BackDrop:
Everybody at some time of their life as netizen would have seen something like this
How about we create one?
Well recently when I was building a Calculator app, I wanted a gif image to be there in the README.md so as to show the usage of the app.
I wrote a How hard can Building a calclator be right? for the same some time back.
Did some googling and found out byzanz-record as the tool perfect for me
Installation
Beginning for 14.04 and above, it is available in the universe repository
{% highlight bash%} $ sudo apt-get install byzanz {% endhighlight %}
If you are on a system older than that
{% highlight bash%} $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/byzanz $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install byzanz {% endhighlight %}
Usage:
We are gonna be using this tool from the command prompt itself as GUI’s would just slow down the process. Now for that we just need four things
--x=<your_value>--y=<your_value>--width=<your_value>--height=<your_value>
Now how do we get that?
run {% highlight bash%} $ xwininfo {% endhighlight %}
and point on the window which you want to record. And it will return you the required values and a little extra information too!
{% highlight bash %} tasdik@Acer:~/Desktop/pyCalc$ xwininfo
xwininfo: Please select the window about which you would like information by clicking the mouse in that window.
xwininfo: Window id: 0x740003f “Calculator”
Absolute upper-left X: 984 Absolute upper-left Y: 509 Relative upper-left X: 0 Relative upper-left Y: 0 Width: 284 Height: 169 Depth: 24 Visual: 0x20 Visual Class: TrueColor Border width: 0 Class: InputOutput Colormap: 0x22 (installed) Bit Gravity State: NorthWestGravity Window Gravity State: NorthWestGravity Backing Store State: NotUseful Save Under State: no Map State: IsViewable Override Redirect State: no Corners: +984+509 -98+509 -98-90 +984-90 -geometry 284x169-88-80
tasdik@Acer:~/Desktop/pyCalc$ {% endhighlight %}
There now, I have got my values
{% highlight bash%} tasdik@Acer:~/Desktop/pyCalc$ byzanz-record –duration=45 –x=984 –y=509 –width=290 –height=170 out.gif {% endhighlight %}
This will immediately start the recording for the Calculator window until 45 seconds. So be sure to finish whatever you want to do before that.
Here’s is what I got from the above script
