Real-time 60fps recording of audio-video under RetroPie libretro emulators - working on the RPi 3!

RetroResolution

I've now got real-time recording working with multiple libretro-core emulators (no slowdown whilst playing and recording, with a rock-solid 60fps / 50fps depending on system / region).

I've put using the hardware-assisted x264 encoder on the back burner, but made good progress regardless, having worked on the record-config combinations required to tune the output files.

PlayStation (footage can be seen here)
Megadrive
Megadrive 32X
SNES
Atari 2600 / VCS
ZX Spectrum

For reasons I can't fathom, there's no video from the PC Engine, only audio.
PrBoom (Doom) records, but there's a speed and sync issue with the audio / video streams

The original thread for this topic can be found here

BuZz

@RetroResolution Great job. We could include as an options to install a retroarch with recording for those that want to compile it in. I had no idea that hardware encoding had been included recently for the videocore iv in ffmpeg. Cheers!

RetroResolution

I only discovered the x264 hardware encoding last week - unfortunately it's not viable at the moment, but with the right combination of ffmpeg options the software encoder works well.

It'd be great to have the option to use ffmpeg recording as standard.

I'm about to begin writing up how I got it working.

Thanks for the initial help with rebuilding RetroArch to allow the recording feature to be utilised - would have taken a while to figure out the start point without this critical information!

RetroResolution

I have finally completed the how-to guide on compiling and installing the FFmpeg suite, which allows for recording from libretro-core RetroPie emulators.

I'm starting work on part 2, which details how to enable the recording features within RetroArch, and how to modify the various Emulation Station scripts to add the option launch a given emulator with the recording option enabled, as well as how create configuration files to change how ffmpeg is used.

Part One: Compiling Software from Source Code on the Raspberry Pi: The FFmpeg Suite

I've

, taken from the PlayStation emulator lr-pcsx-rearmed, on YouTube

Topics Covered

A Little Background Information
Linux Software Installation
FFmpeg Compilation and Installation
Compiling Shared Libraries
Compiling From Source: The Make Command
A Note Before Proceeding
Installing Prerequisite Build Tools
Installing the YASM Assembler
Compiling and Installing FFmpeg Codecs
    X264 Codec
    Libfdk-aac Codec
    Libmp3lame Codec
    Libopus Codec
    Libvpx Codec
The FFmpeg Suite
Compiling and Installing FFmpeg
    Checking the FFmpeg Build
Using FFmpeg to Transcode Files: Examples
Related Posts
External Links