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.

How much would you pay for it for lifetime value? Context: I had built very similar tool myself & can implement a few more features to make it self host possible to sell license.

$15-20

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!

He builds in public on his youtube channel. he pretty much types every line of code onto the screen... No one can ever make everyone happy.

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

That's a fantasy of the hobby FOSS developer.

"If I make something so great then people will still pay me even if I give it away for free!"

A tiny percentage of people might still pay for it, but the vast majority will not, and will complain loudly about any attempts to monetize.

Why does everything need to be made for profit? Why does someone NEED to be paid for every project, every scrap of work?

You said it yourself, this is a hobby FOSS developer. Key word hobby.

Have people stopped understanding that others do things simply because they want to? Not everything is profit-driven, even on this site.

This is what I was referring to.

Though I can also understand the child comment on your comment as well. I think that is a reasonable statement as well.

This is a really weird ethical dilemma that I still hold, as a hobby creator myself (just not at a scale of really earning money,but boy I sure would want to ), I want to earn money from it but I also want to distribute it freely, I am not sure how I can get both.

I would like for artisan, indie developers to be able to sustain some kind of a living off their work instead of being forced to work at a soul-sucking faang optimizing ad clicks because their hobby projects can't pay any bills.

> A tiny percentage of people might still pay for it, but the vast majority will not, and will complain loudly about any attempts to monetize.

This is true of all products though, in ecommerce 1% conversion is pretty average... generally the path is to increase the top of the funnel because it's always small at the bottom... some products get by with 0.5% or less

"For posterity"?

What is the cultural significance of this tool that would require it?

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.

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.

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.

I'd love a self-hosted version for no other reason than to be able to customize encode quality and video size. I'd like to do some video casts for my coworkers on workflows I developed/use, but sharper text would be convenient.

pretty cool. soon there will be an open source version of this

The fact you've copied screen.studio so closely leaves a bad taste in my mouth. On the landing page you apply formatting in Google Sheets, just like screen studio does. It's ok to be inspired by screen studio but remember they are mostly a solo dev too so try and be more original.

No one said it's illegal. They said it leaves a bad taste. I also don't think this particular comment was necessarily a critique of capitalism as a whole.

I love the youtube series... raw, watching you build in the open is great. This would be a killer app to make youtube videos, but without the ability to download the video, you won't be able to post them. I can "Export" but then it just gives me a specific link that can be shared instead of the raw mp4 file.

Do you plan on adding this feature?

Absolutely I will. In Chrome, you can right click the video and save it. Thank you for the kind words about the YouTube series - the idea is to build a tool I myself can use, so I have all sorts of things I want to add like title pages, text, etc.

Including some text that says "Right click to download" would dramatically decrease your bounce rate. I was a bounce without that feature.

That sounds like it would be a good niche to pivot into. Eventually you'll have to charge, so differentiating yourself here would be key.

Also, make sure you are aware of which 'channel' you are receiving your feedback from, and skewing your bias to account when deciding a roadmap. I see alot of comments saying self-hosted, which would be a bad use of development time at this stage. Obviously lock down encryption, and create a video-library similiar to loom but have that all hosted through the app.

how i could see a potential differentiation with this tool/ what i'd be interested in.

Consulting tool pivot: A tool to eliminate meetings

I own a consultanting company and i am always onboarding freelancers to certain tasks that i need them to do. Sometimes it's the same tasks that will be repeated, so they can always use the videos as a tool to 'refresh' themselves when they get stuck. It's like a video SOP, so what would be cool is if you used AI to create an 'SOP' from the video. Like links i clicked, folders and documents i interacted with and their location, etc. etc. This would be an invaluable tool for me at my company as every time i have a task that i need to delegate, i just create a loom video and then link all those things in an email which takes a long time.

For my clients it's the same exact thing, but showing them whats been done or answering any questions they have sent via email.

Youtube pivot:

Make a software for creators. Where they can record these videos for tutorials, with some kind of auto edditing features such as including intro's, outros.

Let's hop on a call and discuss (JK, saw the youtube video haha)

I know people are going on about privacy and that's fair but easily sorted with the appropriate data privacy policies and actually adhering to your commitments in them.

If you are approaching this from a potential business perspective that will not be the major issue. As you can tell from the comments most people do want their screen recordings on a remote service, now matter the policies involved.

That leaves you with some options :

1) Encrypt the outgoing WebRTC stream before it leaves the client device/browser (e.g. through WebRTC Insertable Streams or similar), encoded with a client local key that only your customer knows/manages. This ensures any screen recordings stored on your end cannot be accessed in any way. They can then download the recordings as needed and decrypt on demand. Note that this still has the implication of you storing and transmitting massive amounts of data which is likely to become cost prohibitive as a service.

2) As above but do the decrypting for your customer on your end so they get to download playable media. This obviously introduces the security risk of your platform becoming temporarily able to 'see' the content.

3) Save your recording directly through MediaRecorder WebM or similar (has various browser compatibility challenges as standards materialize) and uses less obvious encodings (we're still living with the bullshit of H.264 requiring licensing).

So unless I am missing something this seems much less useful than windows builtin screen recorder. Any mouse movement causes it to zoom in and cut off large portions of the screen and I don't see a way to prevent this. (I can see the occasional use case but the fact that there appears no way to turn it off is a deal breaker.)

One potential useful (And I have no clue how hard to implement) thing I could see implementing would be the ability to mask out private details and have the mask follow the details as the screen is scrolled. It feels like something an LLM/AI could do.

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!

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 :-)

Thank you! If you're willing to provide feedback over time, I'll implement features you're looking for if you have legit use cases for this tool and are willing to use it. I'll give you free service in exchange once I begin charging.

The aspect ratio issue you mention has not been well tested, and your feedback is already very valuable. I will fix this.

It is cool but I thought it was client-side only - it turns out the videos are exported and stored remote. Can you confirm?

Yes this is correct - they are stored in s3 and deleted every few days.

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?

Probably having the license AGPL or some certain restriction where you can only attract the big business users on this product.

Let's be honest, you can make money from the small guys but they are little cents as compared to giving corps self hosting guides / licenses like docker..., I know they may not come under pure open source, but the question is tricky, and so is the answer.

So this becomes "fair source" I guess.

I just want the code itself to be readable & buildable from scratch, I want to trust in the process that there are atleast some person who have searched this code and found no malicious use. I want it so that I can modify your program if I really want to, maybe even redistribute that modifications.

Cool tool, but I would make it a local desktop app that hooks the browser.

I tried first using a browser extension and I couldn't get traction, thus making it completely sign-up free and available right from the homepage. However, I'd eventually like to transition into desktop software because there are so many more options. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life hopefully or for a great while. I want to make screen recording software for people.

Well done! Just tested this out and it's great but some feedback:

I couldn't successfully trim my recording. I could get into "trim mode" but couldn't figure out how to do it. That's a really important feature to me and the UX needs a lot of work there.

A feature that I always use with Screen Studio is changing the speed of clips. For example, if I'm typing in the recording, I like to speed it up super fast.

Also, I like the Cursor size/preferences (size, hide when mouse isn't moving, etc)

A feature that is missing from SS is: I can't insert title cards or my own clips. I kinda wish it took video editing to the next level and allowed me to insert other clips or title cards.

I'm still not happy with Screen Studio's pricing change.

Good luck!

Also - I want to add speed up and slow down of clips

I removed the cut button - but trimming the start and end points still works

Hey thank you so much for this feedback. What are your use cases for a tool like this?

Right now, there is a button with scissors on it that doesn't work. I apologize for not removing that, but I didn't think this post would even make the front page. (as an aside - I've tried several times posting this without success, but a change to the landing page much have done it)

I am definitely going to add the ability to add cards and title screens - and nice ones! I'd love for you to be a part of that conversation.

If you're willing and you have time, I'd love to connect for ongoing feedback. Like some of the other comments have surmised, I will eventually want to charge for it, and I could give you free service (I don't want to say lifetime, because I don't know what that implies, but it would effectively be lifetime or something very generous). I don't want to pretend that means to much right now - as you've stated, it needs a lot of work. But I am determined! And the features you mention are on my roadmap.

This offer extends to anyone willing to provide useful feedback over time, which would mean responding to one or two e-mails a month probably. I don't know what it looks like. I just want help. Thanks!

John, this is spectacular. I'd love to go back and forth with you on this...I've wanted something like this for a long time and I'm super impressed. Could you email me? [email protected].

Sent!

I never thought I'd see the expressions "screen recording" and "stunning" being used together...

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).

Does anyone have suggestions for tools similar to this/Screen Studio that works as a webcam on macOS? I'd like to share 2-3 windows, with those fancy backgrounds, and a camera overlay, in a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio, without needing to change the resolution of my ultra wide monitor or move/close all other windows etc.

OBS can always get you there, but you will be doing the scene work on your own.

cam.so (opensource, free for personal, local)

I've tried the domain as well as searching DDG and Github and can't find this software. But I'm intrigued by it. Where I can find this?

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...

System audio (i.e. Zoom calls) can be captured only on Chromium browsers on Windows and ChromeOS when sharing the entire screen; tab audio has wider OS support; Safari and Firefox do not support system or tab audio capture https://addpipe.com/docs/recording-client/screen-recording/#...

The MDN support table does not differentiate in this regard. (le: it actually does if you click to see the implementation notes)

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 [email protected]

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.

Ha thanks for your vigilance owebmaster. I can see your support on some of the other comments! It's just the venue though, and I would expect nothing less. The fact that HN didn't shit all over it is a big enough bar for me for now ;-)

I love this tool, but I am pessimistic because the following is probably going to happen next:

1. At some point, the app will be covered with tonloads of ads to the point of impossibility to use

2. The core functionality will be hid behind sign-up/sign-in walls. The email addresses will be collected and then spammed to the brim

3. To add an insult to the injury, the app features will be gradually crippled unless you switch to a "Pro" plan. But you will not be able to do that efficiently as a user because you will be constantly attacked, bombarded and poisoned by ad banners and popups everywhere

4. Then, the app will start to upsell other offerings (of course, with modal banners!)

Those are cynical observations but they are 99% precise. I wish you good luck if you are among 1% elite.

This is the author's 3rd or 4th attempt to launch a product in this niche, Interactivedemo.ai (ProductHunt launch), demo.fun (link in their profile), a chrome extension with the same name (never took off), etc. I got this all from their Twitter profile

I'm a bootstrapped software developer myself, so I can't decide if I should admire this or flag this as spam. But you're probably right, we're getting a "pricing" page very soon.

I do want to charge but if you have valid use cases and will function as a beta-tester I would work out free service technically forever. I am open to discussions about this. I'm still experimenting and nothing is set in stone, but I actually quit my job a while ago, and this is what I want to do full time. I have a bit of runway.

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!

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!

Nice work! I really like how simple it was to get started. I know this would make it a bit harder to signup, but I think you should consider creating a Chrome Extension that allows you to get the real mouse coordinates, if possible. I think the animations feel a bit rougher compared to ScreenStudio, so maybe having the real coordinates would help. But maybe that's fixable with more smoothing or easing.

congrats on the launch! how are you rendering the video? is it browser based (wasm ffmpeg for example) or is it on cloud using aws lambda?

Thank you - It uses AWS Lambda. I started out using remotion, but I ran into some issues and just wanted control over it so I wrote my own rendering engine similar to remotion targeted towards my use case. This part took me about 1 1/2 months and still needs work with the UX.

but this will cost you money, you need to charge users. Maybe give a number of renders for free (like 50 render every month for free) and charge for extra renders

Indeed. I think a number of free renders or something like that would be a great idea once it becomes cost prohibitive for me. I hope that becomes a problem ;-)

Looks interesting mate. screenstudio keeps crashing for me endlessly ... so this is a welcome effort

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.

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....

Nice. https://gifcap.dev is good also.

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

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.

What does it means "Return here after selecting your screen"? I have no idea how I should selct, select what?

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 have no connection but seeing as these conversations often discuss alternatives I'd like to mention https://screenrun.app/.

It's web based, offers plenty of features and can be had for a one-time of $40.

I've only used it a handful of times however I keep coming back.

Does it work offline?

congrats on the launch. I was just about looking for a tool like this.

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

open source?

Great job :)

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.

The same reason we call the computer in our pocket a phone?

It's not that deep. "Twitter" just has more cultural mass than "X".

This is like correcting someone who says "legos" instead of "Lego": who cares what a corporation wants you to call it?

My point is that once a word get's adopted in the global lexicon, it's not easy to unseat it. Doesn't matter if that word is a brand, a misnomer, slang, or even derogatory to someone, it will stick for quite some time. Companies and websites get rebranded all the time and can be done so overnight. Language doesn't move at that speed.

I'd argue that it doesn't help that X is such a stupid name that many people actively oppose calling it that. Twitter (noun) and tweet (verb) were hardwired into language, my guess is you'll still be hearing them in decades to come.