Inspiration
It all started when we were thinking of what tool we could use to record a demo of the app we were going to build. We had seen people on Linkedin share demo videos of their apps using some software that helped record clean tech demo videos with butter-smooth zoom action and animated cursors. Upon checking out the tool, it turned out that it was called "Screen Studio" and it was a paid app only usable on MacOS. This inspired us to try and build a cross-platform, open source recording tool that would have similar features, just without the cost and hassle of OS compatibility.
What it does
As of right now, the app can record your screen or even a window you choose. It's pretty simple to use, and all you have to do is clone the repository from GitHub, and run a few commands outlined in the repository's README.md file.
How we built it
We built this app using Python. We made good use of the vast and rich ecosystem of Python packages to abstract away lower level details regarding video encoding and screen capturing and ended up building the app fairly quickly.
Challenges we ran into
One of the main challenges we ran into was making this app properly cross-compatible. We were initially facing problems related to developing the app on one OS while adding features and packages into the project that are meant for a different OS. Testing the app required us to switch to different OS's and it was kind of a pain.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud to have pushed basic recording functionality using little code by leveraging the power of Python's package ecosystem and clean, modular code. We believe it's an excellent foundation to build on and new features to.
What we learned
We learned a lot about video encoding and screen capturing in general. We had to adapt to work with technologies like ffmpeg and x11.
What's next for Cross Platform Screen Recorder
We will be looking into adding features like smooth zooming and cursor tracking to make the app feel more like a tech-demo screen recording app.
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