Cannot record the screen on Android Nexus 4 with screenrecord or telecine

Question

On Nexus 4, with Android 5.1.1 I have the following problem that drives me mad:

When trying to record the screen (on Kubuntu 15.04) with:

adb shell screenrecord --verbose /sdcard/Download/intro9.mp4

just few seconds (1-4) are recorded and then recording stops by itself.

In the logcat there is relevant output:

09-16 14:12:46.943    5733-5742/? I/OMXClient﹕ Using client-side OMX mux.
09-16 14:12:46.946     188-4537/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ Is component secure 0
09-16 14:12:46.969      188-188/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ set_parameter: metamode is valid for input port only
09-16 14:12:46.969      188-188/? E/OMXNodeInstance﹕ setParameter(50:qcom.encoder.avc, OMX.google.android.index.storeMetaDataInBuffers(0x7f00001c): Output:1 en=0 GB=0) ERROR: UnsupportedSetting(0x80001019)
09-16 14:12:46.969    5733-5742/? E/ACodec﹕ [OMX.qcom.video.encoder.avc] storeMetaDataInBuffers (output) failed w/ err -1010
09-16 14:12:46.971     188-4537/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ WARNING: Unsupported Color format [2130708361]
09-16 14:12:46.972     188-4537/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ C2D init is successful
09-16 14:12:46.972      188-188/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ WARNING: Unsupported Color format [2130708361]
09-16 14:12:46.973     188-5092/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ venc_set_intra_period: nPFrames = 600 nBFrames = 0
09-16 14:12:46.982     188-5743/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ Allocated virt:0xb3e4b000, FD: 41 of size 1474560 at index: 0
09-16 14:12:46.982     188-5743/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ Allocated virt:0xb3ce3000, FD: 43 of size 1474560 at index: 1
09-16 14:12:47.011     188-5743/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ open Color conv for RGBA888

After Ctrl-C:

09-16 14:13:21.482      188-716/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ ion recon buffer free failed
09-16 14:13:21.482      188-716/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ ion recon buffer free failed
09-16 14:13:21.521     188-5744/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ ioctl VEN_IOCTL_CMD_READ_NEXT_MSG failed
09-16 14:13:21.521     188-5092/? E/OMX-VENC-720p﹕ Destroy C2D instance

The console outpus is:

Main display is 768x1280 @60.00fps (orientation=0)
Configuring recorder for 768x1280 video/avc at 4.00Mbps
Content area is 768x1280 at offset x=0 y=0

I've tried different solutions like lowering the bitrate, restarting the phone, using telecine, using different PC, turning off MTP but with no luck. In the past when faced the same problem even downgraded the Android to 4.4 but again no luck.

Did someone had this problem and how did you solved it?

PS The weird thing is that everything was working as expected initially: I was able to record about 2 minutes of screen recording with Telecine (few times). And then for no apparent reason it started to behave like this...

Answer 1

It turns out the reason is pretty simple: when Android Studio or Eclipse is running it obviously sends some adb messages periodically that interrupt the recording. The solution is stop the AS or eclipse and then to record.