[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH v2] libavfilter: add PipeWire-based grab

[François-Simon Fauteux-Chapleau]

----- On Jul 28, 2024, at 10:53 AM, Quack Doc quackdoctech at gmail.com wrote:
> Is it possible to use this without using the portals API and without
> systemd? That would be much appreciated if so since the portal is not very
> flexible.

I don't like the portals API either and would rather not have to use it, but
as far as I can tell there is no alternative. All the other projects that
use PipeWire for screen capture that I've looked at (e.g. WebRTC, OBS Studio)
use it, and according to the XDG Desktop Portal documentation,
"the primary way of capturing screens and windows on Wayland desktops is
through the ScreenCast portal, and some desktop environments don’t even expose
other means to capture the screen or windows."
(https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/reasons-to-use-portals.html)

> As for systemd it would be great to be able to use this on
> non-systemd platforms.

Using the ScreenCast portal requires an XDG Desktop Portal backend
implementation, see e.g.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Desktop_Portal
https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/writing-a-new-backend.html
I don't know if any backend currently supports non-systemd platforms (on my
system at least, the backend is implemented as a systemd service), but
assuming you can find one, then it should be possible to get screen capture
to work.