Record your desktop

[I've written elsewhere about video screen capture (a.k.a. screencast) applications. This is KDE4 specific.]

If you’re using KDE4 and have found the screencast feature ( System Settings > Desktop > [All Effects] : Video Record) you’re probably wondering how to play the files it produces. By default (during your KDE4 session) when you toggle “Video Record” mode on and then off with Ctrl-Meta-V it drops a file called kwin_video1.cps into your home directory which none of my video player apps could read - mplayer complained about avisynth.dll, but this doesn’t appear to be the real problem. The file is in the format used by captury, just don’t ask me why.

Playback your KDE4 “Video Record” files

You’ll need a couple of things:

mplayer OR vlc (or anything that can play y4m, a.k.a YUV4MPEG2 files)
capseo (just apt-get install it, it provides cpsrecode)

Then, if you’ve a faster machine use:

cpsrecode -i kwin_video.cps -o - | mplayer -

On my Athlon 1.1GHz that doesn’t do anything. Instead I need to transcode the file first and then play it.

cpsrecode -i kwin_video1.cps -o kwin_video1.cps.y4m

Note that cpsrecode’s man page also gives the option to transcode to “Theora” (using switch “-c theora”) but this didn’t work for me initially, failing with

ERROR: Unsupported output codec: theora

I then tried installing ffmpeg and ffmpeg2theora, neither cpsrecode nor ffmpeg could do the conversion still. Though you could convert the raw output from the .y4m file if you wished using ffmpeg or mencoder or something (thanks to Harald Sitter for this line).

cpsrecode -i kwin_video1.cps -o - \
| mencoder - -o kwin_video1.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=xvid:autoaspect=1

Hope that helps.

Update:

This doesn’t work at all for me on my main computer (a dual core athlon) running Kubuntu. I get the .cps files made but cpsplay isn’t finished:

user@localhost:~/Videos/screencasts$ cpsplay ./kwin_video2.cps
error: This piece of cursed code is under development!
Please use `cpsrecode movie.cps | mplayer -` to view your movie.

and cpsrecode doesn’t operate (don’t use their suggestted code either, it’s the wrong format, see the man page or read above). The test binary cpsinfo reports the file size and resolution information however:

media:             : ./kwin_video2.cps

video:
frame width      : 1680
frame height     : 1050
frame scale      : 0
fps hint         : 30

cursor
present          : likely

Seems “Video Record” is not yet ready for service. Wonder why .cps was chosen.

Mouse spins player instead of normal movement

When I started Enemy Territory: Return to Castle Wolfenstein (ET:RTCW) everything came up fine but as soon as I entered a server to play an online game then the mouse would mess up. Basically any movement would cause the character on screen to spin / rotate / turn around on the spot without being able to look up and down. The games pretty tricky if you can’t look up from the ground!

/seta in_dgamouse 0

in ET console seems to do it, also when I have console open I can then switch apps (without a minimiser app running) cool!—

That does fix it, but it’s not actually the dgamouse that doesn’t work! Setting as above makes the mouse jumpy and hard to control. All I actually need to do is

/seta in_dgamouse 1

which is strange in that it doesn’t change the dgamouse state - but it fixes things. Also to move between apps and ET I use CTRL-F1 (etc.) to move desktop then I can alt-tab into ET. When ET resumes a new map it grabs the pointer so you have to CTRL-F4 (or whatever) to bring up ET, then open console with “backtick” (next to number 1 key near Q) then you can click on the application bar to choose the app you wanted to switch too … it’s a pain in the butt, but better than not being able to switch.

Enemy Territory cfg (config) files

I’ve now entered

/set in_dgamouse 1

into a otherwise blank file at /installation/directory/enemy-territory/etmain/autoexec.cfg and the fix is now applied on loading.

Short version: Alt-F3, M, then use cursor keys.

Alt-F3 enters the “window menu” or “window configuration menu” for the currently focussed application / program.

M is the underlined letter in Move, this will then bring up the “compass” cursor over the window to be moved.

Cursor keys - up, down, left, right - then move the window around.

So can I take someone else’s hard work from Wikipedia - though it’s probably lots of peoples light work - and paste it into Google’s Knol, add some adwords and make a huge steaming pile of cash? Not likely.

From Wikipedia, GFDL (Text of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)):

“You may copy and distribute the Document [wikipedia article] in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this [GFDL] License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this [GFDL] License.”