Working with video¶

Video recording¶

Info

H.264 is available on Pi 3 and Pi 4. Older boards won't handle it. Best of all this feature only works for HDMI to CSI bridge. For the USB HDMI dongle, there will be a decrease in FPS to 10-15 for 1080p.

Update OS:
Updating PiKVM OS

To update, run following commands under the root user:
```
[root@pikvm ~]# pikvm-update
```
If you encounter an error like:
```
[root@pikvm ~]# pikvm-update
bash: pikvm-update: command not found
```
It's most likely you have an old OS release. You can update the OS as follows:
```
[root@pikvm ~]# rw
[root@pikvm ~]# pacman -Syy
[root@pikvm ~]# pacman -S pikvm-os-updater
[root@pikvm ~]# pikvm-update
```
Next time you will be able to use the usual method with pikvm-update.
Install ffmpeg:
```
# rw
# pacman -S ffmpeg
```
For USB dongle only: Add line gpu_mem=256 to /boot/config.txt.
Perform reboot command.
Run rw after the reboot.
To record a video, you need to enable the stream (open the web interface or connect via VNC). Then run something like this in the console:
```
# rw
# ustreamer-dump --sink kvmd::ustreamer::h264 --output - | ffmpeg -use_wallclock_as_timestamps 1 -i pipe: -c:v copy test.mp4
```
Press Ctrl+C to stop recording. Your video will be in the file test.mp4.
After finishing work, do not forget to switch the file system to read-only mode using ro command.

Take a screenshot via console on PiKVM¶

Note

You must have a stream running

# curl --unix-socket /run/kvmd/ustreamer.sock http://localhost/snapshot -o /tmp/screen.jpg