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ScreencastTeam Meetings

The ScreencastTeam meetings are currently not regularly scheduled. Meetings are held at #ubuntu-meeting, irc.freenode.net. They are open for everyone interested and/or participating in the ScreencastTeam.

Next meeting

• When: Mon 12th Feb 2007

• Start: 20:00

• End: 22:00 (may be earlier, depending upon agenda)

• Timezone: [http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=2&day=12&year=2007&hour=20&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 UTC]

• Where: #ubuntu-meeting on irc.freenode.net

• Chaired By: AlanPope

Agenda for this meeting

• Current status
  • What's happened, happening, planned
• Tools and methods
  • Discuss the method used for screencasting
  • How can we streamline the processes and make it easier for people to get involved in our team?
  • Should we care what tools people use
• Keeping current
  • Should we mandate all new screencasts should be done on Feisty, is there a place for Edgy/Dapper?
  • How do we best keep in contact with the developers to find out what is new within apps, and what new apps are being delivered, or in the pipeline?
  • Should we re-record screencasts when their content becomes obsolete/incorrect?
• Communication
  • Should we have a separate mailing list, focus discussion of screencasts
  • Separate IRC channel
• Internationalisation
  • How can we help people to translate the screencasts
• Accessibility
  • Should we add subtitles?
• Any other business
• Next meeting schedule

Summary

• A summary of activity of the screencast team was presented.
• The basic roadmap for the screencast project was agreed to be sane
• It was pointed out that the process to create screencasts can be complex and this should be simplified
• A common bug in X means that videos recorded at 1024x768 will not play on many (Intel video based) machines
• Videos recorded at 1024x768 are very large to download, which is especially a problem for those with bandwidth-limited connections
• The audio and video codecs used with default options, which means they have not necessarily been using an optimal compression rate, and as such can also result in large video files
• Given the difficulty people have had in making screencasts, and the variable quality of the tools under Linux, it was decided that the "rules" on tools used should be relaxed somewhat.
  • It was agreed that authors should create screencasts using whatever tools and platforms they can but that as a result the quality should not suffer.
  • It was also agreed that a trial of screencasts should be done at 800x600 rather than 1024x768. In addition different codecs and compression rates should be tried to determine the best quality/size of video.
    • Some dialogs/screencasts may not fit easily in 800x600 and as a result an exception can be made to make them at 1024x768
• It was agreed that it should be made easy for other locales to redub the videos in other languages.
  • Transcripts of each screencast should be provided either by the author or a 3rd party - this could be a good way to get people involved who cannot create screencasts, but would like to contribute).
  • The dubbing process would involve the translator recording an audio file which the screencast team could redub onto the video - there would be no need for the translator to do the redubbing and remuxing/transcoding, just the translation and audio recording.
  • The intro and outro slides should be made available in an open format so other teams could translate them
• It was agreed that subtitles were potentially a good idea, but the technical feasability and implementation would need to be investigated. This would be done at a later date.
• We decided that screencasts should be made for the current LTS release, and the current stable release.
  • Whilst we would not reject screencasts for other releases, but would encourage the use of LTS and current stable.
  • Each screencast would be tagged with the versions/releases of Ubuntu that it applies to.
• It was agreed that there was nothing specific that the team could do to keep up with latest developments other than keep an eye on the usual places
  • The fridge
  • Development mailing lists
  • Developer blogs
• We decided not to create a separate mailing list or IRC channel for the screencast team, but instead stick with the ubuntu-doc mailing list and #ubuntu-doc IRC channel.
  • In the future if bandwidth demands it, we may move, but not for now whilst we are small and can do with the input from the doc team.