Today I was inspired by this tweet after which I fell into this rabbit hole to create an efficient recorder for your Screen, System audio, and Mic.

After trying to implement this using Claude in Swift I completely failed (see folder swift-version) so I decided to create a simpler version (also using Claude) in Node.js

Efficient Recorder

An intelligent, multi-modal recording CLI tool that automatically captures and streams audio, screenshots, and webcam video to S3. Uses advanced detection and efficient resource management to capture multimedia content.

Features

Intelligent Audio Recording:
- Monitors audio at 8kHz with automatic speech detection
- Switches to high-quality 44.1kHz recording when speech is detected
- Automatically stops recording after 2 seconds of silence
- Direct streaming to S3
Automated Screenshot Capture:
- Configurable screenshot interval
- Immediate upload of screenshots to S3
- Low-overhead screen capture
Webcam Video Capture:
- Configurable webcam capture interval
- Direct upload of webcam images to S3
- Supports custom webcam device selection
Efficient Resource Management:
- Minimal system resource usage during idle periods
- Intelligent detection and recording mechanisms
- Concurrent upload processing

Prerequisites

Required Software

This package requires:

SoX (Sound eXchange) for audio recording
- Linux: sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-all
- MacOS: brew install sox
- Windows: Download from SourceForge
Webcam capture tools
- Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install fswebcam
- Arch Linux: sudo pamac build fswebcam
- MacOS: brew install imagesnap
- Windows: Standalone exe included in node-webcam

S3 Configuration

You'll need:

S3-compatible storage endpoint
Access key
Secret key
A bucket named "recordings" (or modify the code to use a different bucket name)

Usage

Run the recorder using npx:

npx efficient-recorder \
  --endpoint YOUR_S3_ENDPOINT \
  --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY \
  --secret YOUR_SECRET_KEY \
  --enable-screenshot \
  --screenshot-interval 5000 \
  --enable-webcam \
  --webcam-interval 3000 \
  --image-quality 80

Command Line Options

--endpoint: Your S3-compatible storage endpoint URL
--key: Your AWS/S3 access key
--secret: Your AWS/S3 secret key
--enable-screenshot: Enable screenshot capture
--screenshot-interval: Interval between screenshots (ms)
--enable-webcam: Enable webcam capture
--webcam-interval: Interval between webcam captures (ms)
--webcam-device: Specify webcam device (optional)
--image-quality: Image quality for webcam/screenshots (1-100)

How It Works

Audio Monitoring
- Continuous low-quality audio monitoring
- Switches to high-quality recording when speech is detected
- Automatic recording start and stop based on sound levels
Screenshot Capture
- Captures screenshots at specified intervals
- Immediate upload to S3
- Configurable capture frequency
Webcam Capture
- Captures webcam images at specified intervals
- Supports multiple webcam devices
- Immediate upload to S3
Efficient Upload
- Queued upload processing
- Concurrent uploads with multi-part support
- Minimal system resource overhead

Multimedia Specifications

Audio

Monitoring: 8kHz, Mono
Recording: 44.1kHz, Stereo
Format: WAV (16-bit PCM)

Screenshots

Captured at system screen resolution
Uploaded as PNG

Webcam

Resolution: 1280x720
Format: JPEG
Configurable quality

Troubleshooting

"Command not found: rec"
- Ensure SoX is installed correctly
- Verify SoX is in your system PATH
S3 Upload Issues
- Check S3 credentials
- Verify bucket exists and write permissions are granted
No Audio/Video Input
- Check system input devices
- Verify microphone and webcam permissions

License

MIT License - See LICENSE file for details

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please submit a Pull Request.

Support

For issues and feature requests, please open an issue on GitHub.

tillydray/efficient-recorder

ErrorLooks like something went wrong!

About

Resources

Uh oh!

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Releases

Packages 0

Languages

Error
Looks like something went wrong!

Packages