screencast2

Ubuntu Open Week - Screencasting Team - Alan Pope - Sat, Apr 28, 2007

see also Tuesday Session.

TZ UTC-4 

(11:03:29 AM) popey: ok, here is the plan:-
(11:03:33 AM) popey: * Introduction
(11:03:33 AM) popey: * Brief history of screencasting
(11:03:33 AM) popey: * Brief history of the screencasting team
(11:03:33 AM) popey: * Useful Links
(11:03:33 AM) popey: * How do we make screencasts?
(11:03:36 AM) popey: * How do other people make screencasts?
(11:03:42 AM) popey: * How/why do we convert videos to other formats (or "There are formats *other* than OGG!?")
(11:03:45 AM) popey: * How do we make them available?
(11:03:48 AM) popey: * What can people do with them?
(11:03:50 AM) popey: * What we should be doing
(11:03:52 AM) popey: And of course any questions as they come up
(11:03:55 AM) popey: * What we need / how you can help
(11:03:57 AM) popey: * Update from the last session
(11:04:00 AM) popey: * What else can we do / any questions?
(11:04:20 AM) popey: * Introduction
(11:04:20 AM) popey: Hi, my name is Alan Pope, I'm an Ubuntu user just like you. I don't work for Canonical, I'm not a system admin, or a developer in fact I can't really code at all. Oh and I have no artistic skills whatsoever.
(11:04:34 AM) popey: I do however have some experience of IT Training so making screencasts makes sense to me as a way of contributing to the community because it's something I can actually do!
(11:05:02 AM) popey: * Brief history of screencasting
(11:05:15 AM) popey: "A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencasting - read the first paragraph of that
(11:05:36 AM) popey: Some people learn better by being shown how to do stuff rather than by reading detailed How-Tos or man pages. Whilst this is an alien concept to many geeks who memorise URLs of How-Tos and commit entire man pages to memory, your average Joe Ubuntu User needs pretty pictures and videos.
(11:05:43 AM) popey: So for this reason I created a few screencasts.
(11:06:04 AM) popey: * Brief history of the screencasting team
(11:06:28 AM) popey: About 7 years ago I was working for a company doing IT training on evil software. We had an idea over coffee one day to make some videos that people could watch online. At the time Viewlet Builder (proprietary app) was available and seemed to do the job of recording screen activity quite well.
(11:06:42 AM) popey: I registered quickones.org to host them, because we thought they would be quick videos, 5 minutes about how to perform a particular task on a computer. Unfortunately the project never really got anywhere so the domain got used for something else.
(11:06:57 AM) popey: Cut forward to 2005 when I started looking at screencasting tools on Linux. I tried some of the desktop recording tools, and some video editing software to see if I could make screencasts that would render well over the web or downloaded and played locally. Some of the tools are pretty good, I filed a few bugs, requested some features and contacted the authors of some of the applications.
(11:07:19 AM) popey: I settled on a suite of tools (more of that in a moment) which I use to do my screencasts. It was (and still is) important to me to make screencasts using completely free tools. i.e. not use windows applications such as camtasia to make the screencasts - but thats a personaly thing :)
(11:07:40 AM) popey: After making some test videos and sending them to my local LUG mailing list for evaluation I started making lists of screencasts that people might want to watch. I tried to figure out what people would want to see, common questions people ask and funky new things new users might not know about.
(11:08:00 AM) popey: A few people tested the videos and gave me some feedback about the format, style and content of the screencasts. Towards the end of 2006 I made a bunch of "feature length" screencasts. They are each about 5-10 minutes long and cover some basic concepts such as installation of Ubuntu and customising the desktop.
(11:08:22 AM) popey: Matthew East contacted me and offered some help and hosting on the documentation team server - which we are now using. We setup the screencast team on launchpad and more recently had a meeting on irc to discuss the direction and technical issues surrounding screencasting.
(11:08:38 AM) popey: It was decided that we should target the current release (Feisty) for new screencasts. We also decided to drop the default resolution from 1024x768 to 800x600 because some popular machines couldn't play them due to driver bugs, and the video files were very large with little added value at the higher resolution.
(11:09:15 AM) popey: (Note: This might actually come back to bite us, many screens in Ubuntu don't fit in 800x600 - for example System --> Preferences --> About me)
(11:09:28 AM) popey: Ok, thats the history lesson over.
(11:09:35 AM) popey: * How do we make screencasts?
(11:09:54 AM) popey: The tool set _I_ use is QEMU+KQEMU(or KVM) (virtual machine), xvidcap (screen recording), avidemux (audio recording), ffmpeg and avidemux (format conversion)
(11:10:20 AM) popey: Some people prefer other tools, I happen to have settled on these because they work for me.
(11:10:35 AM) popey: In just slightly over one sentence:-
(11:10:43 AM) popey: "I install Ubuntu in a QEMU vm which runs in an 800x600 window on my desktop (we used to use 1024x768 but this casued problems). I run xvidcap on my desktop and set it to record the QEMU window only. I do my demo in Ubuntu under QEMU and when finished I stop xvidcap. I watch the video back, recording the audio track in audacity as I go. I merge the audio and video in avidemux and upload to the web"
(11:11:00 AM) popey: It sounds a lot easier than it actually is. And in a way, it sounds a lot harder than it actually is :)
(11:11:12 AM) popey: See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreencastTeam/RecordingScreencasts for considerably more detail.
(11:11:31 AM) popey: Some people have reported that this process is complicated (recording audio separately from video), doesn't perform well (some people get low frame rates out of xvidcap), and cumbersome (running a virtual machine rather than recording the local machine direct). These are of course all valid concerns :)
(11:11:52 AM) popey: On the wiki we outlined the reasons for doing it this way. Of course other people can create screencasts in any way they want, this is just the way that works for us. So long as people can create high quality screencasts in a format that we can use, we really don't care how they are made.
(11:12:04 AM) popey: If anyone has a better (more streamlined, faster, easier) way to create screencasts _on_ _Linux_ (i.e. not using a Windows/Mac screencasting app) which results in high quality video in formats we can use, we want to hear it.
(11:12:35 AM) popey: If you have any questions about the way we make screencasts, please do ask and I'll try to answer them as best I can.
(11:12:46 AM) popey: * How do other people make screencasts?
(11:12:55 AM) popey: There are a load of screencasting apps on Linux.
(11:13:04 AM) popey: Istanbul, RecordMyDesktop, screenkast, DemoRecorder (proprietary), and of course xvidcap we would recommend.
(11:13:16 AM) popey: vnc2swf, vncrec and wink we would generally not recommend for our screencasts (they record to formats that are difficult to manipulate).
(11:13:27 AM) popey: There are good reasons I don't recommend some apps, and that's all detailed on the wiki, but by all means ask any questions and make any comments about these judgements :)
(11:13:50 AM) popey: Examples of some quality screencasts made by other people, that you might want to look at include those at http://ubuntuclips.org/, http://screencastsonline.com (Mac OSX videos) and http://showmedo.com/ .
(11:14:06 AM) popey: I am not going to give you examples of bad screencasts - you can find them on youtube and google video yourselves, and when I say "bad" that is entirely my personal opinion, feel free to argue that one with me some time :)
(11:14:22 AM) popey: * How/why do we convert videos to other formats?
(11:14:31 AM) popey: It's a bit beyond this session to go into the intricate details of the different formats for the screencasts. Suffice to say that in general there are at least 4 formats we support. Put simply, OGG for the Good, MOV for the Bad, and AVI for the Ugly. FLV is the 4th, (evil) flash based streaming which is done because of the popularity of the flash video format.
(11:15:11 AM) popey: Whatever you think of flash, it has a massive install base, and that's a lot of potential eyeballs for our screencasts.
(11:15:20 AM) popey: It might also make sense to convert screencasts so they can playback on small format devices such as iPod Video and mobile phones.
(11:15:36 AM) popey: Whatever happens, we _always_ intend to make our videos available in OGG/Theora/Vorbis format as a primary objective.
(11:15:51 AM) popey: We hoped this would not change, but due to the tremendous bandwidth we have consumed we may have to reconsider the way we host the files.
(11:16:07 AM) popey: Avidemux is a great GUI application for converting videos. You can load a video made in another application and save it out in some other format using a different codec and can also do neat things like resize as the file is converted. Perhaps we need an avidemux screencast? :)
(11:16:40 AM) popey: In addition ffmpeg can be used on the command line to convert between formats. We also use ffmpeg2theora to convert MPEG/AVI files to OGG/Theoa format. Other tools have been tried, and suggestions are welcome for other robust, easy to use, flexible tools.
(11:17:01 AM) popey: * How do we make them available?
(11:17:21 AM) popey: http://doc.ubuntu.com/screencasts/ is the central repository for all the screencasts that have been made under the Screencast Team banner. This is hosted on a box provided by Canonical. We also upload them to Google video.
(11:17:44 AM) popey: These are videos actually made by the team specifically _for_ the team (and anyone else) to redistribute. We don't take other peoples ready-made videos off YouTube for example, I know http://ubuntuvideo.com do a good job of collating video content - including screencasts - in that way.
(11:17:58 AM) popey: In the past we uploaded the videos to http://archive.org/ however whilst free it's a little painful and the performance is somewhat slow. So now we host on the docteams server - big thanks to Matthew East (mdke) for helping us out there. Some of these videos are large and as such chew bandwidth when linked to.
(11:18:11 AM) popey: * What can people do with them?
(11:18:28 AM) popey: Pretty much whatever you like. I rather stupidly created the videos initially under a restrictive license. This was pointed out and now the videos are available under CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/). Just to be clear:-
(11:18:37 AM) popey: You can redistribute the videos in any format and media you like.
(11:18:43 AM) popey: You do _not_ need to ask our permission to redistribute them.
(11:18:52 AM) popey: You can translate them to other languages - perhaps by overdubbing the audio track, create mashups, edit them, whatever. We really don't mind.
(11:19:33 AM) popey: Of course we also want people to make their own and contribute back! :)
(11:19:53 AM) popey: * What we need / how you can help
(11:20:22 AM) popey: Rationalisation of the screencasting pages on the wiki. Many of the screencasting pages (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreenCasts and its children) are brain dumps of what we were doing to make screencasts at the time. These pages need some love. They need simplifying. Help!
(11:21:04 AM) popey: We need a very very very simple guide to making screencasts. The problem is it's not that easy to make good quality screencasts. People have suggested a "screencast on how to make screencasts" which we have considered but it's also not exactly easy to make (technically).
(11:21:20 AM) popey: We have a list of screencasts we would like to see made:- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreencastTeam/Requests
(11:21:23 AM) popey: Please add to this list, or adopt a screencast and make it yourself.
(11:21:35 AM) popey: If we can streamline the process I think we can get more people to make them. We would love to hear input on how we can make things easier.
(11:21:46 AM) popey: Voice overs/dubbing. I understand from speaking to some people that they don't like the idea of their own voice on a screencast. If that's the case, and you have a video you would like to make, then _please_ let me know. We need the videos made, we can record the audio track if that would help.
(11:22:00 AM) popey: * Update from the last session
(11:22:08 AM) popey: I was asked whether xvidcap was packaged in ubuntu. It currently isn't. Since that session I have contacted the author and we are going to work together to try to get it into the Ubuntu repository. So that's great news.
(11:22:24 AM) popey: I have got hold of the usage logs for doc.ubuntu.com and it's quite scary. The most popular (by KB transferred) videos are
(11:22:37 AM) popey: 3. Installing updates on Ubuntu - http://doc.ubuntu.com/screencasts/Installing_Updates_on_Ubuntu
(11:22:42 AM) popey: 2. Installing Ubuntu Dual-boot - http://doc.ubuntu.com/screencasts/Installing_Ubuntu_with_Windows_Dual-Boot
(11:22:48 AM) popey: 1. Downloading and burning an Ubuntu ISO - http://doc.ubuntu.com/screencasts/Downloading_and_Burning_an_Ubuntu_ISO
(11:23:09 AM) popey: We are transferring a ridiculous amount of data from the site. It's quite scary.
(11:23:20 AM) popey: We have a potential issue in that the bandwidth we have consumed is way over what we expected and more than Canonical pay for on the server we host on.
(11:23:33 AM) popey: We may have to look at reducing the number of formats down. Perhaps only one downloadable version and one streamable version?
(11:23:38 AM) popey: Maybe we should have less videos online at once?
(11:23:43 AM) popey: Maybe we should provide the larger videos on DVD instead of the web?
(11:23:52 AM) popey: Other suggestions welcome!
(11:23:56 AM) popey: * What else can we do / any questions?
(11:24:00 AM) popey: Q&A Time.
(11:24:10 AM) popey: Ok, that's the end of my prepared stuff..

< magnetron> QUESTION: Have you been considering aggregating the videos as pod-cast, for easy deployment into Democracyplayer, iTunes and iPods?

  • Yes, I had considered it. But one of the golden rules of podcasts seems to be "release on time" so people know how often to expect your programme. and we have had very little submissions :(. having just had a baby in this house I have made few recently, but I should ramp up a bit now, but what is really needed is lots of other people doing it too and if I can help in anyway to get people making them I will.

<dthomasdigital> Question: You said that the pages need organized who do we contact if were willing to take this on?

  • me. Smile :) alanpope AT ubuntu DOT com or popey on irc

QUESTION Why not include torrents links and encourage people only to use direct donwload if there are no sources for the torrent. I know that some people keep a torrent client open alle the time anyway for uploading Ubuntu iso images, so why not use that? I would support it that way !

  • good point. never thought about using torrents, one torrent per video perhaps? or one almighty big torrent?

< nothlit> btw, pyvnc2swf comes with an editing tool, that can convert the file to MPG--and from there any format you wanted

  • it does, but I found it somewhat unreliable when I used it, things may of course have changed since then. also the flv files that are created by pyvnc2swf arent fantastic quality compared to the MPEG ones from xvidcap, but I guess for some screencasts it might be good enough

< nicolai_> QUESTION: When do you think UbuntuStudio will be ready to be released?

  • I have no idea, ask them. no, don't do that. Smile :) I have been approached and had lengthy discussions with the guys at showmedo about them holding some of the content and serving up .flv files, but flv makes me very twitchy. especially as it does not play out of the box on ubuntu. doesnt play at all on some other platforms. no AMD64 version etc. I would be interested to know why people dont create screencasts. is it the procedure is too complicated? or something else? not enough power to run qemu/xvidcap?

< Schalken> QUESTION: how does gtk-recordMyDesktop compare to others?

  • only tried it briefly and it seems to have quite a few nice features. xvidcap seems to be the most feature rich though. istanbul is probably the easiest to use. recordmydesktop is probably somehwere between the two on usability and functionality

< magnetron> QUESTION: What could be done to integrate the wiki with the screencast tutorials? Would linking to a corresponding screencast from importan tutorials in the wiki be a good idea?

  • Hmm. Good question. Do you think it would be wise for us to lift the content from the screencast site and put the links on the wiki? might be a good idea actually. i will do that and see what it looks like, good suggestion, like it, thanks Smile :)

< Schalken> COMMENT: i have had problems with Istanbul's stability

  • recently? submit bugs, the author is very attentive. I have reported a few bugs and been in contact with the developer, he is a nice guy Smile :) hmm. I haven't use istanbul for a while since I have been smitten with xvidcap. Smile :) one problem istanbul has is that it encodes to ogg on the fly, which can make for intense cpu activity that has mostly been addressed in newer codec versions

    < Schalken> COMMENT: approx 6 months ago... wouldn't that cause problems? I know I get best performance out of recordmydesktop when i set ti to do all encoding afterwardds.

    well, it streams to disk all the time, so it doesn't all buffer up in memory then spit out at the end. it used to have a function where you could "encode later" but the author took it out. I have reported a bug to get it put back in Smile :)

< samgee> QUESTION: I guess I don't create screencasts because I suck at teaching. People don't seem to get what I'm saying, or newbies find my easy ways of doing things difficult (and the other way around).

  • good point.. I would say let me know if you want to create one and I can give some guidance. maybe suggest things to do. if you dont like your voice, or dont like the idea of people hearing it or whatever, I can voice over for you. For anyone thinking of making a screencast, please let me know, I can help. Smile :) The key thing for me is to get more of them made. right now on the site there are only about 8 screencasts, 7 of which I made. we need lots more than that

< Schalken> QUESTION: any tips on getting the best audio quality out of screencasts (recording from system output, not a mic)?

  • I am no expert on the audio, and I do very little post processing. all of the ones on the site that I made were recorded through the mic port on my old hp 1GHz celeron laptop, so not the best quality. I do have a good mic though. somewhat over the top in fact. Smile :) when you say system-output? you mean, the system sounds and the like? I don't record any of that - or haven't yet. i know qemu can direct all output to a wav file though, and that works nicely. then you have an audio file containing all the sound that was made by the virtual machine

< Schalken> QUESTION: what do you use to record your voice, and how do you put in the video?

  • I use a Shure SM58 connected to a mixer, which is then connected to my laptop. I record using audacity. bought it off ebay. the thing about doing the audio separately from the video is that you can easily re-record it. this is why i dont record audio and video together. now feisty is out, we need more screencasts of the stuff in it

<dthomasdigital> Question: I have a nice USB mic any hints on getting it to work?

  • sorry, I have never used a usb mic, I do have a usb extigy sound card which I hope to use instead of the mic port on my laptop that just worked out of the box with zero effort

<dthomasdigital> I've created a document on how to change xorg.conf files is that the kind of thing your looking for?

  • if it explains how to do something that someone would not know how to do, yes. Smile :) I am trying to stay away from terminal type stuff though. none of the screencasts I have recorded even show a terminal

(11:47:58 AM) popey: maybe later I will, but i think it is important to have lots of screencasts that show that you dont need a terminal to work in ubuntu (mostly)

  • <dthomasdigital> I see your point the terminal really freaks some people out.

    yes. i have made one that i have not put online yet, which has a terminal in it, but it is all about dosemu so i think thats okay Smile :)

< samgee> QUESTION: Is it possible to visualize rightclicks and holding the Ctrl button instead of just saying it?

  • that is a good question. not that I am aware of. i know one of the mac screencasting apps has something that can do that to focus your attention. maybe we need a little icon of a mouse on the screen, which highlights the buttons when you press them that cant be hard to write. Smile :) 

(11:50:54 AM) popey: quick, someone write it :)
(11:51:52 AM) popey: the thing about terminal is that its text, so you can easily explain it with a text document
(11:51:57 AM) popey: and people can copy and paste
(11:52:03 AM) popey: you cant copy/paste a right mouse click though :)
(11:52:18 AM) popey: which is why screenshots and screencasts are popular for graphical tutorials
(11:52:39 AM) popey: 3 < Schalken> IDEA: have the screencasting app insert stylish little notifications in the video for when the demonstrator is pressing keys
(11:52:48 AM) popey: an onscreen keyboard that pops up perhaps?
(11:52:57 AM) popey: and an onscreen mouse
(11:53:17 AM) popey: hmmmmm
(11:53:22 AM) popey: i like both of these suggestions
(11:53:31 AM) popey: might have to try to grab a developer at UDS next week :)
(11:54:03 AM) popey:  < Schalken> CONTRARY: you dont want space being used up by keys that aren't being pressed. just a little picture of the button that is show while pressed would be cool
(11:54:15 AM) popey: maybe it could be brought up with a keypress of some kind
(11:54:29 AM) popey: F12 or something, then type
(11:54:30 AM) popey: hmmm
(11:54:32 AM) popey: needs thought
(11:54:41 AM) popey: < Schalken> ALSO: it has to looks damn good
(11:54:45 AM) popey: goes without saying :)
(11:55:15 AM) popey:  < magnetron> IDEA: editing the screencast manually and add an icon showing right-click etc
(11:55:18 AM) popey: 16:55:15 < Schalken> OR: a setting before starting the record "visualise key presses"
(11:55:35 AM) popey: editing is possible I guess, easier if it happened automagically though?
(11:55:53 AM) popey: i suspect the "visualise" option to be an external application
(11:56:01 AM) popey: that way it doesnt matter what screencasting app you use
(11:56:17 AM) popey:  < samgee> But you don't want to visualize every key when you're typing a bit of text
(11:56:30 AM) popey: yeah, just specific function keys or "special moves" :)
(11:56:44 AM) popey: Right-Right-Right-FIRE!
(11:57:21 AM) popey: ok. I will write a specification for both thes, on screen keyboard and on-screen mouse
(11:57:40 AM) popey: anything else screencast specific?
(11:58:03 AM) dthomasdigital: Question: popey is there a Screencasting team on Launchpad?
(11:58:08 AM) popey: 16:58:03 < nothlit> an icon would have to be pretty large for it to be legible for those viewing the screencast in flash applets
(11:58:12 AM) popey: 16:58:16 < Schalken> IDEA: tell macslow, he can make stuff look awesome and transparent
(11:58:24 AM) popey: yes nothlit
(11:58:30 AM) popey: ScottLij: exactly the right person!
(11:58:50 AM) popey: ok, good point dthomasdigital, here are some useful links :)
(11:59:08 AM) popey: * Useful links
(11:59:08 AM) popey: ** Our pages
(11:59:08 AM) popey: http://doc.ubuntu.com/screencasts/ - Home of the screencasts made by the screencast team.
(11:59:11 AM) popey: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreenCasts - Base of the screencast team wiki pages.
(11:59:14 AM) popey: http://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-screencasts - Launchpad team page.
(11:59:16 AM) popey: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreencastTeam - Team pages on the wiki
(11:59:18 AM) popey: ** Other people doing good work
(11:59:21 AM) popey: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreencastTeam/RecordingScreencasts - The method I use to make screencasts.
(11:59:24 AM) popey: http://ubuntuclips.org/ - Have generated a large number of screencasts.
(11:59:27 AM) popey: http://ubuntuvideo.com/ - Aggregate video content (not just screencasts) from YouTube/Google (so all flash based).
(11:59:30 AM) popey: http://showmedo.com/ - Free and pay-for screencasts on various topics
(11:59:49 AM) ***jenda looks at his watch
(12:00:06 PM) popey: right, I think we are about done.
(12:00:18 PM) popey: I want to thank all of you, it's been a very useful session for me
(12:00:21 PM) popey: lots of great ideas
(12:00:33 PM) popey: <end>

MeetingLogs/openweekfeisty/screencast2 (last edited 2008-08-06 16:25:22 by localhost)