Show HN: Ffscreencast – CLI-based screencasts for OS X, Linux, BSD | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Ffscreencast – CLI-based screencasts for OS X, Linux, BSD

github.com

76 pointseverythingcli16 comments

I really wish there were something like this for Windows. Free/Open source, not requiring me to use someone else's service (i.e I can host my own server to stream to and from) etc.

I want to stream games on Windows, but the games I want to stream aren't allowed on various streaming services, or those services require proprietary software in some capacity.

I haven't had much luck with ffmpeg and ffserver; it's very hard to configure for me.

Perhaps this is the only time I'm asking if there's a Windows alternative to something for GNU/Linux :)

For capturing, encoding, and transporting the stream, you can use OBS https://obsproject.com/ , which is what tons of streamers use.

Are you looking for a web frontend for RTMP that you can host? http://www.projekktor.com/ looks promising, but I have no personal experience with it.

ShareX uses ffmpeg on Windows for screencast recording (similar to ffscreencast), but ShareX doesn't seem to care much about streaming.

https://getsharex.com/

If you are on Windows, why do you have a problem with “proprietary software in some capacity”?

Are the games you want to stream also proprietary software?

Looks awesome. I typically use and recommend ScreenFlow[1] for mac but it is a bit expensive at $99. ffscreencast looks like a great option for quick recordings.

[1] - https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm

Not as cool as this or Screenflow, but if on macOS, QuickTime Player can do screen recording as well :)

VLC too. Media -> Capture/Save -> Capturing device -> Desktop.

Glad to see pulseaudio-support is on the roadmap (shouldn't be too hard really). On Linux I have never had a proper ALSA recording with ffmpeg, due to ALSA "xruns", i.e. bad buffers. Pulse may be using a bulldozer to drive in a nail, but it doesn't yield this problem.

yes, however still need some digging on this as my experience lacks a bit when it comes to sound on linux.

You could use pacmd to gather the list of microphones and monitors. ffmpeg supports "-f pulse" in place of your "-f alsa".

thanks. Btw do you guys have any good article links about the differences between pulse and alsa and why one might be superior to the other.

Pulse has more features, but sits atop alsa. So it's not generally one or the other as pulse still needs alsa underneath. I don't have any docs on which is 'better' but a quick search reveals a lot of opinion on the matter. Bear in mind many Linux distros introduced Pulse a little early (Ubuntu [my employer] included). This caused quite a bit of hatred for it, as it was a bit unstable. Now those issues are mostly gone, and it Just Works™.

Very good, works as expected on my Gentoo box, multiple monitors and camera. Solid ffmepg wrapper

thanks

I spent a couple hours playing with voctomix to get a similar setup going last night (way overkill but seemed the main tool I could find to do a webcam overlay in realtime)

Will check this out.

With GStreamer you can put together a processing pipeline for that on the command line:

“gst-launch-1.0 v4l2src ! timeoverlay ! xvimagesink” gives you a webcam overlay.

For more info: http://wiki.oz9aec.net/index.php/Gstreamer_cheat_sheet

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