screencast
I've seen animated GIF images of screen casts (like the one below) promoted a few times on this site as a way to improve answers.
What toolchain is being used to create these? Is there a program that does this automagically, or are people taking screencasts, converting them into a series of static frames, and then creating the GIF images?
I've found a satisfatory way:
It seems that mkv(**) allows for many levels of compression. By using a low compression for video, I am able to record in real time and with quality on my lowly eeepc.
To achieve that, I had to use ffmpeg. It is available in Ubuntu, but I used a version from a ppa(*):
To install:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jon-severinsson/ffmpeg
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
To record:
ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 25 -s 800x450 -i :0.0+0,60 -f alsa -i plughw:1,0 -vcodec libx264 -crf 0 -preset ultrafast -acodec pcm_s16le file.mkv
The important part is this "preset ultrafast" that tells the encoder not to compress the video too much.
(*) apparently, Ubuntu is using a fork of ffmpeg that is not the most common in use. I tried that line with Ubuntu's ffmpeg and it did not work. However, one should note that I am still using 11.10
(**) probably mkv is a container, and this libx264 is the codec that allows different compressions ...
dconf-editororg.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys in the tree of settingsmax-screencast-length (the default value is 30 seconds)
Best Answer
Peek
Is a new application that lets you easily record GIF's from your screen.
Anyway, keep in mind that GIF's have a very limited color palette so it's not a very good idea to use them.
Since Ubuntu 18.10 you can install Peek directly.
For older versions of Ubuntu, you can install the latest versions of Peek from its PPA.
Find more information in the GitHub repo.