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Ploppz

Member

Registered: 2013-09-14

Posts: 313

Simplescreenrecorder - error when trying to record to gif

I'm trying to record an area of my screen to gif.

Here is the error I get when I press "Start recording":

[PageRecord::StartOutput] Starting output ...
[Muxer::Init] Using format gif (GIF Animation).
[BaseEncoder::CreateCodec] Using codec libx264 (libx264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10).
[Muxer::Start] Error: Can't write header!
[BaseEncoder::EncoderThread] Encoder thread started.
[BaseEncoder::Stop] Stopping encoder thread ...
[BaseEncoder::EncoderThread] Encoder thread stopped.
[PageRecord::StartOutput] Error: Something went wrong during initialization.

Container: other...
Container name: gif
Codec: H.264 (I tried all codecs with default values).

I did try x11grab, but I find it inconvenient to have to write down the mouse coordinates: I am unlikely to know exactly which values I want.

chafic

Member

From: Lebanon

Registered: 2016-01-25

Posts: 2

Website

Re: Simplescreenrecorder - error when trying to record to gif

I had the same problem and found the solution here. The author of SimpleScreenRecorder writes:

SSR only supports the YUV color space, but the gif encoder probably expects RGB images. You're not really supposed to use that container. Even if it would work, the quality would be terrible (because the palette wouldn't be optimized). You should record to a normal format and convert it to a gif later if you want that.

But if SSR doesn't support the GIF format then why does it even show up? The author adds:

SSR simply shows a list of all available codecs in FFmpeg/Libav. 'gif' is in there because it exists, not because I picked it. If you choose 'other' as the codec, these kinds of things are to be expected.