TimeLapze: Open-source screen recorder | Hacker News Reader

TimeLapze: Open-source screen recorder

github.com

195 pointswkaisertexas50 comments

For those wondering about the difference between this and OBS, it looks like this is actually for creating time lapses of the desktop and camera specifically:

> A open-source menu bar application for creating screen and camera timelapses without excessive file sizes.

It should probably be in the title.

"for MacOS" should also have been in the title

In the same line I found this today

https://w-okada.github.io/screen-recorder-ts/

A WASM ffmpeg that helps with quick screen recording.

Pretty cool what these modern web things can do.

Last release was on Nov 8, 2023

I couldn't get it to work on my mac (M1 Max).

- A short recording saves a file of zero bytes.

- When you record a gaming session (Geforce Now), it crashes the system, causing a reboot. I realize it may not have been meant for it, but it shouldn't be crashing the entire system.

But it would certainly be cool to have a simpler alternative to OBS for recording programming sessions. Does anyone know of a suitable tool?

Every single major OS ships with a simple screen recorder. Name your OS and I'll tell you the name of the screen recorder you already have installed right now.

For recording a programming session or a timelapse? From experience, Qucktime on macOS isn’t practical due to file size.

Isn't OBS an open-source screen recorder, plus a lot more? What's the distinguishing factor here? It'd be nice if that was the title instead.

Time-lapses, like the name of the app implies..?

OBS is great when I want to record precisely, but needs a lot of setting up. I wish there'd be something as easy to use as print screen but for record too. Press button, mark rectangle/select window, press start, record for 5 sec, export as gif/mp4, directly upload to Imgur and save link in clipboard. Would pay money for this.

I have been usin Peek for this. https://github.com/phw/peek

Not perfect, but works.

Sounds like ShareX is what you are looking for, it has these exact functions basically. Although it is Windows only. https://getsharex.com/

I bought Bandicam for precisely this. Use it every day when making a game to show progress, bugs and features. Just works and is simple.

I've never managed to get OBS to be simple.

On Mac, I've enjoyed kap.

https://getkap.co/

Quicktime lets you record all or some of the screen, along with optional microphone audio. Saves to an MP4 file.

Many moons ago, I hacked together a similar app with Python [1]. It broke because of some MacOS changes and ever since then I hoped that someone would build a "native" alternative with Swift. Good job! Now I can finally point people there and archive my repo.

[1]: https://endler.dev/2020/timelapse/

Nice, I’ll try it. I assume this takes a screenshot every second or so and we get a video?

Semi-related but I’ve been wanting a screen recording tool that drops identical consecutive frames for reducing file size. Maybe frame comparison would be mouse-insensitive idk. Cause I would like to review what I’ve been working on and still capture the details as I’m scrolling a page, but often there’s half a second where I’m just reading or I take a drink of water or something and I don’t need those frames. I suppose this is a pretty close approximation if I can capture like 10fps or something

You can drop similar frames with ffmpeg: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37088517/remove-sequenti...

The most obvious use is of course to reencode the video after you did your screen recording with your usual software, but it might be possible to combine with ffmpeg's screen capture and do it all in one go, I haven't tried it.

http://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Capture/Desktop

This looks interesting to me. I want to see if there's any pattern when I work with my laptop.

1. Tried installing with brew; failed. Using binary from the releases page (last released Dec 26, 2023) works.

2. Enabled the option to record 2 displays (Macbook Air's screen + 1 external display) and Facetime camera. It works! I'm using MBA M2 and it took ~20% of cpu. No lag.

3. I disabled the FT camera and only record 2 displays, cpu usage down to ~6%. If I only record 1 screen (2560x1440), cpu usage is down to ~2%.

4. Timelapze is running while I type this. I have other apps running (vscode, spark, tableplus, etc.). I don't think I notice any performance degradation, which is good.

5. Output of the recording is good. I can still optimize the size with ffmpeg. A recording of 1 minute 55 seconds (6x speed up) has 141 mb size. It becomes 28.3 mb after optimizing with ffmpeg (with no noticeable quality drop)

Will test this more and use it as daily screen recording. I want to see what's the longest duration I can record with this. Here's an example of the recording output. I trimmed to 15s (6x speed up, so it's 90 seconds in reality):

https://imgur.com/gallery/RjSemE1

Note: Actual size of 15s video is 10.5 mb, optimized further with fmpeg to make it 2.2 mb.

> If you liked this project, consider giving the repository a star ! I am trying to get to 75 stars to be added to homebrew

I hate that that's a metric.

Homebrew wants to avoid being filled up with random stuff that nobody uses.

So to get something into homebrew repos you have to show somehow that people use it.

I guess GitHub star count is one way of doing that. Even though it’s probably pretty easy to game it.

For open source software that is cross platform you could probably get it into another package manager first, and then use that to argue for getting into Homebrew. But since this tool is macOS specific it would not get added to any Linux or BSD package manager repos.

This will be great for code/game jams. You can let it run for the duration because it's not a resource hog and wind up with a cool time-lapse video at the end that's a manageable file size for some quick editing and you're done. There's nothing more daunting than completing a marathon programming session only to be faced with a bunch of video editing and publishing. I'm always intrigued when I watch one and it's a cool way to get more people to try your game after; thanks for this!

Isn't OBS opensource?

It looks like this software is actually for recording time lapses, specifically:

> Take color-accurate timelapses of your screens and cameras on MacOS

But speaking of OBS, I use it on my Mac (a Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra and 64gb memory) and it does not feel good. The interface feels slow and laggy, and after Sonoma introduced native noise canceling for all microphones, the audio recording of my mic sounds deeply pitch shifted and slowed to the point that I sound like a hostage taker making a phone call to the police in some old 80s movie. I can't find a way to fix that despite fiddling for hours.

@dang Someone seems to be going around maliciously flagging comments all over HN recently, including in this post. Could you take a look? Thanks.

OP, it looks like you’re shadowbanned for some reason. I can see your comments but only with showdead turned on. I’d try emailing dang to see if you can get unbanned, I don’t see any reason you should be in your comment history to be honest.

Typo: MIT Liscense => MIT License

lucky for us it's open source!

https://github.com/wkaisertexas/ScreenTimeLapse/pull/23

Common issue in open source: work is duplicated.

This change was already proposed 3h before you did https://github.com/wkaisertexas/ScreenTimeLapse/pull/19

Nice does it also capture desktop audio?

Time-lapsed audio? That sounds messy.

Can you make it work automatically once you turn on your computer, without opening by yourself the app?

If the app doesn’t support that itself, you should be able to do it using an Automator script that runs at startup.

Anybody able to install it using Homebrew? I get a download failed error.

Yes, it looks like the Homebrew script is pointing to a zip file that doesn't exist. The URL is wrong. Somebody's created a PR to fix it:

https://github.com/wkaisertexas/ScreenTimeLapse/pull/21

Why not just use QuickTime out of the box?

QuickTime file size outputs are ridiculous. This can also record the camera simultaneously.

Being for MacOS it'll get a lot of time-lapse of cafes

Title suggestion "...for MacOS".

It also requires macOS 13+.

Time-lapse functionality, but only mentioned once in the title and no image shows options for time-lapse recordings? Always amusing when, as a user, you have to explore the unique selling point yourself through installation.

...or through the name?!

names are sound and smoke...

ever wondered from which country the words Häagen Dazs stem? They are fictional words from the US ice cream founders to make them look Scandinavian.

What kind of comparison is that? The tool is literally called "TimeLapze".

The name shows or explains exactly what about the options for time-lapse recordings?

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