Jackoff is a simple utility that records audio off of a JACK source to a file, using any of the encodings supported by libsndfile.

Jackoff is heavily based on Rotter, another program that allows you to record audio from JACK and save it to file. The main differences are:

• No file rotation. Rotter starts writing to a different file every hour, but Jackoff does not include this behavior. You pass it the name of a file you wish to write to and Jackoff writes to it until it terminates. If scheduled recording is desired, Jackoff can be controlled by the Permanence recording scheduler daemon.
• Automatic shutdown. You can instruct Jackoff to only record for a certain number of seconds, after which Jackoff will stop recording and exit.
• No support for writing MP2 or MP3 files.
• Records an arbitrary number of channels. Rotter can only record mono or stereo audio.

This should certainly be considered alpha-quality software, given that this is the first time I've touched C in years.

Basic usage of Jackoff is very simple. To record stereo audio from the first two JACK ports, encoded in FLAC format, run:

jackoff --auto-connect --format flac recording.flac
# or, with less typing:
jackoff -a -f flac recording.flac

If no format is provided, Jackoff defaults to recording in 16-bit PCM AIFF. Jackoff makes no attempt to guess at the desired format based on the extension of the filename it is given.

To record from a given set of JACK output ports, pass the -p (--ports) option:

jackoff -p system:capture_0,system:capture_1 recording.aiff

Jackoff will automatically create a recording with as many channels as output ports it was given to record from.

For more usage information, including a list of supported output formats, run jackoff --help.

Jackoff is made available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Copyright © 2009-2010 Eric Naeseth

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.