About VLC
VLC is a free and open-source multi-purpose application for audio and video playback and conversion. VLC plays a variety of video formats, including DVD media, on many operating systems, including Windows, Mac, and Linux. VLC can also encode a live feed of your desktop, called a screencast. Create a screencast to demonstrate a software product or website, instruct viewers on how to use an application, or document an error or bug to help resolve a problem.
How to Download VLC
To begin, download and install the recent version of VLC, which is updated often. At the time of this guide, the latest version was 3.0.16, but VLC doesn’t change its interface often, if ever.
On Windows and Mac
Go to the download page and select the version of VLC for your operating system. Installation is straightforward, and you can safely walk through the install wizard to get it running. Linux users should use the distribution’s package manager instead. VLC is open-source, and it’s a Linux favorite. The package name is usually vlc. On Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, or another version based on these distributions, open a terminal and enter this command: sudo apt install vlc
Set Up the Screen Capture
Once you have VLC, there are two ways to set up a screen capture: use the point-and-click graphical VLC interface or a command line. The command line lets you specify more advanced capture settings, such as desktop crop size and index frames, to make a video that is easier to edit. Most of the time, though, this is more than you need. The graphical VLC interface is easier to use.
Launch VLC
VLC is a typical media player with an orange traffic cone icon. You’ll find it among your other applications; the exact location depends on your operating system.
Set Up Your Destination File and Encode Options
The window will shift to let you set up your encoding options.
Set Up Screen Capture Using the Command Line
You can choose more configuration options by creating a screencast using VLC on the command line rather than the graphical interface. This approach requires that you are familiar with using the command line on your systems, such as the cmd window in Windows, the Mac terminal, or the Linux shell. With the command-line terminal open, refer to this example command to set up a screencast capture on Windows: c:\path\to\vlc.exe screen:// :screen-fps=24 :screen-follow-mouse :screen-mouse-image=“c:\temp\mousepointerimage.png” :sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,venc=x264{scenecut=100,bframes=0,keyint=10}, vb=1024,acodec=none,scale=1.0, vfilter=croppadd{cropleft=0,croptop=0,cropright=0,cropbottom=0}}: duplicate{dst=std{mux=mp4,access=file,dst=“c:\temp\screencast.mp4”}} On Linux and Mac, it is similar: vlc screen:// :screen-fps=24 :screen-follow-mouse :screen-mouse-image="/tmp/mousepointerimage.png" :sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,venc=x264{scenecut=100,bframes=0,keyint=10}, vb=1024,acodec=none,scale=1.0, vfilter=croppadd{cropleft=0,croptop=0,cropright=0,cropbottom=0}}: duplicate{dst=std{mux=mp4,access=file,dst="/tmp/screencast.mp4"}} This command is one single line and must be pasted or typed that way. The example above is the exact command used to record the screencast video included in this article. Several parts of this command can be customized:
c:\path\to\vlc.exe: This should be the path to the vlc.exe executable. On Mac and Linux, this can just be vlc.:screen-fps=24: This should be set to the frames-per-second rate you want to record.:screen-follow-mouse: Include this to record the mouse pointer, or exclude if you want to hide the mouse pointer in the screencast.:screen-mouse-image: Supply a path to a pointer image when capturing the mouse pointer.vb=1024: Set this to the bitrate at which you want to record. A higher bitrate produces a better quality video but with a larger file size (this works in combination with the fps value). Try values of 1500 or 2048 to improve quality.:scale=1.0: Set this value to reduce or enlarge the video proportionally. For example, a value of 0.5 creates a screencast of your desktop scaled down to half-size.cropleft, croptop, cropright, cropbottom: These values represent the pixel size of the crop areas. Set to 0 to capture the entire desktop. For example, if you set cropleft to 100, the recorded desktop crops 100 pixels of width from the left side of the desktop. The same logic applies to each parameter.dst=": The full path and name of the video file you want to create.
How to Edit Your Screencast
When recording a screencast, you might not get everything right in one take. When this happens, use video editing software to polish your screencast. Not all video editors can open MP4 format video files, though. For simple editing jobs, try the free, open-source application Avidemux. Use this program to cut sections of a video and apply filters such as crop.
