Here is simple code: i = vlc.Instance() player = vlc.libvlc_media_player_new(i) m = i.media_new("screen://", ":screen-fps=24", ":sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=0,scale=0,acodec=mp4a,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:file{dst=screencapture.mp4}", ":sout-keep") player.set_media(m) player.play() time.sleep(10) player.stop() i.release() You will need installed vlc and vlc.py module. more info: http://wiki.videolan.org/Python_bindings http://wiki.videolan.org/