Screen Recording With RecordMyDesk

As its name implies, RecordMyDesktop is a software that enables you to record activities on your desktop. It is simple, easy to use and produces high quality recording. It allows you to make video of your desktop, with or without sound in the open source .ogg format. The default RecordMyDesktop package is a terminal application without any graphical interface. Installing the gtk-reordmydesktop package provides the graphical frontend.

Other than the desktop recording, you can also choose to record activities within a window, making it a versatile screen recorder.

Installation is easy. Ubuntu users can install it via the Synaptic Package Manager or in the terminal, type

sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop gtk-recordmydesktop

Once installed, you can open the program via Applications -> Sound & Video -> gtk-recordMyDesktop. You can now see a small window with a small screen of your actual desktop and a few buttons.

To record activities within a window, press the “Select Window” button. The mouse cursor will change to “+“. Click on the intended window.

If you are adding sound to your screencast, you have to check the box beside the sound quality. Make sure that your sound card recording function is working. Due to the driver’s problem, my sound card is not able to do any recording, internally and externally.

Press the Record button to start recording. The program will minimize to the task bar, showing only the desktop. To stop recording, click on the square button on the task bar. The program will automatically encode and save the video to your home folder.

The video format is .ogg. If you want to upload to youtube, you have to convert the video to avi or mp4 format. I used VLC to convert the video to mp4 format.