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.git && 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 planar formats. In this case, use the -t or --force-yuv option in addition to the vaapi options to convert the data to yuv planar data before sending it to the gpu.
The -e option attempts to use OpenCL if wf-recorder was built with OpenCL support and -t or --force-yuv is specified, even without vaapi gpu encoding. Use -e# or --opencl=# to use a specific OpenCL device, where # is one of the devices listed.