Stop adb screenrecord from java

Question

I'm using Selendroid in order to test my app. At the beginning of each test I run adb shell screenrecord with the following function:

public static Process startScreenRecord(String fileName) throws IOException{
    ProcessBuilder builder = new ProcessBuilder(
            "cmd.exe", "/c", "cd C:\\Users\\user\\Downloads\\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20140702\\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20140702\\sdk\\platform-tools\\ && adb shell screenrecord /sdcard/" + fileName);
    builder.redirectErrorStream(true);
    Process p = builder.start();
    return p;
}

The recording is starting and everything looks OK. At the end of each test I try to stop the record via the following code:

public static void stopScreenRecord(Process p) throws IOException{
    p.destroy();
}

And in the test I use the following structure:

    Process p = CmdHelper.startScreenRecord("e1.mp4");
    //TestCode
    CmdHelper.stopScreenRecord(p);

The problem is that the video recording doesn't stop. How can I stop the call recording at the end of each test?

You may want to use adb shell operations to find and kill the screenrecord process itself. Beware android does not have a pkill or a killall, though it does now have a grep. — Chris Stratton, Aug 07 '14 at 16:41
the problem is after killing the process the video is not saved. there is any 'clean' way to stop the process so the video will be saved? — galvan, Aug 08 '14 at 15:21
@galvan Can you please post the solution you came up with? Did you get this to work? We are running into the same issue. Thank you — ALM, Jun 09 '16 at 22:22

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 08 '14 at 17:50

The adb shell screenrecord --help documentation says that the two ways to terminate it are to set a time limit or to send it ctrl-C.

Assuming the time limit option doesn't work for you, the question would be how to send ctrl-C or its functional equivalent. If you get an output stream connected to ADB's stdin and keep it open, you might be able to send a ctrl-c down that (or you might end up interrupting ADB and not the remote).

A different option, which seems to work is to use the kill command to send SIGINT (which is what ctrl-C typically does) rather than the SIGTERM signal which kill normally sends. That should make the screenrecord process think you hit ctrl-c.

If you have found the process, id, the following seems to work and leave behind a video file:

adb shell kill -2 [pid number]

Where 2 is the usual number of SIGINT on Linux and thus Android.

Pipe the adb shell's `ps` into a `grep` for the process name, with grep running on whichever of the android device or your development machine better supports it. Maybe someday android will get a `pkill` — Chris Stratton, Oct 08 '15 at 01:07
@ChrisStratton Do you have a solution with the ps -ef | grep screenrecord or how were you doing this? We are running into a similar issue. — ALM, Jun 09 '16 at 22:22

Stop adb screenrecord from java

1 Answers1