Play and Record Demos with Ease

Playing and recording demos in terminal sessions has never been easier. Simply put your demo's commands with comments in a text file, then run the provided script. Your demo will run and be captured in a file in svg or mp4 format.

Install dependencies manually (optional)

You can skip this step if you have pip3 and node.js/npm installed on your machine. In this case, the script will automatically install the required tools and modules: asciinema, svg-term and svg-to-video for you.

1. Install asciinema (https://asciinema.org/docs/installation)

   pip3 install asciinema

2. InstallNode.js/npm (https://docs.npmjs.com/downloading-and-installing-node-js-and-npm)
3. Install svg-term-cli (https://github.com/marionebl/svg-term-cli)

   npm install -g svg-term-cli

4. Install svg-to-video

   npm install -g svg-to-video

5. Install ffmpeg if you need to record demos in mp4 video files (https://ffmpeg.org/download.html)

Usage

Create a demo file

A demo file is a valid script that consists of:

• Comments and notes, each starting with #.
• Command lines containing valid commands that will execute during the demo.

Here's a simple example demo file: simple.demo.

# This is a simple demo file

# Comment/note lines begin with '#'
# This is a comment.

# A command line is a valid command that will execute.
# List all files in the current directory
ls

# Show today's date
date

# Say Hello
echo "Hello, world!"

# Wait for 2 seconds
sleep 2

# That's it.
# Thank you for using recdemo!"

clear

Play a demo and save it in a svg or mp4 file

 scripts/recdemo.sh <input> [output] [--help] [options...]
 <input> input file
 [output] output file: .svg to record in a svg file (default), .cast in a cast file, .mp4 in a video file
 --help show this help
 --cols cols of the terminal
 --rows rows of the terminal
 --ps1 ps1 of the recording
 --term terminal type

Record a demo in a svg file:

  ./scripts/recdemo.sh examples/simple.demo examples/simple-demo.svg

Record a demo in a mp4 video file:

  ./scripts/recdemo.sh examples/simple.demo examples/simple-demo.mp4

Play a svg file

Open the svg file simple-demo.svg that was generated in the previous step.

Download the mp4 video file

A more realistic demo

Here is a recorded demo about how to use minikube to play with kubernetes on my Mac.

• Input: minikube.demo
• Output: minikube-demo.svg

Contributions

Contributions are welcome!

Acknowledgement

The script recdemo.sh has been borrowed and adapted from a script created by @wzshiming for the kwok project.