Would love to be able to self host this tool - I'd be fine with purchasing a license to do so but I'd really rather not have this running on hardware that isn't mine - wrapping this up in a docker container that I can deploy would be mint.
Right on! That is definitely something I am willing to explore over time! I know Basecamp has been experimenting with the Pay Once model with great success.
I don't really have a use for this particular software, but I wanted to add my +1 to pay once self-hosted Sofware. It's such a great model for the customer and I have bought software with that model even when there were free open-source alternatives. I really hope it works on the business side as I would love for it to viable.
Awesome stuff.
It requires some polishing though, but I prefer it over many apps.
To me - it didn't work well with USB camera on a laptop - it could only choose one and it was the one built into my laptop.
Take the feedback, do some improvements. I will use it even if you don't - love it :-)
Seems cool! But for privacy reasons I prefer to do the recording locally and send the file myself. I've been using the extension https://cursorful.com/ (only for Chrome), which doesn't upload the video to the cloud, it just does everything locally, and the free tier features are enough for me.
Thanks! Hosting in the cloud lets me centrally manage assets and makes it easier to add interactive features like Arcade and Supademo, which require server-side components. It also simplifies analytics and customization. Currently, I store everything in S3 but purge the videos every few days. If this gains traction, I'm already experienced with implementing standards like SOC 2.
Congratulations on the release, is there a plan to opensource it?
I've been using https://snapify.it/, it's opensource but I haven't been able to selfhost it.
Thank you pratio! I quit my job and this is my full time gig now. I've got about three years of runway, so if I can't get it to PMF soon--then yes and I'll move on to something else.
I'm super passionate about this though. Totally up my alley as a Dev and aspiring Growth Hacker, Product Marketing Manager.
The idea is to build a tool and use it to grow itself.
Also, anyone want to talk offline about anything at all, please contact me at john@screenrecorder.me
Hey! Great product you released. Don't feel pressured by the people asking you to release everything for free, it's a terrible strategy to create a profitable business.
Hey! What are your opinions on open sourcing this tool considering privacy considerations and simply I would love it if I can host my own data/ not have to worry about what proprietary thing is running!
It’s time to have self hosted solutions for this kind of activity, with simple UIs, voice editing, text to audio, without subscriptions. Just a matter of time OSS will deliver
I use screen recorders all the time. Question: what format does it capture in? Some screen recorders capture as mov files, which get janky in high zoom. A pro app like Camtasia captures in what I assume is the raw screen data, and for this reason zooming in on a clip works really well.
I use getDisplayMedia which is a JavaScript API that lets you capture recordings as large as your computer can handle, but the format is fixed to either MP4 or WebM.
There are definitely artifacts, especially in the latter, but in practice the videos I've been creating have been working well. Also, it's primarily because the zoom is so high.
In practice, I usually set the zoom much lower and it doesn't have as much artifacting. Check out the homepage video
I tried capturing a portrait mode monitor, and that video came out very weird: Only the upper right quadrant of the video had a gradient, with my portrait window in the middle....
Fantastic product! I almost feel bad for Screen Studio as he's a solo creator and charges for the product, this will most certainly be bad news for him
I've built a 100% web-based screen recording tool aimed at product marketing managers, developers, or anyone wanting to showcase their work along with a talking head. Inspired by ScreenStudio, it allows you to effortlessly create polished recordings directly from your browser.
A couple of technical highlights I'm particularly proud of:
Initially, I used ReMotion but ran into limitations. I ended up building my own animation engine from scratch, closely inspired by ReMotion's capabilities but tailored specifically for my use-case.
Due to browser security constraints with getDisplayMedia(), I couldn't directly track cursor movements. To overcome this, I trained a custom YOLO (You-Only-Look-Once) model for cursor detection. This allowed me to implement smooth, mouse-following animations within recordings, bypassing the browser limitations entirely.
Happy to dive deeper into the tech if anyone's interested!
Yes, I currently save them to Amazon S3, but they're deleted after a few days. It's still just a hobby project, so I haven't set up a privacy policy yet. You're right though, I definitely need to clarify this explicitly. Thanks for pointing it out!
That's great to hear. I am going to put up some communication channel on the site soon so I can talk back and forth to users. Let me know if you have any recommendations on what that could look like. I have tried Discord, but I think I want something more one on one.
How long can the recordings be? Recently needed to do some 1-2hr long recordings. Look works pretty well for that, QuickTime + OBS could, but generates massive files, which are hard to share
Fyi, you can easily encode your obs recording via good old Handbreak or similar (editors usually also let you so that, but if you are not planning to edit.. )
Currently, videos are recorded and uploaded directly to Amazon S3, and I haven't set an explicit limit on video length. I've personally tested uploads around 15–20 minutes without issues, and a couple of users have successfully recorded 30-minute videos, though I haven't fully rendered or extensively tested videos at that length yet.
The app uses a custom renderer inspired by ReMotion, so while the app can output MP4s, I also have a player that is dynamic HTML/CSS animation powered by JS, hosted either on my site. I could make it a player that is hosted from anywhere, and I think I will do this for a free tier.
Theoretically, this setup can handle videos of arbitrary length, but practically speaking, I've only thoroughly tested around 10–15 minutes. I'd recommend caution with significantly longer recordings (like an hour) for now, as you might encounter rendering issues.
I’ve using screen studio since it was beta release. Making alternative is a start but if you want to be better, I would suggest adding what’s missing from screen studio.
Few things I would like to see:
- Ability to add images in the time line, think of intro/outro.
- Ability to add notes (text) on frames to explain something or highlight an area.
As some comments mentioned, running locally is a must, and I have no problem paying for it.
OP here: I'm looking for testers for my web-based screen recorder app—specifically product marketing managers or anyone regularly demonstrating software to clients. I'd love your feedback, and in return, I'll prioritize building or adjusting the tool based on your specific needs (within my technical capabilities). I'm particularly interested in exploring interactive demo features similar to Arcade or SupaDemo, so suggestions in that direction would be especially helpful.
Would love to be able to self host this tool - I'd be fine with purchasing a license to do so but I'd really rather not have this running on hardware that isn't mine - wrapping this up in a docker container that I can deploy would be mint.
Don't worry about the docker container right now, since the community can figure it out though it would obviously be a great step imo.
First we really need the Source code of this tool though if we really want this tool to stay for posterity!
No mate, you need to help the creator of the tool to make enough money from it to create a sustainable business/project
both are possible
Right on! That is definitely something I am willing to explore over time! I know Basecamp has been experimenting with the Pay Once model with great success.
I don't really have a use for this particular software, but I wanted to add my +1 to pay once self-hosted Sofware. It's such a great model for the customer and I have bought software with that model even when there were free open-source alternatives. I really hope it works on the business side as I would love for it to viable.
Awesome stuff. It requires some polishing though, but I prefer it over many apps. To me - it didn't work well with USB camera on a laptop - it could only choose one and it was the one built into my laptop.
Take the feedback, do some improvements. I will use it even if you don't - love it :-)
Seems cool! But for privacy reasons I prefer to do the recording locally and send the file myself. I've been using the extension https://cursorful.com/ (only for Chrome), which doesn't upload the video to the cloud, it just does everything locally, and the free tier features are enough for me.
I have used cursorful before but make sure you aren't using it for commerical use, need to buy a license for that.
I really want a free version from commercial use tbh, not that cursorful is expensive
Thanks! Hosting in the cloud lets me centrally manage assets and makes it easier to add interactive features like Arcade and Supademo, which require server-side components. It also simplifies analytics and customization. Currently, I store everything in S3 but purge the videos every few days. If this gains traction, I'm already experienced with implementing standards like SOC 2.
pretty cool. soon there will be an open source version of this
You 100% need a privacy policy, you are potentially storing PII information and secure details with this.
People are a nightmare, I can already see someone leaking secrets with this.
Congratulations on the release, is there a plan to opensource it? I've been using https://snapify.it/, it's opensource but I haven't been able to selfhost it.
Thank you pratio! I quit my job and this is my full time gig now. I've got about three years of runway, so if I can't get it to PMF soon--then yes and I'll move on to something else.
I'm super passionate about this though. Totally up my alley as a Dev and aspiring Growth Hacker, Product Marketing Manager.
The idea is to build a tool and use it to grow itself.
Also, anyone want to talk offline about anything at all, please contact me at john@screenrecorder.me
Hey! Great product you released. Don't feel pressured by the people asking you to release everything for free, it's a terrible strategy to create a profitable business.
Hey! What are your opinions on open sourcing this tool considering privacy considerations and simply I would love it if I can host my own data/ not have to worry about what proprietary thing is running!
Thanks in advance
> What are your opinions on open sourcing this tool
What are your opinions on the best way for you to pay for it as an open source tool?
It is cool but I thought it was client-side only - it turns out the videos are exported and stored remote. Can you confirm?
Doesn't appear to work on Firefox or Safari — dialog closes immediately after opening.
Thanks again - I got it working on Firefox and it's deploying now. Still investigating Safari...
Fails for me in similar fashion on macOS Safari.
I'm looking into it now. It has been tested on those but I've made some changes to the home page that might have broken that. Thank you!
It’s time to have self hosted solutions for this kind of activity, with simple UIs, voice editing, text to audio, without subscriptions. Just a matter of time OSS will deliver
I use screen recorders all the time. Question: what format does it capture in? Some screen recorders capture as mov files, which get janky in high zoom. A pro app like Camtasia captures in what I assume is the raw screen data, and for this reason zooming in on a clip works really well.
I use getDisplayMedia which is a JavaScript API that lets you capture recordings as large as your computer can handle, but the format is fixed to either MP4 or WebM.
Here is the JS-based player: https://screenrecorder.me/projects/s3hx9YRgXNsrN1s/player
Here is a video that I rendered: https://screenrecorder.me/player/s3hx9YRgXNsrN1s
There are definitely artifacts, especially in the latter, but in practice the videos I've been creating have been working well. Also, it's primarily because the zoom is so high.
In practice, I usually set the zoom much lower and it doesn't have as much artifacting. Check out the homepage video
https://screenrecorder.me/
Would it also capture system audio? Wasn’t there some security restrictions on that for MacOS
Audio capture support apparently available on all desktop browsers except Firefox: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MediaDevice...
I tried capturing a portrait mode monitor, and that video came out very weird: Only the upper right quadrant of the video had a gradient, with my portrait window in the middle....
Is there any way I can host my own version of this?
Do you mean the video that you create or the editor itself? I'm always open for discussing anything.
He probably means the whole thing, to self host it somewhere (potentially even on localhost).
I never thought I'd see the expressions "screen recording" and "stunning" being used together...
Fantastic product! I almost feel bad for Screen Studio as he's a solo creator and charges for the product, this will most certainly be bad news for him
Why people still write "Follow me on Twitter" (found on web website) when there is no Twitter anymore?
The same reason we call the computer in our pocket a phone?
Looks interesting mate. screenstudio keeps crashing for me endlessly ... so this is a welcome effort
Hi HN,
I've built a 100% web-based screen recording tool aimed at product marketing managers, developers, or anyone wanting to showcase their work along with a talking head. Inspired by ScreenStudio, it allows you to effortlessly create polished recordings directly from your browser.
A couple of technical highlights I'm particularly proud of:
Initially, I used ReMotion but ran into limitations. I ended up building my own animation engine from scratch, closely inspired by ReMotion's capabilities but tailored specifically for my use-case.
Due to browser security constraints with getDisplayMedia(), I couldn't directly track cursor movements. To overcome this, I trained a custom YOLO (You-Only-Look-Once) model for cursor detection. This allowed me to implement smooth, mouse-following animations within recordings, bypassing the browser limitations entirely.
Happy to dive deeper into the tech if anyone's interested!
Does the video get stored on your server at any point in the process?
Might be worth calling that out either way.
Yes, I currently save them to Amazon S3, but they're deleted after a few days. It's still just a hobby project, so I haven't set up a privacy policy yet. You're right though, I definitely need to clarify this explicitly. Thanks for pointing it out!
I was looking for something like this since so long. Thank you for making it! Will test it out soon.
That's great to hear. I am going to put up some communication channel on the site soon so I can talk back and forth to users. Let me know if you have any recommendations on what that could look like. I have tried Discord, but I think I want something more one on one.
I'd love to make it do what you need.
What does it means "Return here after selecting your screen"? I have no idea how I should selct, select what?
How long can the recordings be? Recently needed to do some 1-2hr long recordings. Look works pretty well for that, QuickTime + OBS could, but generates massive files, which are hard to share
Fyi, you can easily encode your obs recording via good old Handbreak or similar (editors usually also let you so that, but if you are not planning to edit.. )
https://handbrake.fr/
Currently, videos are recorded and uploaded directly to Amazon S3, and I haven't set an explicit limit on video length. I've personally tested uploads around 15–20 minutes without issues, and a couple of users have successfully recorded 30-minute videos, though I haven't fully rendered or extensively tested videos at that length yet.
The app uses a custom renderer inspired by ReMotion, so while the app can output MP4s, I also have a player that is dynamic HTML/CSS animation powered by JS, hosted either on my site. I could make it a player that is hosted from anywhere, and I think I will do this for a free tier.
Theoretically, this setup can handle videos of arbitrary length, but practically speaking, I've only thoroughly tested around 10–15 minutes. I'd recommend caution with significantly longer recordings (like an hour) for now, as you might encounter rendering issues.
I’ve using screen studio since it was beta release. Making alternative is a start but if you want to be better, I would suggest adding what’s missing from screen studio.
Few things I would like to see:
- Ability to add images in the time line, think of intro/outro.
- Ability to add notes (text) on frames to explain something or highlight an area.
As some comments mentioned, running locally is a must, and I have no problem paying for it.
Good luck
congrats on the launch. I was just about looking for a tool like this.
Doesn’t seem to work on mobile
It doesn't, and I need to put up a little blurb when it is launched on mobile. I will do that now.
i just randomly found this site on accident, what is it?
F, I bought the lifetime of screen studio
Congrats on the launch!
Thank you!
OP here: I'm looking for testers for my web-based screen recorder app—specifically product marketing managers or anyone regularly demonstrating software to clients. I'd love your feedback, and in return, I'll prioritize building or adjusting the tool based on your specific needs (within my technical capabilities). I'm particularly interested in exploring interactive demo features similar to Arcade or SupaDemo, so suggestions in that direction would be especially helpful.
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