From: Tim Hunter <cyclists@...>
Date: 2004-10-08T22:29:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby screen capture movies via ImageMagick

Bil Kleb wrote:

> However, I'd like to automate the whole process of capturing, converting
> to mpeg, and so forth.  I started thinking that I should be using the
> Ruby's ImageMagick binding, RMagick, etc.
> 
> Then I thought: I should just ask here because someone has probably
> figured all this out already...

Very nice hack! I put a Ruby script that does this with RMagick on
codepaste.org: http://www.codepaste.org/view/paste/232?show_comments=1
I used RMagick 1.6.0 with ImageMagick 6.1.0. I don't have the MPEG encoder
installed but I tried both MIFF and GIF formats. The resulting GIF file is
much smaller but takes a long time to write.

I could only get about 1 frame/sec (measuring with "1 Mississippi, 2
Mississippi...") and you're limited to the number of frames you can fit in
memory. That could be alleviated by capturing a relatively small window.