stream videos in web browsers (not
fullscreen).


To always add value to every thread, here's my list, so far, of the
free tools you _can_ use, in order of best to worst but this order is
super preliminary until more data is known about the shenanigans they pull.
o camstudio
o vlc
o apowerrec
o debut
o dvdvideosoft
o ezvid
o flashback
o goplay
o obs
o gamedvr
o sharex
o smartpixel
o tinytake
o icecream
o screenomatic

ShareX seems to work (had to get its addon as well). Free Icecream
Screen Recorder only does five minutes and watermarking.

OBS & VLC, I cannot figure how to only video capture parts of my desktop
like a streaming live video in a web browser. I don't need HQ and
fullscreen/everything.
--
Quote of the Week: "Ants! Why don't we all line up like a [bleeped]
bunch of ants! It's the most beautiful part of the day!" --Robert Eroica
Dupea in Five Easy Pieces movie
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org / http://antfarm.ma.cx
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
| |o o| | ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and URL/link.
\ _ /
( )

Paul wrote:
Paul wrote:


You can always boot Linux and do it there. Windows has
GDIgrab, Linux has X11grab, so both platforms support
ideas like this. An example would be Simple Screen Recorder.

https://www.ubuntupit.com/15-best-li...ose-on-ubuntu/

SimpleScreenRecorder is pretty good.

It seems to have a means to timestamp the video and
audio stream, and it did a better job of maintaining
lipsync.

On the minus side, there were a couple non-monotonic
audio timestamps, which causes the capture to hiccup
a bit. But on the plus side, it otherwise seemed
to keep things aligned.

You might look at your audio chip, and if the "native"
clock rate is 48KHz, select 48KHz for capture/playback
choices, so no re-clocking is going on at the hardware
level. I didn't thoroughly test means to correct the
hiccup, but perhaps with a bit of work you can
bring it under control.

It's also possible it had something to do with Pulseaudio,
so who knows...

No, this won't work since I need it in 64-bit Windows 7.
--
Quote of the Week: "Ants! Why don't we all line up like a [bleeped]
bunch of ants! It's the most beautiful part of the day!" --Robert Eroica
Dupea in Five Easy Pieces movie
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org / http://antfarm.ma.cx
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
| |o o| | ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and URL/link.
\ _ /
( )

Ant wrote:
Paul wrote:
Paul wrote:

You can always boot Linux and do it there. Windows has
GDIgrab, Linux has X11grab, so both platforms support
ideas like this. An example would be Simple Screen Recorder.

https://www.ubuntupit.com/15-best-li...ose-on-ubuntu/

SimpleScreenRecorder is pretty good.

It seems to have a means to timestamp the video and
audio stream, and it did a better job of maintaining
lipsync.

On the minus side, there were a couple non-monotonic
audio timestamps, which causes the capture to hiccup
a bit. But on the plus side, it otherwise seemed
to keep things aligned.

You might look at your audio chip, and if the "native"
clock rate is 48KHz, select 48KHz for capture/playback
choices, so no re-clocking is going on at the hardware
level. I didn't thoroughly test means to correct the
hiccup, but perhaps with a bit of work you can
bring it under control.

It's also possible it had something to do with Pulseaudio,
so who knows...

No, this won't work since I need it in 64-bit Windows 7.

That's true, but if you do decide to test it,
you can use that as a "standard" to compare to
the Windows-side offerings. I can't even do
that good using FFMPEG here. Any tool derived from
FFMPEG, is likely to "wander" just as much as FFMPEG does.

For example, I can do this in Windows, but the lipsync isn't
as good as SimpleScreenRecorder. I think this was the
syntax for Windows 10. Some Windows OSes, the name of
the audio is truncated to fewer characters.

C:\FFMPEG\bin\ffmpeg -framerate 30 -f gdigrab -i desktop
-f dshow -sample_rate 44100 -i audio="Stereo Mix (Realtek High Definition Audio)"
-vcodec mjpeg -acodec pcm_s16le F:\out.mov

FFMPEG allows querying sources. Using the names the first
command returns, you can adjust the second and third commands
to get details for the source in question. The details are
then used when selecting parameters for commands like
the previous line.

ffmpeg -list_devices true -f dshow -i dummy

ffmpeg -f dshow -list_options true -i video="some video source"
ffmpeg -f dshow -list_options true -i audio="some audio source"

And that FFMPEG command in Linux, would likely do just as bad a
job at lipsync. In Linux, you'd replace gdigrab with x11grab,
and you'd need to adjust the name of the audio and so on.
FFMPEG has "equivalent" capabilities in Linux. But any
sync issues it might have, are buried in the engine details.

I can't tell you what SimpleScreenRecorder is doing,
but whatever it is, they're pretty proud of it, because
they put up an actual "sync graphic" on the screen while
the capture is running.

Paul

On Tue, 13 Nov 2018 11:05:40 +0000, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

But in contrast, those appear to be _alternatives_, so I wouldn't have
continued the number sequence.

You are 100% correct.
Those are actually a cut and paste from my log file.
(I keep a log file on all installations.)

So _next_ time I post those instructions, I'll break up the number scheme.
To remember, I already made the changes in my log file.


Also:
When you say "download ... command http://whatevervideourl.com", does
whatevervideourl.com have to be the URL of the actual video itself, or
can it be the URL of the containing webpage (such as a YouTube page)?

Hi J. P. Gilliver,
I'm not the best person to ask that question but I'll answer from what I
know which is only from experience.

Both methods work depending on what you're downloading.
For example, if you're downloading a Youtube video, you can use the page
that got you to that youtube video, or you can use the video itself.

Remember this youtube-dl works on, oh, I don't know, a hundred different
web sites or so, so it's not just for youtube.

For those web sites, like news sites or whatever, most of the time the main
URL that got you to the web page works the same as the url to the actual
video inside the web page, but not always.

I'm sure you're mileage will vary depending on the web page.
If you have a specific video you're interested in, I can test it for you.

Also others will know a LOT more than I do as I only use it to download
documentaries for the most part, and now Android tutorials. SO I'm not a
heavy user.

The manpage is extensive though...


If
it has to be the actual video component, does anything you've done in
steps 01 to 05 help you actually find what URL to use?

Again, it's pretty flexible. If the URL ends up playing a video, even if
there is other crap on the page, generally _that_ url works (but not
always).

I can't really describe it better as I only rarely download a video that
isn't on Youtube where, on Youtube, both the main (long) URL works as does
the short one.

For example, this week I was writing Android apps from Windows using
freeware, where I'm a complete noob (these are my first five apps ever)
Your first Android app takes about a hour from start to finish
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.mobile.android/aW64zYeBtF0

As always, so that others could follow in my footsteps, I posted these URLs
into that thread, where I used the youtube downloader so that I could start
and stop them at will without having to be in a browser online (they were
actually loaded to the iPad using Linux dual boot to do so).
Android Studio For Beginners Part 1, 2, 3, 4
by Bill Butterfield, Published on Jun 13, 2017 (mp4)
https://youtu.be/dFlPARW5IX8 (part 1)
https://youtu.be/6ow3L39Wxmg (part 2)
https://youtu.be/rdGpT1pIJlw (part 3)
https://youtu.be/bu5Y3uZ6LLM (part 4)

But, in reality, these are the URLs I originally used:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFlP...ature=youtu.be (part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ow3...ature=youtu.be (part 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdGp...ature=youtu.be (part 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu5Y...ature=youtu.be (part 4)

Both styles of URLs work
o The top of the page
o The video embedded inside the page

If I understand your question correctly (and I might not), then both URLs
work fine, one of which is the page and the other the video in the page.

Playlists also work, but I don't use them, but you can point to a playlist
that you have on Youtube and it will download everything in the playlist.

Again, the manpage has more than you could ever ask for, and, again,
I just use it for simple stuff where it does more than what I know.