Writing video files

The ScreenRecorder extension

A simple way of writing your program’s output to video is offered by the ScreenRecorder extension. The extension creates video files named after your Program class name plus the date. For example: MyProgram-2018-04-11-11.31.03.mp4. The video files are located in the video/ directory in your project.

To setup the screen recorder do the following:

import org.openrndr.KEY_ESCAPE
import org.openrndr.application
import org.openrndr.color.ColorRGBa
import org.openrndr.draw.isolatedWithTarget
import org.openrndr.draw.renderTarget
import org.openrndr.ffmpeg.ScreenRecorder
import org.openrndr.ffmpeg.VideoWriter

fun main() = application {
    program {
        extend(ScreenRecorder())
        extend {
            // -- whatever you draw here ends up in the video
        }
    }
}

Note: the ffmpeg command-line program is used for video output. If ffmpeg is not found in your system OPENRNDR will attempt to use an embedded version of it.

Toggle the ScreenRecorder on and off

By default the screen recorder extension adds video frames as long as the program runs. If you keep running the program again and again you will end up with a folder full of video files.

We can make it more flexible by letting the user start and pause the recorder, for instance by pressing the v key on the keyboard.

import org.openrndr.KEY_ESCAPE
import org.openrndr.application
import org.openrndr.color.ColorRGBa
import org.openrndr.draw.isolatedWithTarget
import org.openrndr.draw.renderTarget
import org.openrndr.ffmpeg.ScreenRecorder
import org.openrndr.ffmpeg.VideoWriter

fun main() = application {
    program {
        // keep a reference to the recorder so we can start it and stop it.
        val recorder = ScreenRecorder().apply {
            outputToVideo = false
        }
        extend(recorder)
        extend {
            // -- draw things here
        }
        keyboard.keyDown.listen {
            when {
                it.key == KEY_ESCAPE -> program.application.exit()
                it.name == "v" -> {
                    recorder.outputToVideo = !recorder.outputToVideo
                    println(if (recorder.outputToVideo) "Recording" else "Paused")
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Video formats

By default videos are recorded in h264 format with a .mp4 file extension, but animated gif or webp, png or tif sequences, prores and h265 are also available by enabling the orx-video-profiles extension.

Writing to video using render targets

It is also possible to produce video files without using the ScreenRecorder extension. This is needed for more advances uses, for example when the content we want in the video file is not visible but actually exists as a render target.

import org.openrndr.KEY_ESCAPE
import org.openrndr.application
import org.openrndr.color.ColorRGBa
import org.openrndr.draw.isolatedWithTarget
import org.openrndr.draw.renderTarget
import org.openrndr.ffmpeg.ScreenRecorder
import org.openrndr.ffmpeg.VideoWriter

fun main() = application {
    program {
        val videoWriter = VideoWriter()
        videoWriter.size(width, height)
        videoWriter.output("output.mp4")
        videoWriter.start()

        val videoTarget = renderTarget(width, height) {
            colorBuffer()
            depthBuffer()
        }


        var frame = 0
        extend {
            drawer.isolatedWithTarget(videoTarget) {
                clear(ColorRGBa.BLACK)
                rectangle(40.0 + frame, 40.0, 100.0, 100.0)
            }

            videoWriter.frame(videoTarget.colorBuffer(0))
            drawer.image(videoTarget.colorBuffer(0))
            frame++
            if (frame == 100) {
                videoWriter.stop()
                application.exit()
            }
        }
    }
}

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