Saving video screencast of iPhone application

Question

Is there a way to capture video of a screen from your own application? As far as I see there is no way to do it with UIImagePickerController (cameras only), but maybe there is a way to do it with iOS 4 AV Foundation or Core Video?

Answer 1

There seems to be two ways of capturing the content of the application while it's running:

1. Use the private API UIGetScreenImage() function which seems to be accepted by Apple now;
2. Use the following thread's captureView method to capture the image.

You'll have to capture it at many times per second (I guess 24 times should be ok for human eye persistence) then you'll have to produce the movie. Perhaps you could use the ffmpeg iphone port.

Alternatively, if you'd like to capture your application's running for a demo, your best bet would be to run your application on the simulator and use a Mac OS X screencast software to capture it. See also SimFinger which "bundle of little tricks to make a screen capture of the iPhone Simulator suck less".

Finally, perhaps the following StackOverflow thread might help you produce better screencasts.

Answer 2

SimFinger and ScreenFlow are great if you can shoot in the simulator.

If you have to shoot on the device (e.g. when accelerometer, GPS, camera, etc. are used) you currently have to resort to the jailbreak world. The app "Display Recorder", available for $5 in the Cydia Store, allows to create an AVI movie of the iPhone's screen content. This works across all apps. There's a YouTube video showing it. The movie files can then be uploaded to YouTube or pulled off the iPhone via the built-in web server.