Video recording .mkv files

Hi Folks. I have a Robotron box running on a Raspberry Pi.

I noticed in my home directory there are two recorded video files: robotron-230428-184345.mkv and robotron-230528-1843438.mkv These are short recordings of games where I was experimenting with keys. So clearly my Retroarch / libretro settup has the ability to record games, but I can’t figure out how to do it on demand.

Searching forums suggest I can start recordings from the ‘quickstart’ menu. Assuming this is what you get when you hit tab (by default) and get the option to configure controls, there’s nothing about recording there. In /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg I found a commented-out setting:

Toggle between recording and not.

input_movie_record_toggle = o

I uncommented that, and then tried setting it to “o” with quotes, but neither seemed to help - pressing the “o” key mid-game didn’t add to the list of files. I also found a commented recording_output_directory which I uncommented and set to: recording_output_directory = /home/pi/recordings (with and without double quotes around the directory name).

Anything I can find by searching is very old and suggests ffmeg needs to be installed, but clearly if I have recorded in the past it should be possible now. I may have updated retroarch or other packages since I did that, mind.

Any suggestions for what I can try? Any way to add the recording option to the menu?

Thanks

2 Likes

If the Quick Menu items are not there by default, it must mean that the record driver is null, so nothing can record unless it has the option “ffmpeg” available and selected.

2 Likes