screen-recorder

A Windows GUI screen recorder built in Python.

• Capture a full monitor, a single window, or an arbitrary rectangular region.
• Downscale output to a target height (480p–1080p, default 720p), aspect-preserving.
• Adjustable frame rate (10–60 Hz, default 30).
• Visually-lossless H.264 (libx264, optional NVENC), with automatic GPU→CPU fallback.
• Output to MP4 (via crash-safe MKV intermediate, lossless remux), or MKV directly.
• Live estimated bitrate / file size before you hit record.
• Remembers your last-used settings.

Run from source (development)

uv sync
uv run screen-recorder

FFmpeg ships bundled via imageio-ffmpeg — no system install needed.

Install as a Windows app

Build a self-contained .exe (with bundled FFmpeg + icon, no console window), then add a Start-menu shortcut:

uv sync                                          # install build deps
uv run pyinstaller screen-recorder.spec          # produces dist/ScreenRecorder/
tools/install_shortcut.ps1                       # adds a Start-menu shortcut

After this, press Win and type Screen Recorder.

Where things live (per Windows conventions)

• App settings: %APPDATA%\ScreenRecorder\config.json — written on app close, read on launch.
• Default recording folder: %USERPROFILE%\Videos\ScreenRecorder\, with timestamped filenames (recording-YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.mp4). You can override per-recording with the Save to… button.

Tests

uv run pytest                 # all tests
uv run pytest -m "not e2e"    # fast tests only (no real recording)