Create a screen recording on FreeBSD with kdenlive and external USB mic

Posted on Sun 04 January 2015 in FreeBSD

This tutorial shows you how you can use kdenlive on FreeBSD to create a screen cast. I am using a Maya 22 USB to record speech from a Rode microphone. This works fine, too.

1. Install the software

ffmpeg

If you have ffmpeg already installed you need to check if you had the X11GRAB option enabled. You will need it to allow kdenlive to record from your screen.

cd /usr/ports/multimedia/ffmpeg
make config

Enable X11GRAB option and SDL (https://bugs.kdenlive.org/view.php?id=3423):

make
make deinstall
make reinstall

Install kdenlive

Use pkg:

pkg install kdenlive

Use ports:

cd /usr/ports/multimedia/kdenlive

make install clean

2. Modify audio options if you want to record your speech and the screen at the same time

Run kdenlive and follow the wizard to configure it the first time. After that a new empty project will be shown in the main window of kdenlive.

Select Record Monitor and open the configure window with the symbol right to the record button.

Select the profile with audio if you want to record your voice or other audio input while capturing the monitor. We need to modify this capturing options for FFmpeg here. I am not using pulse audio which is set by default in kdenlive. I use the oss input device which is in my case /dev/dsp9 for my Maya USB 22 interface. In your case this is a different dsp device.

FreeBSD-kdenlive-4

After you have modified this options you can now record your first video with audio. If you don't want to have audio recorded just select the other profile and you don't need to make any changes.

I hope this will lead to more true FreeBSD made screen casts.

Here my first screen record using FreeBSD and kdenlive: