Set up a Xephyr nested X server with a resolution of 1280×720 as this resolution yields the best result when uploading the final video to a webservice like YouTube. I use a little script for this:

#!/bin/bash

# Set up nested X server
Xephyr -keybd ephyr,,,xkbmodel=evdev -br -reset -host-cursor -screen 1280x720x24 -dpi 96 :2 &
sleep 3
export DISPLAY=:2.0
/etc/X11/Xsession &

As you can see I set up a session by calling /etc/X11/Xsession. In Ubuntu >= 9.10 this starts up a new fresh Gnome session and because I use IceWM for my main session in which I run Xephyr this works very well. If you're using Gnome as your DE using /etc/X11/Xsession won't work properly so in that case you will have to resort to a different start-up option. This also holds for distributions that don't use /etc/X11/Xsession.

TODO:other distros

After you ran this Xephyr script, you should run the above screencast script, taking care of making the following changes to it:

* add the line “export DISPLAY=:2.0” after the TIME line * change -i 0:0 ffmpeg option to -i :2 * add the -display 0:0 option to the xterm line (so it won't appear in your screencast)

Within the Xephyr session I also use a plain cursor theme without drop shadow because ffmpeg doesn't capture the drop shadow properly. As of FFmpeg revision 25690 this has been fixed.