XVidCap screen-capture

[wiak]

Programming is your hobby, video editing is ours.. Dont get Puppy Linux something else that a popular OS light and fast VS big Linux, don't reduce it to a training laboratory for a dozen of Learners, as abandoned airplanes in the desert or White mice produced by thousands for experiments
As an Evidance Xvidcap with xenialpup will ask less MBs than to install FFmpeg, silly devs Xvidcap is all icluded stuff.
First lesson in programming is 'search if what you need is not yet available.
...
Best screencaster ever. Nothing else but xvidcap! ...

You are correct, Doudou: It is time we who try to develop new code, stop bothering because the programs already out there are better anyway. xvidcap is really a nice program; despite it not being developed further since "sourceforge News: xvidcap 1.1.7 released July 2008".

So did a very quick test, just using default xvidcap config and default weX config (except using mp4 in weX instead of mkv format since may prefer that, and both recording at 25 fps). Tried to keep video file size and duration similar. Playing back the videos, it seemed (just by eye) to be that quality was pretty good in both results; I think weX output slightly better, but both okay. So yeah, just use xvidcap: devs just wasting their time really... Oops, wait a minute... look at the resulting video size. Hmmm... I wonder why?

Maybe you can spot the problem in the attached screenshot - seems to be something to do with the codec used (DIVX in case of xvidcap...). So how do you manage to get h264 codec (and aac for audio) with xvidcap? Please explain to me how to do that DouDou? I really am not very familiar with using xvidcap, unlike you Doudou, so maybe it is possible so I will be happy to know how to do that, thanks.

From one of the many useless Puppy forum developers,

wiak

EDIT: Above is using the xvidcap from Mike Walsh post 1 of this thread, which seems to include its own pretty small, but old, ffmpeg, though I should say that I haven't as yet checked out how that xvidcap binary was compiled.

__________________

Using xvidcap:
Input 'test-0000.mpeg':
Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg4 (Simple Profile) (FMP4 / 0x34504D46), yuv420p, 800x600 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 1362 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 tbc
Stream #0:1: Audio: mp3 (U[0][0][0] / 0x0055), 44100 Hz, stereo, s16p, 64 kb/s

Video Duration: 10.12 seconds
Video size: 1,822,104 bytes (OOPS... bit big?!)
------------------

Using weX:
Input 'try.mp4':
Stream #0:1(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 800x608, 301 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 12800 tbn, 50 tbc (default)
Stream #0:0(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 192 kb/s (default)

Video Duration: 10.14 seconds
Video size: 634,500 bytes (not much more than one third the size of the xvidcap test above... hmmm...)
------------------

[Mike Walsh]

@ wiak:-

I wouldn't let Pelo get under your skin ('cos we all know that's who it really is, don't we?) I'm well aware that he does more than just give feedback; he goes out of his way, a lot of the time, to have a really good bitch about things that aren't to his liking.....but I never notice a scrap of anything constructive forthcoming, do you?

Personally, I'm like most Puppians on here. Oh, sure, I do a fair bit of re-packaging, it's true (and perhaps added the odd wee YAD box into some of my re-packs, simply to make things easier to use).....but at the end of the day, I'm eternally grateful to you and the other Puppy devs for going to the trouble to put together original, carefully-coded stuff from scratch. You're 'good guys', in my book.

I just wish I had those abilities myself.....aside from not having the time nowadays, following various health-related issues I find I have increasingly less inclination to learn! I have to add that it's only recently that I've started really trying out some of the original, minimally-coded 'proper' Puppy apps & stuff (and I've been pleasantly surprised at how good some of them are).

I've never been bothered about 'eye-candy' (I do love XVidCap's minimalist interface, it's true).....although I've usually been trying to get the more well-known apps running in Puppy. Trouble is, as you know, many of those are pretty big in size, having been designed for 'mainstream' distros. (Talking of which, why is it that most of those occupy around the 4-5 GB mark, whereas Pup's only a fraction of that size, but can do all that they can???)

I've been meaning to have a look at weX. I shall do so.....and let you know what I think of it.

(Just as an aside, d'you think it might be possible to take XvidCap, and do whatever it takes to add the ability to make use of h264 and aac.....'cos I have to agree with you about the size issue. That's my only real complaint with XVidCap, although I realise it hasn't had the development to make use of a lot of codecs, containers & formats which have become increasingly used nowadays.)

EDIT:- Just downloaded weX, weav & scrox. I'm in Slacko 560 ATM; I have libgiblib and libimlib2 on here already, so we'll see what happens.....


Mike.

[wiak]

I usually use XenialDog (nowadays I've moved to 64bit version) and for some reason or other weX works particularly well on there. On other systems, including several Pups, I find problems with weX in terms of audio/video synchronisation and similar. Don't know why the difference (except that weX does depend on newish ffmpeg and in Pups quite often the ffmpeg is pretty old). Note that pause control in weX is really only for pausing audio - pause in weX doesn't work well with audio/video combined (I simply don't pause videos or I make them in pieces and join them later...). Fact is, an app written in C code or C++, such as xvidcap or SSR can use ffmpeg libs in a much more controlled manner than a simple frontend bash script for ffmpeg, such as weX. I can't do much about that except consider writing a version in C... but I won't be doing that since SSR is out there already. As I say, however, weX works well in the Dogs, and if ffmpeg already installed it's a tiny addition so well worth having it in such circumstances.

Yes, xvidcap could possibly be developed to use more modern codecs; developing it could prove to be an ideal (I'm not fond of SSR, if only because it required heavy Qt libs, though I'm also not fond of its large user interface either). For me weX is enough, and xvidcap code, as I mentioned, is really huge in terms of number of code lines involved (though that isn't a complaint - once compiled it is fine), but that doesn't mean it would necessarily be difficult to modify. Whether I get round to looking into that possibility, I currently have no idea.

I'm pretty sure weX won't work or won't work well with Slackware (I remember trying it) - reason being the old ffmpeg, which doesn't accept the relatively advanced h264-related commandline used by weX for maximum speed of conversion (so weX can work well even recording fast/high fps video game play) and pretty good even on quite old machines if suitably new ffmpeg installed. weX also works in XenialPup but not TahrPup out of the box, and for some reason works better (good in fact) in XenialDog than in XenialPup (which is odd since same ffmpeg was used in my test with XenialPup).

Anyway, these issues tend not to be weX bugs but simply too old ffmpeg builds - summary is that weX depends on newer ffmpeg - then it is pretty good with results comparable to SSR (and higher quality than any currently available xvidcap since that indeed needs developed to use newer codecs despite Pelo's ill-informed nonsense claims).

wiak

[Mike Walsh]

Hi again, wiak.

I know this is probably the wrong place, but it's MY thread.....so if I want to derail it, I will..!

I got weX running nicely in Slacko 560.....complete with embedded webcam image (although no sound. More on that in a minute.) Eee, but I do like this...

(BTW: you and mcewanw ARE the same individual, aren't you? At least, I think you are; your prose style is absolutely identical. I tend to notice stuff like that...)

I digress.

I'm about to install in 570; my daily driver, and general workhorse. Libglib and libImlib are already here, too, so; a coupla questions, if I may?

I want to try using Fred's wex-portable (I've been boning-up since my earlier post, y'see!) Do I still need to install weav and scroX for this to work? I understand Fred's compiled a newer ffmpeg into the binary/AppImage/whatever it is, but I presume I still need the other two, yes?

I take it that if I do this, then I won't need to change the audio and video plugins.....is that right? I understand that the modified versions are only for the older ffmpeg...

-------------------------------------------------

About the audio thing I mentioned earlier; you might be able to advise with this one. A wee bit of history, first...

I started in Linux with Ubuntu in May 2014, just after XP went EOL. Used it for a year, then switched to all-Puppy. During that first year, any audio recording I did in Ubuntu played back perfectly....OK?

All the years I've been using Puppy, whenever I want to record audio, I can do so.....but playback? It sounds all slow and treacly, and nothing I can do will change that. I'd just about given up on ever again recording audio; I thought my audio chip had developed a major problem.

Fast-forward to very recently. A month or two ago, I installed Fred's Bionic Dog. Apart from installing a current Iron browser, and a couple of other things, I haven't yet done very much with it. However, just as an experiment, I've got a tiny little webcam screen-grabber/recorder that watchdog let me have, called VideoView. It's a single, compiled binary, that will literally run in anything. I fired this up, and, just for the hell of it, tried recording a short clip.

(I have to use a headset when recording. Although my Logitech c920 HD Pro webcam works perfectly for video, being UVC-compliant, Pup (or the Dogs) doesn't even see the audio card for some reason. But that's easily worked around by means of the headset.)

Having recorded the clip, I tried playing it back. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather, I was so surprised. Audio played back perfectly, just like in the Ubuntu days!

This indicates to me that since this has always been the same hardware since I began using Linux, it's obviously not a hardware problem in Pup, but instead, some kind of software problem. Can't be owt else. Would you have any ideas as to what, though? Something to do with the older versions of ffmpeg in use, perhaps? I thought it might be something to do with the kernel in use (560/570 using early 3-series as they do), but the problem still exists in the very newest Puppies.

What d'you think? Sorry for the length of this missive, but this has been bugging the hell out of me for years.....


Mike.

[wiak]

(BTW: you and mcewanw ARE the same individual, aren't you? At least, I think you are

Yes, I used to be part of a programmer's 'group' (ten years ago) and back then wiak was a group login name (initials of team), though even then it was mainly me who used it. That group dispersed over world now and not doing any team work just now so I decided to use it - originally from non-mcewanw specific project work, but had password issues so ended up just using it generally too.

I wasn't quite sure from your post if you now know what the problem with your audio recording/playback was (I didn't quite follow if audio recorded properly but wouldn't play back or if recorded wrongly).

As for weav and scrox, well weav is always optional (though it's tiny so probably worth including) and I can't remember if Fred included scrox in his portable ffmpeg weX version - since you have made dotpet, I presume you have that sorted out now. weX does require scrox for selecting screen areas to record (for full-screen X records only, scrox would not be required). EDIT: Yes, fred's compiled ffmpeg is new enough that the default weX-inbuild commads should work fine without needing the external mod code. You should also consider including his gifenc program, as described along with it's direct use by weX in one of the threads (sorry, can't remember offhand exactly which thread or post; that allows weX-created videos to immediately be make into animated gifs; you would be best to use his later gifenc select version, since allows more control over created gifs. Sorry, I can't remember the details, but, see here:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 724#948724

You making the dotpet is fine by me, by the way - I don't have time to do such dotpet creations these days since working on other matters that taking up most of my Linux-related time.

Note that scrox has full scrot capability so can do normal screenshots too. Just enter: scrox --help for tips on that. You can also therefore make scrot a symlink to scrox and that would work for whenever scrot is otherwise expected.

Cheers,

wiak

[hamoudoudou]

mcewanw and pelo exchanged a lot on Pavrecord, one testing the newest stuff for screenrecording.. It was a debate too, but the developer develops as he likes. Never it was a trouble about that. Sure better than people telling 'very nice, dear friend ' and never using the application. Isn't it mcewanw ?
Xvidcap is old. That is not the question. It does the job..
As Avidemux does the job for editing.
I know new programs that even the dev never succeeded to make a video with.. But they let the pet available.. That is not professional. Well they are not professional too.. Video editing is not their hobby. They search something to program, anything..
Cinelerra... pages and pages.. Not only one video edited with it..
They are aircraft builders, and pilots, passengers who will go on board.. If the dev never flies on his airplane, sure he can say 'it's ok, men, take off !"
Testers are not here to be kind or nasty, they are here to feed back facts.
That is not for you wiak.. i fully respect your work. and we will work together a long time..

[Mike Walsh]

@wiak:-

Just to let you know, I have Wex working well in Slackos 560/570, both using the re-pack I did using Fred's wex-portable.....especially audio. (Finally!!)

To clarify your above observation vis-a-vis my previous post, yes; audio would always record properly (at least, I assume it did), but wouldn't playback correctly. Or perhaps it was never recording correctly in the first place; I'm honestly not certain now.

The end result was always slow, treacly-sounding audio playback.....which annoyed the hell out of me. Using these packages, however.....problem solved.

Just FYI, I'm about to try it out in Racy 5.5. We'll see if this works with the last of the T2 builds.

EDIT:- Amazing. It appears that by using Fred's included ffmpeg, this will work even in a Puppy as old as Racy. With the exception of the VU meter not wanting to show up, I'm very impressed!

Mind you, having battleshooter's glibc-2.20 'upgrade' for Racy (so I can run the last Linux 32-bit release of Chrome) might just have something to do with that.....

Thanks again.


Mike.

[wiak]

Hi Mike,

Did you notice that Fred just updated his portable weX offering - maybe noticed you making dotpet and wanting to fix a few flaws in what he put together earlier.

Not sure why vu meter not showing in Racy; must be a small tweak required to fix, but as you say, not really a priority.

Wiak

[fredx181]

Did you notice that Fred just updated his portable weX offering - maybe noticed you making dotpet and wanting to fix a few flaws in what he put together earlier.

No flaws in earlier version of wex-portable AFAIK, the update is just for to include your newest weX version.

Fred