Intro

The below method was derived by experimenting with various options and scenarios and, as such, is not complete yet. In particular – I have not tried any sound options yet.

Troubleshooting

Scenarios which fail:

• Starting VLC from the command prompt / terminal / Xterm with “screen://” argument – this seems to screw up the whole display
• Some codecs / encapsulation methods produce erors such as: “Streaming / Transcoding failed”, “VLC could not open the encoder”, “cannot open encoder”, “cannot find video encoder”, “cannot create video chain”, “cannot create packetizer output”
• Some codecs / encapsulation methods do not produce erors but don’t produce output either
• Some combinations of input parameters produce a video which deteriorates in quality, becomes distorted, full of pixelized squares etc

How To

Summary of all parameters which worked for me in the next section.

• Open VLC as you would do normally
• Window -> Errors and Warnings (this will warn you if encoding failed)
• File -> Open Capture Device -> Screen
• Try to limit the area You are recording by specifying Subscreen parameters – I didn’t have any luck with recording full screen
• Tick: “Streaming/Saving”
• Click on “Settings…”
• Select “File”, click on Browse, select dir where you want to save the file and give it some name
• Encapsulation Method: MPEG 4
• Transcoding options: tick “Video” and select mp4, Bitrate 512
• Untick “Audio” (just to test if it works without it)
• Click “OK”
• we are back to previous screen, click “Open”

Once You clicked “Open” the video / screencast will start recording. There won’t be any progress indicated on the VLC interface, so click on “stop” button in the VLC interface after a while and open the file to see if recording worked.

Additional info

VideoLAN Streaming formats – list of all streaming / container formats and their compatibilities.

Parameters that worked for me

MPEG-4, no sound, 00:29 seconds

Screen Capture Input:
Frames per second: 20
Subscreen left: 800, Subscreen width: 400
Subscreen top: 0, Subscreen height: 800
Follow the mouse: no
Streaming/Saving:
File: {filename}.mp4
Encapsulation Method: MPEG 4
Video: mp4, 512 kb/s, Scale 1
Audio: disabled

AVI, no sound, 00:14 seconds

Screen Capture Input:
Frames per second: 20
Subscreen left: 800, Subscreen width: 400
Subscreen top: 100, Subscreen height: 1000
Follow the mouse: no
Streaming/Saving:
File: {filename}.avid
Transcoding options: unticked
Comment: Great quality but 460MB for 14 seconds video