Install VirtualBox Guest Additions and create videos

VirtualBox Guest Additions consist of device drivers and system applications that optimize the guest operating system for better performance and usability. To create videos on VirtualBox actually you must also require VirtualBox Guest Additions.

I installed VirtualBox Guest Additions on my system so that I can create videos from VirtualBox.
If you are surprising , it means you are not aware about virtual box video settings. At the end of this post I will give some brief about how to create video using virtual box.

Guest operating systems are fully supported with Guest Additions by VirtualBox, here is the list of Operating System.

Guest Additions offer the following features

1. Mouse pointer integration : Means pressing the Host key is no longer required to “free” the mouse from being captured by the guest OS as you used to do.

2. Shared folders : Easy to share files between host and guest machine just like you do in Windows network share.VirtualBox treat a certain host directory as a shared folder, and VirtualBox will make it available to the guest operating system as a network share.

3. Better video support : Custome video drivers shipped with VirtualBox Guest Additions provides extra high and non-standard video modes as well as accelerated video performance. With Guest Additions,3D graphics and 2D video for guest applications can be accelerated.

4. Time synchronization : Enables synchronisation of host system’s time with guest operating system.

5. Shared clipboard : With the Guest Additions installed, the clipboard of the guest operating system can optionally be shared with your host operating system

There are some more awesome features which occurs after installation of Guest Additions.

How to install VirtualBox Guest Additions

You must have VirtualBox installed on your system. In case if it is not, we will suggest you to read our this post on How to install virtual box on Ubuntu.

We have two methods here for installing. Sharing both method if first one is not working, try the second method which can be a little time taking.

Method 1. Install VirtualBox Guest Additions by using apt-get

Run the below command to install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso package.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso

It will install virtualbox-guest-additions and it is done.Restart the guest system to enable the Guest Additions.

Method 2 : Download VirtualBox Guest Additions iso file and install

As per the VirtualBox installed on your system you have to get the VirtualBox Guest Additions iso file. Here is the link http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox

Download VBoxGuestAdditions iso file. (Use your URL respective to your VirtualBox version)

wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.8/VBoxGuestAdditions_6.1.8.iso

Use below given command, if already installed, no problem move to next step.

sudo apt-get install dkms gcc 

Mount the iso file VBoxGuestAdditions_iso on /mnt

sudo mount -o loop VBoxGuestAdditions_6.1.8.iso /mnt

Change to /mnt and and run below givencommand

cd /mnt
sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Restart the guest system to enable the Guest Additions.

The method is complete and now you can use feature of VirtualBox Additions.

Create Videos of your VirtualBox Guest Operating System

You can also create videos of your VirtualBox Guest Operating System itself from VirtualBox.
This feature is very useful for creating Video Tutorials.

You have to first enable this feature. For this –

1. Select the Guest Operating System
2. Click on General Tab
3. Click on Display. Inside Display windows, click on Video Capture tab. Select the check box on “Enable Video Capture” . By default video format is webfm.

In below given screenshot, you can see there are other options available. Set the values as per your requirement if required else default value perfectly works.