I first read about recordMyDesktop in a Linux magazine, and after watching how it well it records video, I must say I am impressed. It is indeed one of the better applications for screencasting on Linux, much better than the generic one I got from Synaptic on Ubuntu, which I have forgotten the name to, not that it matters, now that recordMyDesktop has entered my life :)

THANK YOU !!!

As mentioned, this has always been a problem for Linux users and the solutions have gone on forever :

*Patched ffmpeg's
*Running Linux inside a Virtual Machine on Windows / OSX

Thankyou Lifehacker !

RecordMyDesktop is crap. Sorry to say but Iv tried teaking this sucker to work but nothing works. If someone can send me an email at driedmosquito@trashmail.net with the Subject: Lifehacker - RecordMyDesktop & give me proper settings, then I might reconsiter this again and try it out. Thanks.

Iv tried many of the record the desktops, and alot of them are crap.

After a quick search, I answered my own question of recordMyDesktop vis a vis Istanbul. The answer seems to lie in complaints of instability in Istanbul, and recordMyDesktop includes audio recording.

Also, it may be useful to know that both recordMyDesktop and Istanbul record only in open formats (Ogg Theora/Vorbis).

Further Reading:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ScreenCasting
[linuxmafia.com]
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreencastTeam/FAQ

It's usually better to use sudo aptitude instead of sudo apt-get because aptitude tracks dependencies (and uninstalls them with the program) and also installs recommended (not just required) dependencies, but just a little note.

don't know if this would work in a linux environment, but i've had good luck with free online service www.screencast-o-matic.com - you might want to give that a try.

Someone mentioned audio, will this 'sample' audio that is being played by whatever video source? I am having a terrible time getting sounds snippets off of DVDs etc.

Thanks for the aptitude tip, I have been doing apt-get for everything, I'll look into that!

Great topic LH! Thanks, again!!

If you like recordMyDesktop for creating screencasts, take a look at [www.debugmode.com]

Too bad the 2.0 version isn't out for Linux yet. You can export the screencasts to many different formats and also add text-bubbles for example.

@TheVault: I've had problems with it as well, particularly the video playback. I've had a lot better luck with xvidcap, it outputs to mpeg and it (seems) to encode quicker as well. [xvidcap.sourceforge.net]

Has anyone been successful in loading this software on a RHEL 4 distribution?

I found that the the majority of screencasts where the audio and video are recorded simultaneously suffer from "uhms" and "errs". When I create screencasts I do the video first, then watch it to make sure it's okay. Once I am happy with it I record the audio in Audacity and dub it on using avidemux. All the screencasts I put on [screencasts.ubuntu.com] were created that way.

I use a modified version of ffmpeg to capture screencasts. It works great but I have to record at 2fps so I don't loose too much frames in a 1280x1024 resolution.

$ sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop gtk-recordmydesktop
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package recordmydesktop

Any ideas? I'm on Ubuntu Dapper.

Bruno, if you record screencasts at 1280x1024, which resolution will use your 'watchers' providing they also need some estate for the player frame and command panel? In my experience of video-tutorial author, a resolution at least slightly inferior to the average screen resolution among users is the best to use.

I used recordMyDesktop to put a video on Google Thanks!

Incredible program. Takes about 5 seconds to compile, too. By the way, for kde users like me, there is a qt version of the front-end.