Previous TOC Next


3d        Misc





        The fourth and last tab in the advanced window is called Misc. In this one you will find various options which are meant to be used less frequently, yet might be necessary for more refined control over both the frontend and the backend.





        The first option is the “Display”. This option defines the connection to the Xserver. The default value, which is $DISPLAY is not actually an environment variable, but an alias for the frontend, which indicates that this option should not be used(the backend is left to detect the current display on it's own). Setting shell variables in this field won't work, so if you want to record a different display than the one that recordMyDesktop runs in, you have to specify it by name.


        The next option is the “Mouse Cursor”. The available options are normal, black, white and none. None means that the final video won't include the cursor at all. This might be useful if you want to record a window that has activity on it's own and wish to avoid having the cursor display by accident.
        The black and white cursor options are two fake cursors, drawn by recordMyDesktop. If you choose on of these options , regardless of how you might see the cursor change to a hand, or clock, while recording, in the end the video will have, at all times, a simple pointer cursor.
        The default setting is “Normal”, which means that whichever cursor you see, the same one will also get rendered in the final video. The default setting requires the Xfixes extension to be available.


        “Follow Mouse” is a new option, added in recordMyDesktop 0.3.6. When it is enabled, the capture area moves around the screen along with the mouse. This way you can record only the bits of the screen that you are interested in, retaining the width and height of the capture to a minimal level.
        When using this option, the mouse remains on the center of the capture area, except when this (the capture area), touches a border.
        “NOTE:” When using the follow mouse option, recordMyDesktop is using the Full-Shots option, which means that more CPU power will be required. This is usually offseted by the limited size of the area, when using follow-mouse, but you should always remember to turn off this option when recording the whole screen.


        “MIT-Shm extension” indicates whether or not the shared memory extension will be used. This is actually a performance setting, but it is included here because it should be always enabled. If you disable it recordMyDesktop might require extravagant amounts of CPU.



        The “Include Window Decorations” setting defines how the “Select Window” button, in the main window, behaves. If you enable it (which is the default setting), the area that will get selected when picking a window, will include any decorations provided by the window manger(title bar, close/minimize/restore buttons, etc.). Otherwise, these will be excluded from the capture. This setting applies only during the selection. if you move the selected window around, the capture area will not change.


        “Tooltips” might be great when you start using the application, but if at any point, they start annoying you, this is where you can disable them. If you change this setting, the frontend needs to be restarted, in order for the new value to properly get applied on it.


        The next setting is “Outline Capture Area On Screen”. When you select an area for capture, a frame will be drawn on your screen (that will remain throughout the recording). If for some reason you don't want this frame to be used, disable this setting.


        “Reset Capture Area”, defines how the program behaves after a recording ends and at program shutdown. Normally (setting : Enabled), the area that you have selected will be reset and unless you select a new one, the next recording will be a full screen one. If you want to make multiple captures of the same area, you should disable this setting.


        The last setting in the Misc tab, is “Extra Options”. This is an empty text entry, inside which you can append options that are valid for the command line backend. In order to find out what options are offered by recordMyDesktop, you should take a look at the manpage that accompanies it. Anything that is valid in the command line is also valid in this field, with the exception of filenames with spaces(escaping them won't make a difference). Options specified here can overlap with the ones specified in the rest of the frontend. In such a case the settings provided in “Extra Options” are used instead of the ones that have been set graphically.



Previous TOC Next