Recording + streaming on Wayland

With gnome:45.2, libwayland:1.22.0, kernel:6.6.4-200.fc39.x86_64, cpu:amd-r5-5600u-and-built-in-gpu

If you choose to do screen recording/streaming on Linux, it's certainly that you'll get more trouble than under Windows/macOS. Here are three ways:

OBS Studio

OBS Studio. It provides a PipeWire capture source for Wayland.

Pros: it's the fact standard on recording/streaming with every platform.

Cons: you need to install many dependencies, and it's painful to custom deeply like VAAPI (GPU acceleration).

Use mediamtx and through Chromium browser's WebRTC screen capture functions. You can find my profile here.

Pros: easy, high performance, low latency (thanks to WebRTC).

Cons: limited, if you want more custom.

Video Capture Card

You can use an HDMI capture card, it needs extra money but not so much (39 chinese yuan currently, please choose the ms2130 chipset). It can be used for SBC(Single Board Computer) also which has poor performance to run video capture inside.

FFMpeg kmsgrab

Pros: maybe fastest if you deal with it properly.

Cons: mouse cursor is not able to be captured, and you need to run ffmpeg with root privileges.

The main idea here, use FFMpeg kmsgrab. First, ensure your environment has VAAPI support. For Fedora Linux with AMD GPU, follow this guide.

The awesome BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds is statically built and many useful features are enabled. Choose ffmpeg-master-latest-linux64-gpl.tar.xz, extract the tarball, and keep only ffmpeg binary.

Then, use these commands:

Details (click to show)

# set an alias
alias ffmpeg="/home/kkocdko/misc/apps/ffmpeg -hide_banner" # please always use latest master branch

# show encoder help
ffmpeg -h encoder=h264_vaapi

# list all avaliable mode in capture card or usb camera
ffmpeg -f video4linux2 -list_formats all -i /dev/video2

# repack file, from flv, to mp4
ffmpeg -i i.flv -c copy o.mp4

# recording, from capture card, through x264, to flv file
ffmpeg \
  -f video4linux2 -input_format yuyv422 -video_size 1920x1080 -framerate 10 -i /dev/video2 \
  -an -c:v libx264 -crf 22 -preset:v veryfast -threads 4 \
  -y rec_$(date +%s).flv

# streaming, from kmsgrab, through x264, to local udp, other environments may use card0 or card2
ffmpeg \
  -f kmsgrab -device /dev/dri/card1 -framerate 30 -i - -vf 'hwmap=derive_device=vaapi,hwdownload,format=bgr0' \
  -an -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -bf 0 -crf 22 -preset:v veryfast -threads 4 \
  -f mpegts 'udp://127.0.0.1:9254?pkt_size=1316'

# streaming, from kmsgrab, through h264_vaapi, to remote srt
ffmpeg \
  -f kmsgrab -device /dev/dri/card1 -framerate 30 -i - -vf 'hwmap=derive_device=vaapi,scale_vaapi=format=nv12' \
  -an -c:v h264_vaapi -profile:v high -qp 24 -compression_level 32 \
  -f mpegts 'srt://127.0.0.1:9254?streamid=publish:s0'

# encoding, through h264_vaapi
ffmpeg \
  -i i.mp4 \
  -vaapi_device /dev/dri/renderD128 -vf 'format=nv12,hwupload' \
  -c:v h264_vaapi -profile:v high -qp 24 -compression_level 32 \
  -c:a copy \
  o.h264_vaapi.mp4

# ===== other notes =====

# encoding, through svt-av1, crf 35 is enough for me, preset 0 is slowest, always tune=0
ffmpeg \
  -i i.mp4 \
  -c:v libsvtav1 -crf 35 -preset 0 -svtav1-params tune=0 \
  -c:a copy \
  o.svtav1.mp4

# concat use ffconcat file, remove metadata, use audio filter to ensure sync
ffmpeg \
  -f concat -i list.txt -map_metadata -1 \
  -c:v copy \
  -af aresample=async=1000 -c:a libopus -b:a 128k -compression_level 10 \
  o.concat.mp4

# combine video and audio
ffmpeg -i v.mp4 -i a.m4a -c:v copy -c:a copy -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a:0 o.combine.mp4

# maybe useful
-tune stillimage
# less latency but no recommended
-tune zerolatency
# move mp4 moov to front, recommended, no size punishment
-movflags faststart
# down to 30 fps
-vf fps=30
# using rtsp with tcp
-f rtsp -rtsp_transport tcp 'rtsp://127.0.0.1:9254/s0'
# output one frame
-ss 00:00:09.000 -frames:v 1 o.png
# good for old devices
-c:v libx264 -preset:v veryslow -crf 28 o.x264.mp4
# streaming use loop video
-re -stream_loop -1 -i i.mp4 -c copy
# never use vp8 please!
-c:v libvpx
# list pixel fmts
-pix_fmts
# use pixel fmts
-an -c:v h264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -profile:v high -level 4.1

# -progress pipe:1
# bd iso: dnf install mkvtoolnix mkvtoolnix-gui
# -bf 0
# -color_range 2
# pactl list short sources
# ~/misc/apps/ffmpeg -f pulse -ac 2 -i - -y ../o.mp3
# -qp 40
# -vaapi_device /dev/dri/renderD128
# -vf 'hwmap=derive_device=vaapi,scale_vaapi=format=nv12'
# -vf 'hwmap=derive_device=vaapi,scale_vaapi=w=1920:h=1080:format=nv12'
# -f flv rtmp://127.0.0.1:9658/live/home
# crop=960:540:480:270 -vf 'hwdownload,format=bgr0'
# -maxrate 9M
# -f alsa -ac 2 -thread_queue_size 1024 -i hw:0 \
# ffmpeg -i i.mp4 -y -c:v h264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -profile:v high -level 4.1 -vf scale=-1:720 o.mp4

Something like Chrome and QEMU-KVM will interrupte kmsgrab after entering/exiting full-screen.

Other Choices

GNOME's built-in recorder. Certainly the simplest but: 1. Recording only, not streaming. 3. Force WebM (libvp8 soft-encoding), terrible for HDPI monitor and needed to be re-encoded before sending file to other people using various machines. So I drop it finally.