[FFmpeg-user] Desktop Capture 'Jerky'

[Moritz Barsnick]

On Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 14:29:14 +0000, derekg wrote:
> I apologise if not using the correct protocol and hope that I'm also 
> following the 'Top Posting' format correctly .

No, that's just fine now.

> bash script and about thirty (30) seconds of execution of that script 
> together with the 'out.txt' console log . I hope that is what you've 
> requested .

Yes.

> #!/bin/sh
> ffmpeg -f alsa -f pulse -ac 2 -i default -f x11grab -s 1920x1080 -r 60 -i :0.0 -qscale 0 -f mpeg -ar 48000 -s wvga -y /media/sda5/sample.mkv > out.txt 2>&1
> exit

First of all:
* "-f alsa" isn't doing anything. You're overwriting it with "-f
  pulse", so pulseaudio is being used.
* You're using "-f mpeg" but an output file named "*.mkv". This is
  certainly not what you expect! You do not get a Matroska file, and
  you're using outdated default codecs, which may or may not be okay
  for you.

That said, these outdated codecs may (or may not) be faster than
others.

Usually, you would omit "-f mpeg", then ffmpeg would automatically
choose the Matroska output format (because it recognizes you file
suffix), and choose other codecs. Probably libx264 for video and aac
for audio. These may be slower, but we can tune them to be faster.

Next, did you read this?:

> [pulse @ 0x357d2c0] Thread message queue blocking; consider raising the thread_queue_size option (current value: 8)

I have no idea if it's of any importance though.

> [x11grab @ 0x35873e0] Thread message queue blocking; consider raising the thread_queue_size option (current value: 8)

Same here. These may be performance issues (I don't know these warnings
good enough).

> frame=  462 fps= 38 q=0.0 size=    4312kB time=00:00:07.65 bitrate=4611.9kbits/s speed=0.625x

Indeed, 0.625x is too slow for your realtime encoding.

Do you really need to capture your desktop at 60 fps? Try reducing that
to 30, and see if that helps. Or even 15, if that's enough for you.

Do you really need qscale 0? That quality setting puts extra load on
the processor.

Next step: If you want to go for real Matroska with H.264: Add
  -c:v libx264 -preset veryfast
("-c:v libx264" is probably default anyway, I guess)
and see how that performs (do you reach > 1.0x?).

If it's still too slow, try
  -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast

If that's not enough, you can reduce the video quality further by using
  -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -crf 25
(a CRF of 23 is default, higher numbers are less quality).

You could also choose a somewhat faster codec, such as mpeg4:
  -c:v mpeg4
(I don't know how speed and quality exactly compare to libx264,
though.)

If, on the other hand, it's more than fast enough, use
  -c:v libx264 -preset slow
if you want better compression (smaller filesize), or even
  -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 21
if you want to use the extra CPU for better quality.

(See: you can trade off encoding speed, quality, and size.)

Hope this helps,
cheers,
Moritz