[FFmpeg-user] Crisp, exact color match for lossless screen-cast

[Bob Maple]

On 3/21/2014 12:32 PM, thangalin wrote:

> How do you create a desktop video (screen-cast) that when played back (e.g.,
> using mplayer, VLC, or ffplay) results in an *exact* match to the original
> desktop colours and crispness?

You would need to use a lossless RGB codec like qtrle (in a Quicktime)
or even rawvideo rgb24 (Quicktime, AVI) like

 -vcodec qtrle -pix_fmt rgb24       or
 -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24

but keep in mind that this will create quite large files (less so with
RLE but it depends on the content) and need to be written to a fast disk
the higher your capture resolution -- and may not play back smoothly for
similar reasons even if all the frames originally made it to disk.
Uncompressed 24-bit is (((W * H) * 3) * fps) so your 1030x794 capture at
30fps would be ~2.4MB per frame, or almost 74MB/sec.

I'm not sure what (if any) lossless RGB codecs are supported in MKV or
other wrappers.  It depends on what you intend to do with the video
afterwards besides just play it in VLC, etc.

Bob