So we all know some cool tools. Dave wrote a VNC client for GStreamer a while ago. Right now, you can also do it simpler, without requiring a VNC server!
gst-launch-0.8 ximagesrc ! ffmpegcolorspace ! videoscale ! video/x-raw-rgb,width=320,height=240 ! ximagesink
And it’ll just work. Nice stuff, someone should write a “make-a-movie-of-your-desktop” app around this. Something like the command below makes a playable Theora movie of your desktop. Performance isn’t all that perfect yet, we may want to peek at what other X desktop grabbers do, they appear to be a whole bunch faster.
gst-launch-0.8 ximagesrc ! ffmpegcolorspace ! videoscale ! video/x-raw-yuv,width=320,height=240,framerate=\(double\)2 ! theoraenc ! oggmux ! filesink location=/tmp/desktop.ogg
Sample movie available here, which is a sample of how to check in a fix to gst-ffmpeg (no, it’s not interesting, I know).