Kazam - The ultimate screen recorder for Linux

Kazam Screenshot taken of my laptop (Linux Mint)

A very quick review and tutorial for those interested in screen recording within Linux. Kazam is a great little program which runs in the background recording a video of your desktop and all that you are doing. This is a great way to do tutorials on software usage or live recordings of games being played which is known as "Screen Casting". Many of my blog posts will include a Screen Cast as it is a great tool to physically see whatever I am discussing removing much of ambiguities and misinterpretations.

Included is a YouTube video of Kazam recording my desktop and in the audio I shall give you a quick tutorial in how to use it and the programs features.  So how do you get it? Simplest way to download Kazam is through the Ubuntu repositories.

Open a terminal and type:

• sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install kazam;  sudo apt-get autoclean;

If you're not Ubuntu based you can get Kazam from https://launchpad.net/kazam here you can get a tar.gz copy to build from source.

So what are the features of Kazam?

• You are able to record the whole screen output, a specific application box, or even create a capture are by highlighting a section of your screen that you wish to be captured.
• Several different video formats to be output too. I mainly stick with the h.264 codec and record my files into mp4. "YouTube friendly".
• You can choose the frame rate of your capture so you can control the video smoothness or if you are on an older computer that it can keep up with the recording.

Other features also include CPU parameters to once again alleviate CPU burden. File output stowage location changes. Countdown timer on screen to give you time to prepare before screen casting begins. Small task bar icon so recording can be stopped, paused or continued easily.

There are other Linux screen caster's but Kazam fits the bill for my requirements. 

I also find it is a regularly maintained package and development is still in progress which gives me hope that this wonderful app will continue long into the future.