VIDEO Call Recording from inside the element adroid app

Your use case

What would you like to do?

I would like to be able to RECORD my kids playing while doing a VIDEO CONF with their grandparents!

This is basically the MAIN REASON I was forced to try and search for separate Audio-Video app versus built-in cellular audio-video. I got tired of "nonsensical" stupid reasons (ie political) as to why not enable recording in other official manufacturer apps.

It's a moot point, anyone can grab another phone and record, albeit in a little bit worse quality, so any "non-technical" reasons should be completely ignored. No permission should be required from other person or anything, even enable auto-record etc.

You can have a "flag" setting in client that says, this user reserves the right to record audio/video or text anytime and archive it (without warning/notifying you), if you wish you can refuse communication with people using such settings, reserving that right. But of course someone can use a custom client to bypass it, so the whole permission/notify etc is proven moot/nonsense. So we just need a way to record the audio/video streams. App users can always be told hey you can't make anyone "unsee" what you send them or stop the myriad of methods they can use to save/record/archive it.

Why would you like to do it?

Because its very nice, cool, and very useful that's why, and inside the Element android app is the best/easiest place to do it. I've tried Screen Recorders but they can't get the audio portion, they can record video but not the audio for some reason.

How would you like to achieve it?

Well I'd like someone else to achieve it :) If I could I would just send a pull-request instead of this feature request :D (But it should be done within the client apps themselves which obviously have access to the audio/video streams etc.)

Willing to donate towards a bounty somewhere if this is prioritized high and progresses.

Have you considered any alternatives?

Yea, tried recording via "Screen Recording" apps on android, but though records usual element android app usage and even video during video calls, it doesn't record the audio.

Additional context

Is this feature already somewhere and I'm blind? I've only just setup my own homeserver and compiled my own apk so just starting using it, so maybe I just missed the feature? Does it exist? Or is it under development already somewhere?

Also wanted to say Big THANKS to the creators of this project, I enjoyed reading the honest and down to earth writeup at https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/da219t/im_project_lead_for_matrixorg_the_open_protocol/

I appreciate the apparent open-ness that is evident even in the very liberal license on everything compared to many other projects that in secret dream of going "proprietary" in some way or another. (proof of that is usually in restrictive GPL or AGPL licenses) So just in this regard, the MATRIX projects stands head and shoulders above others in the flexibility it gives everyone and most importantly the peace of mind assurance that this is a project that seems to not have started with any "hidden" aspirations! 👍

Oh and the OTHER big reason I chose Matrix over the other hugely popular ones, is that though in "theory" they let you build your own, they don't make it easy or make it purposefully hard or broken in some way, AND they force you to give their app access to your PHONE NUMBER! That's inexcusable for apps pretending to be the all and all of what they were 'pretending' to be : D

So THANKS to the MATRIX!

element-hq / element-android