libcapture is a multiplatform C library that allows to capture your screen and optionally microphone audio, built with FFmpeg.
- CMake >= 2.8
- FFmpeg >= 4.4.1 (>= 5.0 on macOS)
- screen-capture-recorder-to-video-windows-free >= 0.12.11 (only for Windows)
Type of Format | Linux | macOS | Windows |
---|---|---|---|
Video Format | x11grab | avfoundation | dshow |
Audio Format | alsa | avfoundation | dshow |
Type of Device | Linux | macOS | Windows |
---|---|---|---|
Video device | screen | screen, webcam | screen, webcam |
Audio device | microphone | microphone | microphone, system audio |
Under Windows, you can install FFmpeg by clicking here.
Make sure to add C:\FFmpeg\FFmpeg\bin
on your Path variable.
Additionally, to ensure proper operation of screen-capture you need to install screen-capture-recorder-to-video-windows-free.
Under Linux, you can install FFmpeg by opening your terminal and running the following command
sudo apt-get -yq update && sudo apt-get -yq install cmake libsdl2-dev libavcodec-dev libavfilter-dev libpostproc-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswresample-dev libswscale-dev libavdevice-dev
Finally, under macOS, you can install FFmpeg by opening your terminal and running the following command
brew install cmake ffmpeg
Using the cmake FetchContent
directives you can directly setup libcapture as follows
include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
libcapture
GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/giulio98/libcapture.git
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(libcapture)
# create your executable
# and whatever you need for
# your project ...
target_link_libraries(<your_executable> libcapture)
Let's see an example on how to install and use libcapture in Windows.
After installing ffmpeg, as described in Install FFmpeg, your CMakeLists.txt
should look like this
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.20)
project(myproject)
add_definitions(-DWINDOWS)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/bin)
include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
libcapture
GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/giulio98/libcapture.git
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(libcapture)
add_executable(myexe main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(myexe libcapture)
As an example main.cpp
can be recorder.cpp.
If your project doesn't compile, probably it's because you are not using a proper compiler, you can use either MSVC or minGW64
you can find here a guide to install minGW64, make sure to add C:\msys64\mingw64\bin
in the path of your environment variable.
At this step you will have under bin your executable.
In order to run your executable you must add the ffmpeg dlls, that you can find under C:\FFmpeg\FFmpeg\bin
, in the same folder of your executable.
Let's see another example on how to install libcapture in Linux.
After installing ffmpeg, your CMakeLists.txt
should look like this
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.20)
project(myproject)
add_definitions(-DLINUX)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17)
set(EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/bin)
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c 11 -pthread")
include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
libcapture
GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/giulio98/libcapture.git
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(libcapture)
add_executable(myexe main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(myexe libcapture)
As before, you can fill main.cpp
with the code provided in recorder.cpp.
Then you can run your executable.
// Create your capturer
Capturer capturer;
// Set video parameters (by default, record whole screen)
VideoParameters params;
// Set the framerate
params.setFramerate(30);
// Start recording (macOS)
std::string video_device = "1";
std::string audio_device = "0";
std::string output_file = "output.mp4";
std::future<void> f = capturer.start(video_device, audio_device, output_file, params);
// Wait on the future for exceptions in another thread...
// f.get();
// Pause
capturer.pause();
// Resume
capturer.resume();
// Stop
capturer.stop();