Peek

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, boys & girls.

Came across this one on OMG!Ubuntu! a little earlier this evening, and thought I'd give it a mention.

Peek GIF Recorder

It's an on-screen GIF recorder, which records a GIF file directly. Fred's put together his very good GIF-Creator, which will turn any short screen capture file into a GIF.....but this thing actually creates the GIF file directly as it records it.

This is the previous release from around 18 months ago - v1.3.1 - but this one is available as a 64-bit AppImage, ready-to-go. v1.4.0 has just been released, but is currently only available as source code.....and I'm not sure as I'd be able to compile this one correctly, as it has quite a complex list of requirements. My compiling skills are steadily improving, though still pretty weak..... but I'd certainly like to get this running as a 32-bit AppImage. I might have a go, but to do the thing properly, it'd need to be done as a static compile, and I don't have a clue as to how you approach that.

Anyway, the new version, apparently, has a noticeable delay when encoding is applied at the end of the process, whereas this version 'records-as-it-goes'.....very similar to how both XVidCap and SimpleScreenRecorder approach the task. It's easily re-sizeable, too; just drag the corners.

For anybody who's interested, you can find it here, at Github:-

https://github.com/phw/peek/releases

Perhaps somebody might fancy trying to compile this for 32-bit? (Please..!!)




It shows simply as a window frame, with a 'Record as GIF' button, which changes to a 'Stop' button whilst recording. You drag to the required location, and re-size before starting to record. You're supposed to be able to change this to either WebM or .mp4, but that option appears not to work.

It does, however, seem to function extremely well at recording GIF files..! (I'm guessing it simply uses ffmpeg as a 'backend'.)

As with all AppImages, download; make executable (rt-clk, 'Properties', tick the 'Exec' boxes, then OK it)....and simply 'click-to-run'. I've got this running in my sole 64-bit Puppy, Xenial64, but I would imagine it'll run fine in Bionic64, too. Maybe even Slacko 700 and FatDog, too.....

Enjoy.


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

After hunting around, and locating the Launchpad PPA webpage for Peek, we now have a 32-bit package for this same version - v1.3.1. You'll find it attached to this post.

I've experimented with some of the older, pre-compiled binaries, and none of them seem to function properly, so I'm guessing Peek's developer fixed a number of issues with this last release. I've tested in 'clean' Puppies, and this package will work fine with Xenial upwards, so we're basically looking at Xenialpup 7.5, Bionicpup32 8.0, and radky's DPup 'Stretch'.

In the 32-bit build, all options behave as expected.

---------------------------------------------------

Before installing, you'll need one (1) item from the PPM; libkeybinder. Do a search (you'll see two items), and install the one where the number begins with a '3'....this is the required GTK3 version.

- Now, install the .pet. You'll find it under Menu->Graphic. It should fire straight up.

Preferences can be changed by clicking the icon to the left of the 'Record as...' button.

Enjoy!


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Evening, all.

Now then: during further experimentation, it's come to my attention that ffmpeg in Bionicpup32 8.0 needs upgrading. With the default version, although Peek installs & starts up OK, it crashes upon trying to record. Pretty well all the error messages in the log are related to ffmpeg in one way or another.

I've got several packages from John Van Sickle, who specialises in doing static builds of ffmpeg. The best one for this is one that I think Fred packaged up as a .pet; v3.2.2. It's the best balance between features and size.

These are statically-compiled builds, and are fully-featured. It doesn't matter what AV deps you've got on the system, this won't rely on them.....and it provides global access to a modern version of ffmpeg for your whole Puppy.

ffmpeg-3.2.2-32bit-static can be found here:-

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J35AKE ... sp=sharing

It's quite possible you'll find you need to upgrade ffmpeg in Xenialpup32 or DPup Stretch; this will work just as well for either of them. I've had upgraded versions of ffmpeg in pretty well all my Pups for quite a while.....but it appears that Bionic's the 'one that got away', and was over-looked during the kennel's upgrade process..!


Mike.