aperture.js

A library for screen recording

Install

npm install aperture.js

Usage

const aperture = require('aperture.js')();
 
const cropArea = {x: 100, y: 100, width: 500, height: 500};
 
aperture.startRecording({fps: 30, cropArea})
  .then(filePath => setTimeout(stopRecording, 3000));
 
function stopRecording() {
  aperture.stopRecording()
    .then(console.log); //=> /var/folders/r9/65knbqts47x3yg055cd739qh0000gn/T/tmp-15694AAzbYX1vzi2X.mp4
}
 

Why

aperture.js was built to fulfill the needs of Kap, providing a JavaScript interface to the best available method for recording the screen. That's why it's currently a wrapper for a Swift script that records the screen using the AVFoundation framework.

But you can use ffmpeg -f avfoundation...

Yes, we can, but the performance is terrible:

Recording the entire screen with ffmpeg -f avfoundation -i 1 -y test.mp4:

Recording the entire screen with aperture.js:

Linux and Windows

We want to bring aperture.js to Linux and Windows, but we don't have time and resources for such tasks (we're Mac users), so any help is more than welcome. We just want to enforce two things: performance and quality – doesn't matter how (ffmpeg, custom built native lib, etc) they are achieved.

Upcoming

aperture.js it's in its early days. We want it to have more a lot of features, such as export to GIF, compression options, support for multiple displays, support for audio and much more. Check out our aperture.js issues on Kap to see what we need 😄