Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

phw · 2016-02-26 16:48:29

I have created a small GUI tool to easily record a GIF animation from an area of your screen. Functionality wise this is similar to what you can achieve with the excellent FFcast [1] by fellow Archer lolilolicon, but Peek is supposed to be a "real" GUI application with good integration into the desktop. The UI borrows ideas from LICEcap and uses Gtk3.

The current focus is in supporting Gnome, but in general it will run on other desktop environments even if it is not yet optimized for them (e.g. offer the option to remove CSD). The tool is young and I consider it to be a beta with some features missing, but the functionality that is there should work pretty well.

If you bare interested give it a try, it is available in the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/peek/
Report bugs and feature request on Github: https://github.com/phw/peek

See Peek recording itself: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/phw/p … itself.gif

I would be happy about your feedback. But please note that Peek is meant to be used for the specific use case of recording screen areas, e.g. for easily showing UI features of your own apps or for showing a bug in bug reports. It is not a general purpose screen cast app with extended features and it never will be.

[1] https://github.com/lolilolicon/FFcast

cedlemo · 2016-03-06 17:03:57

Oh thanks,

I was looking for something like that. I have just installed it and test it once but it did the job. Simple and efficient.

I will give you more feedback after more tests or utilisations.

Thanks again.

phw · 2016-03-06 21:56:34

Thanks for you feedback and bug reports

akelian · 2016-08-06 15:06:17

Thanks phw I was looking for a LiceCap Linux alternative.
This is exactly it !
I'm on KDE5 and the GTK Integration works well here. I'll report any issues. Is there a dedicated place for that ? (on the AUR git page ? sorry I'm new to Arch)

akelian · 2016-08-06 15:30:29

I just realised it outputs 0kb gifs. Do you know what is wrong ?

Bobses · 2016-10-02 14:56:59

Peek sounds great, but doesn't work in Arch with Mate: black window.

hiepph · 2016-10-03 21:04:22

Bobses wrote:

Peek sounds great, but doesn't work in Arch with Mate: black window.

Same with i3 ;(

likytau · 2016-10-04 03:29:20

Works for me on Qtile (with 'prompt for filename' on). Yes, window is black. Window area is nonetheless recorded, so putting another window in front of it works to record that other window.
Still a bit awkward -- I'm guessing it depends on compositing or something? This is why I prefer the GtkRecordMyDesktop approach (thumbnail the desktop and let the user drag a rectangle over that thumbnail).

phw · 2016-10-04 06:52:20

As stated in the Readme this does only work with compositing enabled since the transparent inner Window with Gtk requires it.

Bobses · 2016-10-04 13:58:57

Thanks! Works ok after I enabled composite - I haven't read that.

lolilolicon · 2016-10-12 20:29:20

phw wrote:

Functionality wise this is similar to what you can achieve with the excellent FFcast

No.

phw wrote:

the excellent FFcast

Yes.

phw wrote:

but Peek is supposed to be a "real" GUI application with good integration into the desktop.

There is a place for GUI, but right now, this is nothing more than a transparent window with a start/stop button.

Look, I don't want to discourage you. You obviously enjoy GTK programming, that's good.
I just can't resist reacting to your false claims about my stuff.
Get creative and actually do something FFcast can't do.

phw · 2016-10-13 08:59:34

lolilolicon wrote:

There is a place for GUI, but right now, this is nothing more than a transparent window with a start/stop button.

It is not supposed to be much more, from a UI perspective it is pretty much where I want it to be. There are a few things missing for the recording feature, but that's it.

lolilolicon wrote:

Look, I don't want to discourage you. You obviously enjoy GTK programming, that's good.
just can't resist reacting to your false claims about my stuff.
Get creative and actually do something FFcast can't do.

I don't quite get what you are so pissed about. Looks like you see some competition here that actually does not exist. I want a simple and clean UI with only a basic set of features, allowing me to quickly record and area of my screen and have access to the final file easily. I also don't see I have made "false claims" about your software and made your software look back. Obviously one is a command line application, getting all the benefits you get from that, the other a pure GUI, I never denied that. I also never claimed that Peek provides all the features ffcast supports. But clearly you can see some similarity between selecting an area to record with ffcast and peek.

lolilolicon · 2016-10-13 09:52:42

I'm not "so pissed about" anything. And there is no competition, agreed.
The problem is you don't seem to understand what FFcast is. Doing GIF screen recording is simply a side effect of its main feature, which is select, combine, adjust and run command on screen regions.
This is a common misunderstanding which I don't want further propagated.

Anyway, good luck with your project, and have fun.

phw · 2016-10-13 12:10:37

lolilolicon wrote:

I'm not "so pissed about" anything. And there is no competition, agreed.
The problem is you don't seem to understand what FFcast is. Doing GIF screen recording is simply a side effect of its main feature, which is select, combine, adjust and run command on screen regions.
This is a common misunderstanding which I don't want further propagated.
Anyway, good luck with your project, and have fun.

Ok, understood and accepted Probably this common misunderstanding is also a little bit caused by its name And thanks for ffcast by the way, have used it a lot (for screencasting) and still using it in some cases in custom scripts.

UPDATE: I wanted to clarify, why I mentioned FFCast in the original post. For one I used it before together with ffmpeg and for simplicity used the same ffmpeg commands for Peek to get quick results (still want to go away from this implementation, but it allowed me to get a working tool I could use really quick). Second thing is I wanted to avoid the "but I can already do this with ffcast" comments

Last edited by phw (2016-10-13 12:15:55)

phw · 2016-10-26 06:57:22

Finally I have released a new version 0.8, which improves the user experience when stopping the recording (rendering the final results happens in the background while the user chooses a file location to save), fixes a few installation issues and brings localization into 11 languages. This is the first version containing contributions by others, which is really great. See the release notes for details:

https://github.com/phw/peek/releases/tag/v0.8.0

There are a few things I want to get in because they annoy me personally (keyboard shortcuts, smaller temp file, packaging, maybe custom recording instead of relying on ffmpeg), but they will have to wait for a later release

Bobses · 2016-10-26 12:11:49

Good job!

phw · 2017-02-20 23:16:25

Again a new release, version 0.9 is out. See https://github.com/phw/peek/tree/v0.9.0 for the details. Most important here is probably the smaller temp files, many thanks to lolilolicon for the hint. This should improve the situation for many users. The rest is mainly Ubuntu specific changes, because it requires special treatment for everything (but I save you the off-topic rant, just happy again I am using Arch).

phw · 2017-03-11 22:35:23

And finally here is 1.0. It's 1.0 because it fulfills all the basic goals I set myself when I started to work on Peek. See https://github.com/phw/peek/releases/tag/v1.0.0 for details. Of course the AUR packages are up-to-date. Enjoy.

And special thanks to all Arch users of Peek. As I have already seen in other projects it's often the Arch users who provide quality feedback and bug reports I guess this is one of the reasons I love using Arch myself.

Arch Linux

#1 2016-02-26 16:48:29

Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#2 2016-03-06 17:03:57

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#3 2016-03-06 21:56:34

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#4 2016-08-06 15:06:17

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#5 2016-08-06 15:30:29

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#6 2016-10-02 14:56:59

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#7 2016-10-03 21:04:22

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#8 2016-10-04 03:29:20

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#9 2016-10-04 06:52:20

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#10 2016-10-04 13:58:57

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#11 2016-10-12 20:29:20

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#12 2016-10-13 08:59:34

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#13 2016-10-13 09:52:42

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#14 2016-10-13 12:10:37

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#15 2016-10-26 06:57:22

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#16 2016-10-26 12:11:49

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#17 2017-02-20 23:16:25

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

#18 2017-03-11 22:35:23

Re: Peek - an animated GIF screen recorder

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