RecordMyDesktop is one of my favorite applications in my Ubuntu desktop. It allows me to record a video of my desktop or just a portion of my desktop. I can use RecordMyDesktop for instructional videos, tutorials or just about any video project I want to capture on my screen. Installing the application is a breeze. You can use the Synaptic Package Manager and search for “RecordMyDesktop.” If you prefer the Terminal, you can install RecordMyDesktop by typing the following:

apt-get install recordmydesktop

RecordMyDesktop contains many options and switches. You can specify height, width, video quality, bitrate, audio quality, and delay. Delay is a nice feature to position the capture screen before recording can begin. You can view all the options of RecordMyDesktop by typing –help from the terminal:

recordmydesktop –help

Here is a screen capture at 450x300px, 10 second delay in ogv format.

recordmydesktop -width 450 -height 300 -delay 10 -o sample.ogv