For quick tutorials and demos, I make screencasts to share with clients and colleagues, typically using OBS Studio. What is a sane approach to achieving this in Qubes OS?
Required:
Screencast of mouse pointer and multiple Windows
Real-time voice recording
Nice to have:
Real-time webcam recording
As viewed from dom0 (to demo Qubes OS itself, but this is low priority for me)
Options that I can make out are:
Running an AppVM in full-screen mode, giving it access to the mic/webcam, installing OBS Studio and making screencasts in that context
This seems to work well with OBS Studio, though it doesn’t give you the dom0 view:
Create a nested X server via Xephyr. The Arch Linux wiki has a good description of how to do this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xephyr . Then share the nested X server. You can have an arbitrary number of windows there and even start any window manager in this X server instance.
Create a nested X server via Xephyr. The Arch Linux wiki has a good description of how to do this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xephyr . Then share the nested X server. You can have an arbitrary number of windows there and even start any window manager in this X server instance.
Hi,
personally I am completely new to Arch Linux. Therefore please tell me with what commands I can install Xephyr within Fedora 32 or Debian 10. In order to screencast my Qube manager and my VMs with OBS-Studio.
Thank you.
Thank you for your help. I managed to install Xephyr successfully in Fedora 32. Also I achieved to execute Xephyr -br -ac -noreset -screen 800x600 :1 . However that was it. So far I don`t understand how to record my screen with OBS Studio and Xephyr. Please help me. Stay healthy & safe. Thank you.
Just to make sure we are on the same page, this will enable you to record what is happening in the black window started by running the Xephyr command. This window is a virtual screen or more properly a new virtual server. This won’t let you record the entire desktop.
To make things show up in this virtual screen, you have to prepend your commands with DISPLAY=:1 as explained in the Arch Wiki page. For instance, DISPLAY=:1 firefox should open Firefox in this virtual screen. You may also want to start a window manager in this screen first (see the wiki for an example as well).
If you run OBS in the same qube, there should be an option to select the screen/X server environment you want to share. You should be able to select :1 or something like that. At least it worked in the past. In the worst case, start OBS in the same screen. I think this is required for something like Zoom for instance (so DISPLAY=:1 zoom).
Let me know if you run into any roadblocks and we can work from there.
Is this truly the process for using OBS with Qubes? I have a Substack that’s about influence ops stuff, and it’s got a section called “Tool Time”, where I offer short videos showing how I do various tasks. That’s been done with OBS latching on to the output of a VM running Ubuntu Budgie that’s purpose built for those tasks.
This seems like one of those things that being secure will make really arduous.
This is excellent news. The only barrier left for me shifting work is getting a solid Wireguard VPN template and something I can do OpenVPN with for that one provider that must have it.
I’ve been anticipating a Christmas bonus and cruising Ebay. Looks like a Dell Precision laptop with Xeon and 32GB is going to be just $300 - $400. Having a mobile device with Qubes will be a big goad towards getting me up to speed
Hello, I just found this thread trying OBS on Qubes.
I installed OBS with FlaPak and works great out of the box: webcam+mic+screen recording.
The only thing that I does not seem to work is “Window Capture” (where only a single window is captured). When I add a `Window Capture (Xcomposite)", no windows appear in the list to choose from. That is, it looks like OBS can’t see the window of the appVM. However it can capture the screen very well.
Question: anybody managed to get OBS and its Window Capture functionality working in Qubes?
