v3.4
DarthScreenCapture
DarthScreenCapture is a 93MB, GPU-accelerated recorder built for engineers, technical writers, and educators. Lossless 4K60, per-region audio, instant GIF export, and a CLI that treats dsc record like any other binary in your $PATH.
Six capture primitives, one binary. No upsells, no "Pro" tier wall, no per-minute cloud tax — every feature below ships in the free build and stays in the $39 license.
AV1 (SVT), HEVC (VideoToolbox / NVENC), H.264 (x264, x265), ProRes 422 HQ, and a true lossless FFV1 mode for archive. Pick per-clip or set a project default — the codec selector remembers your last choice and exposes every flag in the inspector panel.
Capture one app's audio without touching the rest of the system. Pick from any CoreAudio / WASAPI / PulseAudio source — including browser tabs and virtual devices. Mix up to four streams with per-track gain and a built-in limiter at −1 dBFS.
Hit ⌘+E during or after a capture and ship a GIF in under a second. The WebM pipeline is open-source and was audited by Trail of Bits in November 2023 — full report linked from the changelog.
Arrow keys move, K toggles keystroke overlay, Z zooms the cursor 2× for demos. Arrows, boxes, and blur rectangles are non-destructive layers — toggle them off in post without re-rendering the source.
Cut on frame boundaries, splice clips, strip silence, normalize loudness to −16 LUFS. Every export action is a separate, composable command — your CLI flags survive into the GUI and vice-versa.
Every action has a default chord and every chord is remappable. Vim-mode preset included. Profiles sync via a plain shortcuts.toml in your dotfiles repo.
Every number on this page is reproducible from the open benchmark suite in our docs. No "up to" weasel-words, no synthetic loads.
| Recorder | CPU avg | Encoder | Installer | Cold start |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DarthScreenCapture 4.7 | 2.7 % | SVT-AV1 (HW offload) | 93 MB | 3.0 s |
| OBS Studio 30.1 | 11.4 % | x264 medium | 184 MB | 5.6 s |
| Loom Desktop 1.12 | 8.9 % | VP9 (cloud transcode) | 141 MB | 7.8 s |
| QuickTime Player 10.5 | 6.2 % | H.264 HW | (system) | 1.4 s* |
* QuickTime requires file-new-screen-recording-per-clip and lacks per-region audio; included for reference only.
If you've scripted ffmpeg or curl in CI, you already know how to use DarthScreenCapture. The same flags work in the GUI inspector, and every action returns a structured exit code you can branch on.
# capture a 1080p region at 60fps, AV1, app-only audio
dsc record \
--region 1920x1080+0,90 \
--fps 60 --codec av1 --bitrate 6M \
--audio per-window --audio-device "Stripe" \
--cursor smooth --keystrokes \
--output ./repros/checkout.webm
# batch regression clips in CI
dsc batch ./scenarios/*.yml --out ./artifacts/
# turn a recording into a GIF without re-encoding
dsc export ./repros/checkout.webm \
--format gif --fps 12 --max-width 720# start a capture, returns a job id
POST /v1/captures
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer $DSC_TOKEN
{
"region": "1920x1080+0,90",
"fps": 60,
"codec": "av1",
"audio": "per-window:Stripe",
"webhook": "https://hooks.example.com/dsc"
}
# → 202 Accepted
{ "id": "cap_8f3a1", "status": "recording" }
# poll status
GET /v1/captures/cap_8f3a1 → "ready"
GET /v1/captures/cap_8f3a1/file → "video/webm"AV1 (SVT), HEVC (VideoToolbox / NVENC / VAAPI), H.264 (x264, NVENC, VideoToolbox), H.265 (x265), VP9, ProRes 422/4444, and a true lossless FFV1 mode. Containers: MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, and PNG sequence. Every codec is selectable per-clip and exposes its own flag set — see the CLI reference for the full list.
macOS 12.0+ on Apple Silicon and Intel, Windows 10 build 19041+ (x86_64 and ARM64), and Linux on glibc 2.31+ as .deb, .rpm, AppImage, and a static tarball. We test on Ubuntu LTS, Fedora, Arch, and NixOS. There is no iOS or Android build — recording on mobile is out of scope for DarthScreenCapture.
No. Free-tier recordings export clean — no watermark, no "Made with DarthScreenCapture" stamp, no time limit on a single clip. The free build and the $39 license are byte-for-byte identical at the capture layer; the license unlocks the commercial-use clause and priority email support.
A single $39 one-time payment, per person, covers commercial use on every machine you own. No seat math, no per-minute cloud tax, no subscription. Updates ship every 3 weeks on a public changelog with semver; the v4 line has been stable since March 2024 and is API-stable through v5.
Yes. The CLI binary is self-contained and runs headless on any machine with a display server (Xvfb on Linux works for automated regression clips). The REST API gives you the same surface over HTTP. Both are documented in /cli-api/ with copy-paste recipes for GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Buildkite.
No. DarthScreenCapture is local-first: capture, encode, and export all happen on-device. The only network calls are (a) checking for updates, which is opt-in, and (b) explicit webhooks you configure for Linear, Jira, Sentry, or a custom URL. There is no background telemetry, no cloud rendering, no remote AI pass. The November 2023 Trail of Bits audit covers the WebM export pipeline in full.
Against OBS, DarthScreenCapture uses about a quarter of the CPU at the same resolution and ships with a CLI; against Loom, it has no cloud dependency and no per-minute cost; against QuickTime, it has per-region audio, multi-codec output, and a scriptable surface. The benchmark table in the section above has reproducible numbers.
Yes — 30 days, no questions asked, refunded by the same method you paid with. Email [email protected] and we process it the same business day. We are a 14-person company, not a ticketing queue.
No watermark, no cloud tax, no per-minute meter. Download the build, record a 4K60 clip, and ship a GIF in under a minute. If it earns its dock icon, the license is $39 — once.