search

rjanja / desktop-capture

Screenshot and screencasting tools for Cinnamon.
40 stars 11 forks source link

Add byzanz-record as a recorder #33

Closed crydalch closed 9 years ago

crydalch commented 9 years ago

Could the applet be extended to support byzanz-record? Coming from Gnome 2, the byzanz Gnome panel applet is incredibly useful to record quick and dirty gifs for emails, teaching, bug reports, etc... and it'd be great if this applet could support that as well.

I tried adding it to the support.json file, but I have no idea what I'm doing, and was mostly hoping it'd "just work". But it didn't...

Thanks!

crydalch commented 9 years ago

I should add, I'm not sure how to tell the applet to use byzanz-record, since only recordmydesktop and cinnamon-recorder show up in the config menu.

Thanks!

rjanja commented 9 years ago

Hi @crydalch, yes I can extend it to support byzanz-record. I've experimented with it this morning (I'd never heard of it) and it's quite nifty. What options did you use the most under Gnome 2? Looking at the docs it seems to support a number of output formats, duration setting and whether to record cursor. It seems like output format would be fine if just limited to GIF, right? What about duration setting, what do you prefer there?

I've plugged it in locally and it works quite well despite currently using just the default 10 second duration and no way to stop the recording manually. I'm sorry for the mis-match between the docs and actual program, it used to be really simple to add more program support before we switched to using Cinnamon Settings API, the possible keys for which I can't modify values at runtime. It's on the roadmap to move back to a custom settings app, but I don't have as much time these days.

rjanja commented 9 years ago

Byzanz configuration added in d5fc692ad2e2e578a860488ebf73a3bb8b56dabc. Currently supports only untimed captures (must stop recording) and no way to turn off cursor display.

crydalch commented 9 years ago

Thanks! Look forward to trying it out!

So my use of the byzanz applet has been using the area and windows options, like you've got here. Having the chair is just fine.

One interesting fact, the gnome 2 panel applet didn't have a duration, it just goes on and on until you manually stop it (by clicking the applet button). So since byzanz-record requires a duration, maybe the default could be 200s, so it doesn't cancel when doing some recording.

Does that make sense? And did you see that other issue, about keybindings to stop a running recording of record my desk top? That would work with byzanz too, right?

I really appreciate this, and kudos for the fast response! On Nov 4, 2014 8:37 AM, "Robert Adams" notifications@github.com wrote:

Byzanz configuration added in d5fc692 https://github.com/rjanja/desktop-capture/commit/d5fc692ad2e2e578a860488ebf73a3bb8b56dabc. Currently supports only untimed captures (must stop recording) and no way to turn off cursor display.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/rjanja/desktop-capture/issues/33#issuecomment-61669274 .

rjanja commented 9 years ago

You're welcome, and thank you for the feedback.

We can set a timed duration by passing, e.g. -d 5/--duration=5 for five seconds, but currently I'm running it without a timer and requiring a manual stop via the menu. There's really no easy way to have a spinner for duration selection in the menu itself; it could be in settings but then it's a few too many mouse-clicks away. It sounds like the way it is now will suit your needs though!

Yes, I saw your other ticket, and others have expressed a desire to use (and modify) a keybinding to start/stop Cinnamon's built-in recorder. I'd like to standardize this to work independent of recorder, of course Cinnamon will require a special treatment as the recorder is built-in and the keybinding is part of Cinnamon and not this applet. But shouldn't be too difficult, I'll check it out later this week. Cheers!

crydalch commented 9 years ago

That works great, thanks! I think byzanz should respect the Cursor toggle as well; or if that doesn't work, at least have the cursor on by default. For quick-gifs, I think most of the time the cursor is desired (just like not having a timed recording).

Look forward to trying out those hotkeys, when you're able to tackle it! Thanks!