wf-recorder is a utility program for screen recording of wlroots
-based compositors (more specifically, those that support wlr-screencopy-v1
and xdg-output
). Its dependences are ffmpeg
, wayland-client
and wayland-protocols
.
Arch users can use wf-recorder-git from the AUR.
yay -S wf-recorder-git
git clone https://github.com/ammen99/wf-recorder && cd wf-recorder
meson build --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release
ninja -C build
Optionally configure with -Ddefault_codec='codec'
. The default is libx264. Now you can just run ./build/wf-recorder
or install it with sudo ninja -C build install
.
Optionally install scdoc
, a tool by ddevault, for building the manpage.
In it's simplest form, run wf-recorder
to start recording and use Ctrl+C to stop. This will create a file called recording.mp4 in the current working directory using the default codec.
Use -f <filename>
to specify the output file. In case of multiple outputs, you'll first be prompted to select the output you want to record. If you know the output name beforehand, you can use the -o <output name>
option.
To select a specific part of the screen you can either use the -g <geometry>
, or use slurp for interactive selection of the area
wf-recorder -g "$(slurp)"
to select and limit the recording to a part of the screen.
To specify a codec, use the -c <codec>
option. To modify codec parameters, use -p <option_name>=<option_value>
To use gpu encoding, use a VAAPI codec (for ex. h264_vaapi
) and specify a GPU device to use with the -d
option:
wf-recorder -f test-vaapi.mkv -c h264_vaapi -d /dev/dri/renderD128
Some drivers report support for rgb0 data for vaapi input but really only support yuv. In this case, use the -t
or --to-yuv
option in addition to the vaapi options to convert the data in software before sending it to the gpu.