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Recording a Moonlight Stream with OBS using vkcapture under flatpak

Problem

Record (only) my gameplay (directly) from Moonlight

Issues

  • Cannot capture a single window
  • Cannot capture a window in another workspace
  • Cannot capture a single workspace
  • Both OBS and Moonlight are running under flatpak
  • pipewire can only capture a display
  • Capturing through pipewire is a bit odd from time to time

Tried a bunch of solution to my problem but most of them dont work outside of flatpak, requires switching / forcing x11, or completely changing to a different DE.

Solution

To directly capture Moonlight’s rendering to OBS with obs-vkcapture.

Steps:

  1. Install the obs-vkcapture plugin.
  • $: flatpak install com.obsproject.Studio.Plugin.OBSVkCapture
  • $: flatpak install org.freedesktop.Platform.VulkanLayer.OBSVkCapture
    • There are some post installation checks that you’ll need to do highlighted here under “Permissions”.
  1. Run Moonlight and load obs-vkcapture using LD_PRELOAD
  • $: flatpak run --env=LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/extensions/vulkan/OBSVkCapture/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/obs_glcapture/libobs_glcapture.so com.moonlight_stream.Moonlight
  1. Add Game Capture to your scene.

Fixes

Issue Fix
Moonlight is flickering black Set Moonlight’s Settings > Advanced Settings > Video Decoder to Force Software Decoding