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2c        Sound recording

        recordMyDesktop has the ability to record sound, either by directly interfacing with the sound system of your operating system (ALSA or OSS), or by connecting to a JACK server (a low-latency audio server used by many audio applications).
        The first step to sound recording is to make sure that it is enabled;




In the main window, as shown in the above picture, the checkbox in the red circle should be enabled. If not, sound recording will be completely disabled.



        One thing you should be aware of, is that every sound card offers a variety of sources for recording. Examples of these are the microphone and line-in inputs of your sound card. Most sound cards also offer the option to set as a recording source the mixed sound, that you hear on your speakers. This is commonly called wave or mix.
        In most cases, you will probably want the microphone and/or the mix/wave sources enabled. However, recordMyDesktop, does not offer a mixer interface to configure your sound card. This has to be performed in an external program like kmix, gnome-mixer or alsamixer(ncurses based interface). For more information, refer to the documentation of these tools.         This is how kmix looks on my PC, with an SB Live 5.1, when I want to record sound from the microphone only;





        Notice that wave is turned off. If it gets enabled (which in kmix happens by clicking on the leds), all sounds will be recorded(music, desktop environment notifications, etc.). There is also the Capture switch, which on my setup, needs to be enabled for microphone recording to work(it's volume setting seems to be irrelevant). You might meet quirks like this in your setup, too, so you'll probably need to experiment a little bit before finding the configuration that gives you the desired result.


        When recording with ALSA or OSS, you can configure the quality of the recording at the advanced window, in the sound tab. When using JACK, recordMyDesktop will use the settings with which the audio server was launched.

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