Screen recording

Record your own screen from roomler-desktop, or the screen of a machine you control from the viewer, in full quality, then cut it, speed it up and add music.

Roomler records a screen to an ordinary MP4 file. You can record your own screen from roomler-desktop, or the screen of a machine you are controlling from the viewer’s toolbar. Either way the recording is made on the machine whose screen it shows, and the file stays there until someone opens or downloads it.

Full quality — encoded on that machine, not copied from the live stream. The live view shrinks to fit a slow network; the recording keeps the screen’s own resolution.

Never through the server — a remote recording reaches you over the session’s own peer-to-peer channel. The server never holds any of it.

Plays anywhere — a standard MP4 that your system’s own player opens.

Record your own screen

On the machine, open roomler-desktop → Recordings, set the options under Record this screen, and press Start recording.

Option	Choices
Frame rate	30 fps (the default) or 60 fps
Encoder	Automatic (GPU, else software), GPU only, or Software only
Computer audio	What the computer plays. Off unless ticked
Microphone	Off unless ticked

While it records, the view shows a red REC chip with the running time, the size, the encoder and the resolution, and the tray icon turns red. Stop recording is in the view and in the tray menu.

The same from a terminal on that machine:

bash

roomler record start --fps 60 --system-audio
roomler record status
roomler record stop
roomler record ls
roomler record rm <file.mp4>

Record a remote screen

Open the machine’s screen as usual, with View screen.
In the session toolbar, open Record this screen. Tick Include what the computer plays if you want its sound, then press Start recording.
If someone at the machine approved this session, they are asked again for the recording. Your toolbar reads “Waiting for the person at the device to allow it…” until they answer.
Before the first frame is written, the machine shows a banner saying it is being recorded, with Stop recording, and its tray icon turns red.
Your toolbar shows the running time with Stop. When the recording ends it appears under Your recordings on this device, ready to download.

Off until the machine's owner allows it

Two switches decide whether a session can record, and both start off.

On the machine: roomler-desktop → Recordings → Recording by a remote controller → Allow remote recording, plus Include computer audio if remote recordings may carry its sound. Only someone at that machine can change these; the server cannot turn them on.
In the organization: you can always record a device you own, and the organization’s owner can record any device. Anyone else needs the Record remote screens permission on one of their roles (users, roles and permissions).

Until both allow it, the Record control is greyed out and its tooltip says why.

The machine’s microphone is never recorded remotely.

Downloading a recording

Download saves into a file you pick with the browser’s save dialog or, where the browser has none, into memory, up to 2 GiB.
A download held in memory is checked against the machine’s SHA-256 and kept only if it matches. A download saved straight to a file shows the machine’s SHA-256, so you can compare.
If the session drops mid-download, the download pauses, and your next session continues it from where it stopped.
Only the person who made a recording can list it or download it.

When the session drops, or someone stops it

If your session drops, the recording keeps running for a minute. Reconnect in that minute and your toolbar reads REC · reconnecting, then picks it back up. After a minute without you, it stops.
Disconnect stops your recording first.
The person at the machine can stop it at any time, and switching Allow remote recording off stops it too.
Recording needs someone signed in at the machine. A sign-in screen is refused, and a Windows machine with nobody signed in never records. The one exception is a Linux machine with no screen at all: its service records into a folder of its own, and the viewer tells you so.

Where recordings are saved

	Default folder	If that one cannot be used
Windows	`Videos\Roomler`, when Videos is local and not under OneDrive	`Roomler Recordings` in your user folder
macOS	`~/Movies/Roomler`	`~/Roomler Recordings`
Linux	`Roomler` in your Videos folder	`~/Roomler Recordings`

The Recordings view shows the folder in use, and says why when it is not the usual one. Change folder… picks another, Use the default folder goes back, and Open folder shows it in your file manager.

Why not OneDrive

A Videos folder under OneDrive is passed over on purpose: OneDrive would upload every recording, gigabytes at a time.

Cut, speed up and add music

In Recordings, press Edit on a recording.

Split at the playhead to cut the timeline into pieces, then mark each piece Keep, Cut or Speed up (×1.25 up to ×16).
Sound: the recording’s own sound, muted wherever a piece is sped up, and Add music… (MP3, M4A/AAC, FLAC, Ogg or WAV) with its volume, start, fade in, fade out and loop.
Export writes a new file next to the original, named <recording> (edited).mp4. The original is never changed, and your edits are saved as you go, so you can close the editor and come back to them.

When something goes wrong

A crash or an update in the middle of a recording costs only the last few seconds. The next recording turns what was left into a playable file, marked as interrupted.
Every refusal says why, in one sentence, in the viewer and in roomler-desktop.

Limits

macOS records the picture only for now: no microphone and no computer audio.
Recording arrived with agent 0.4.110. A machine on an older agent shows no Record control.
This page is about screens. Roomler does not record video calls.