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I have no sound!

In order to record sound from a source(e.g. microphone) you have to set it
through a mixer like kmix, gnome-mixer or alsamixer. recordMyDesktop will
not set anything itself but it will rather start recording from any preselected
source.
Another reason for no sound might be the presence of more than one soundcards.
In that case make sure you've set the right one (consult the manpage on how to do this).
Unless you know that you have more than one soundcards, do not change the device setting.



I still have no sound...

The solution is in your mixer's settings. Keep playing with it ;).
More advice here.



Some windows are not recorded!

recordMyDesktop is based on extensive usage of the Xdamage extension. Instead of capturing
whole screenshots, the program marks the areas that have changed and updates them.
This approach fails on two occasions. Video played throught the Xv extension and hardware
accelerated glx context. This generally means 3d games and video windows.
To record video you can configure your player to not use the Xv extension but rather go with X11/Xshm.
This is a simple task on most video players and you should consult their documentation on how to do this.

Recording 3d windows on the other hand, is not easy. You have to enable the full-shots option(*and with
it you also definately have to enable usage of the MIT-Shm extension). This means though that now you are
requesting a full image at every frame, so you will need a lot more proccessing power. In this case you
should probably confine the recording only on the 3d window itself.




When recording, some windows don't receive drag'n drop events.

There are some occassions where recordMyDesktop seems to interfere with dragging and dropping.
Disabling the frame will probably resolve any such problems. To do this on the commandline,
use the --no-frame option, while for the graphical frontends, consult this page
(uncheck the Outline Capture Area On Screen checkbox, in Advanced => Misc.).




recordMyDesktop eats up too much CPU.

Assuming that this is not a problem in your configuration(driver issue),
there are 4 steps you can take to achieve higher framerates and smoother videos.


  • Enable quick subsampling.

  • Enable zero compression.

  • Lower the depth of your Display to 16bpp.

  • If all of the above does not improve performance enough,
    you can always try capturing a smaller area/resolution.





    • gtk-recordMyDesktop fails to run with:egg.TrayIcon is not found!

    If the frontend fails to run, with the console output saying something about egg.TrayIcon not found,
    then you need to install gnome-python-extras.
    A temporary note; If your distribution doesn't offer an easy way to install gnome-python-extras,
    or if you don't wan't to draw the whole libgnome thing in your computer, there may be a solution.

    This is, compiling gnome-python-extras yourself. The required module for gtk-recordMyDesktop to run,
    is actually the only one that will build without any of the gnome dependencies present. This is tested
    only on version 2.14.2 of the gnome-python-extras, but it should apply to others, too.
    As of version 0.2.1-r2, there's also support for gtkStatusIcon. This is a tray icon, present in gtk>=2.10
    and it makes the gnome-python-extras dependency obsolete. So if you have an appropriate version of
    gtk and gtk-recordMyDesktop you no longer need the gnome dependencies, just the gtk ones.




    gtk-recordMyDesktop fails to run with:ImportError: No module named recordMyDesktop!

    If after compilation and installation the frontend fails to run, with the console output saying something about
    ImportError: No module named recordMyDesktop,
    you need to follow these steps:
    1) Go to the source directory that you used to perform the installation and run:
    $ make uninstall as root.

    2) Run configure again, like this:
    $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/ and then
    $ make && make install again.
    If you have removed the source directory and can't perform step one from above, just unpack a
    tarball of the same version again. Then follow the steps that gave you a faulty installation
    (./configure && make ) but instead of make install run make uninstall.Then do step 2.

    Note: This error will also appear if you use the Debian Sarge package with distributions that
    ship a default version of python>2.3.
    In this case, you will need to remove the package and search for one compatible with your
    distribution, or compile from source.






    What's the shortcut for...

    Consult this page
    (v0.3.7 and later only, older ones don't have any shortcuts).




    Will you add support for format(audio/video encoding) X or Y?

    No.




    I've made a recording but I cannot play the file!

    Usually when something like this happens, it's a playback issue.

    The reason that this happens is that the files produced from recordMyDesktop
    can have very large dimensions(same as your screen) and some video cards
    can't play them using the (hardware accelerated) Xv extension, which is
    usually the default in most configurations.


    A quick way to test it is with mplayer, like this:

    ~$ mplayer -vo x11 out.ogg

    and see if it plays.
    This will use the Xserver for video playback, which is not very efficient,
    so you might want to also try with the OpenGL driver:

    ~$ mplayer -vo gl out.ogg
    and maybe
    ~$ mplayer -vo gl2 out.ogg

    If some of the gl,gl2 or x11 drivers gives proper results, you can set up your
    default player to use this instead of the xv driver.

    Limiting the area of the recording or resizing the file after recording might
    also be a solution, since smaller files will probably play with the defaults.

    You can find more about limiting the area with gtk-recordMyDesktop here.
    And you can look at the manpage on how to do this with from the commandline
    (~$ man recordmydesktop )

    You can also find more about resizing the file using the VLC media player,
    here.


    As a final note, there has been occasions, where the files where unplayable
    while using the Compiz window manager, because of some problems it had
    with handling windows that use the Xv extension. In case you are using it
    try turning it off and test if the file is playable.





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