Creating movies in codea

Questions
1

Aside from the startRecording()/stopRecording() (which leaves an ugly big watermark on the video) is there any other wya I can create a video? I’d like to build out a simple animation tool that could then be used to record simple videos. The solutions I’ve thought about are inserting a 5 second timer before the animations run so I can do a screen record, and …er… that’s it.

I’m assuming the watermark is an apple restriction, but is there a way to either remove the watermark or send the screen output to a movie file that can then be recorded?

-PJ

2

@pjholden Try setting displayMode(FULLSCREEN_NO_BUTTONS) . You’ll have to use the touched function to startRecording and stopRecording. Or just startRecording as soon as the program starts and I guess it will stop recording if you stop the program.

3

Hi, I’ve done that - when you start recording programmatically you get a “RECORDING” message on screen (along with a timer letting you know how long the recording is) I’m assuming this was to comply with apple’s requirement that users know when you’re recording the screen.

4

@pjholden I don’t get that on my iPad. When I look at the video, all I see is the screen. There isn’t any RECORDING message or timer.

5

The numbers are things I’ve drawn on screen, the Red recording and camera icon are codea’s Own…

6

Here’s the program I’m using. Tap the screen to start recording. Tap the screen to stop recording. When you stop recording, I call exit() which doesn’t exist so the program cancels back to the editor. You’ll be given the option to save the video.

displayMode(FULLSCREEN_NO_BUTTONS)

function setup()
    z=1
    v=0
    xx=0
    stopRecording() 
    fill(255)  
end

function draw()
    background(40, 40, 50)
    text(z,WIDTH/2,HEIGHT-100)
    if xx==0 then
        text("tap screen to start recording",WIDTH/2,HEIGHT-50)
    end
    if xx==2 then
        text("tap screen to stop recording",WIDTH/2,HEIGHT-50)
    end
    if xx==1 then
        startRecording()
        xx=2
    end
    if xx==3 then
        stopRecording()
        exit()
    end
    z=z+v
    ellipse(WIDTH/2,HEIGHT/2,z)
end

function touched(t)
    if t.state==BEGAN then
        xx=xx+1
        v=.5
    end
end
7

Hmmm I think I was doing FULLSCREEN, though I did edit it to fullscreen no buttons and got the same message but coming out and in and it’s made it go away! Ta!

8

For what it’s worth…

I wrote a recordScreen wrapper to add a countdown and a timer. When it’s begun it’s given a callback function which is the animation proper (which right now are just a couple of simple tweens on some sprites)
(I’ve lots of tidying up to do, it was more proof of concept at this stage)



recordScreen = class()

function recordScreen:init(t)
    -- you can accept and set parameters here
    self.countDown = {}
    self.countDown.timer = 4
    self.countDown.time = self.countDown.timer - 1
    
    self.t = t or 10 -- default to 10 seconds...
    self.recorder = {}
    self.recorder.time = self.t + self.countDown.timer -- add the timer to the total record time...
    self.recorder.tminus = self.recorder.time
    
    self.recorder.recording = false
    self.inCountdown = false
    self.timeStart = os.time()
    
    self.debug = true
    
end

function recordScreen:begin( callback )
    -- begin the countdown ...
    self.inCountdown = true
    self.timeStart = os.time()
    -- first tween is for the on screen count down 4/3/2/1
  startRecording() 
    tween(self.countDown.timer, self.countDown, {time = 0},nil, 
            function (param)
                self.inCountdown = false
                if callback then  
                    return callback()
                end
        end )
    -- this second tween is for the overall record... simple cancel record when we're done!
    
    tween(self.recorder.time, self.recorder, {tminus=0}, nil,
        function(params)
            self:endrecord()
        end
    )
end

function recordScreen:endrecord()
    self.timeFinish = os.difftime(self.timeStart, os.time())
    -- turn off screen recording...
 stopRecording()
end

function recordScreen:runningTime()
    return os.difftime( os.time(), self.timeStart) 
end

function recordScreen:draw()
    -- Codea does not automatically call this method
    pushStyle()
    if self.inCountdown then
        pushMatrix()
        fontSize(100)
            text(math.ceil(self.countDown.time), WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2)
        popMatrix()
    end
    if self.debug then
        fontSize(12)
        text(self.recorder.tminus, WIDTH-300, HEIGHT-200)
    end
    popStyle()
end

function recordScreen:touched(touch)
    -- Codea does not automatically call this method
end