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Last modified: Sat, 15 Apr 2023
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What is SimpleScreenRecorder?

SimpleScreenRecorder is a Linux program that I've created to record programs and games. There were already a few programs that could do this, but I wasn't 100% happy with any of them, so I created my own.

My original goal was to create a program that was just really simple to use, but as I was writing it I started adding more and more features, and the result is actually a pretty powerful program. It's 'simple' in the sense that it's easier to use than ffmpeg/avconv or VLC, because it has a straightforward user interface.

The input selection page:

Image: screenshot.png

Demo video:

Features

  • Graphical user interface (Qt-based).

  • Faster than VLC and ffmpeg/avconv.

  • Records the entire screen or part of it, or records OpenGL applications directly (similar to Fraps on Windows).

  • Synchronizes audio and video properly (a common issue with VLC and ffmpeg/avconv).

  • Reduces the video frame rate if your computer is too slow (rather than using up all your RAM like VLC does).

  • Fully multithreaded: small delays in any of the components will never block the other components, resulting is smoother video and better performance on computers with multiple processors.

  • Pause and resume recording at any time (either by clicking a button or by pressing a hotkey).

  • Shows statistics during recording (file size, bit rate, total recording time, actual frame rate, ...).

  • Can show a preview during recording, so you don't waste time recording something only to figure out afterwards that some setting was wrong.

  • Uses libav/ffmpeg libraries for encoding, so it supports many different codecs and file formats (adding more is trivial).

  • Can also do live streaming (experimental).

  • Sensible default settings: no need to change anything if you don't want to.

  • Tooltips for almost everything: no need to read the documentation to find out what something does.

Download

SimpleScreenRecorder should work on any Linux distribution, and in most cases can be installed from the official repositories. The list below is incomplete.

Arch Linux

As of april 2023 the 'simplescreenrecorder' package was moved to AUR due to not having a package maintainer. You can install it from AUR, or alternatively you can install 'simplescreenrecorder-git' to get the very latest version from git master.

The base package is 'simplescreenrecorder'. If you want to record 32-bit OpenGL applications on a 64-bit system, you will also need 'lib32-simplescreenrecorder'.

Debian

If you are using Debian 9 or newer, you can install the 'simplescreenrecorder' package from the official repositories. You can install it with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

Add this if you want to record 32-bit OpenGL applications on a 64-bit system:

sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder-lib:i386

You should copy-paste these commands to a terminal line by line rather than all at once, otherwise it won't work.

Fedora

SimpleScreenRecorder is available in the RPM Fusion reposity. RPM Fusion can be activated with this command:

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

After that, SimpleScreenRecorder can be installed with this command:

dnf install simplescreenrecorder

Gentoo

SimpleScreenRecorder is now included in the main repository. You can install it with:

sudo emerge -av media-video/simplescreenrecorder

KaOS

SimpleScreenRecorder is avaliable in the official repository, the name of the package is 'simplescreenrecorder'.

Mageia

Install simplescreenrecorder from the Core Release repository using urpmi or the Mageia Control Center.

NixOS

You can install SimpleScreenRecorder with the following command:

nix-env -i simplescreenrecorder

The same command should also work on any other distribution provided that the Nix package manager is installed.

OpenSUSE

Install 'simplescreenrecorder' from the Packman repository. If you want to record 32-bit OpenGL applications on a 64-bit system, you should also install 'libssr-glinject-32bit'. This package was created by Dmitriy (DAP-DarkneSS).

PCLinuxOS

Install 'ssr' from the official repository:

sudo apt-get install ssr

Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
CentOS,
Scientific Linux

Packages for SimpleScreenRecorder are available in the Nux repositories.

Slackware

A SlackBuild is available here.

Ubuntu,
Linux Mint,
...

If you are using Ubuntu 17.04 or newer, SimpleScreenRecorder can be found in the official repositories. You can install it with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

Add this if you want to record 32-bit OpenGL applications on a 64-bit system:

sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder-lib:i386

You should copy-paste these commands to a terminal line by line rather than all at once, otherwise it won't work.

If you are using an older version of Ubuntu, or you want to get the latest version of SimpleScreenRecorder immediately without waiting for the next Ubuntu release, you can also get the package(s) from the SimpleScreenRecorder PPA:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:maarten-baert/simplescreenrecorder
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

Add this if you want to record 32-bit OpenGL applications on a 64-bit system:

sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder-lib:i386

Other

For distributions that don't have official packages, you have to compile it yourself for now. It's not that hard, and there are instructions in the readme file. You can find the source code on GitHub:
https://github.com/MaartenBaert/ssr
If you're not familiar with git and you just want a .tar.gz file, download this:
https://github.com/MaartenBaert/ssr/archive/master.tar.gz

If you are using a different distribution and you have created a package for SimpleScreenRecorder, please contact me so I can add it to the list :).

License

Image: gpl-v3.png

SimpleScreenRecorder is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Feedback, bugs, feature requests ...

You can report bugs and submit feature requests on GitHub:
https://github.com/MaartenBaert/ssr/issues

If you don't want to create a GitHub account, you can also send an email to:

Image: aaaa.png

If you don't get a reply within a week, your message was probably eaten by the spam filter. If that happens, try sending the message again from a different address.