Ubuntu Wiki

The screencast team was started in 2006 after some screencasts were made by members of the UK LoCo team. After a hiatus we built a community around screencasting. This involves production & hosting, transcription, translation and feed back to the team.

Key Details

• Date - (9th October 2007)

• Team Contact - Alan Pope <alanpope@ubuntu.com>

• Membership - 49 at 9th October 2007

• Mailing List - ubuntu-screencasts on lists.ubuntu.com

• IRC - #ubuntu-screencasts on Freenode

Roadmap

• Month Of Screencasts - Currently ongoing (and overrunning) we need to finish the 30 screencasts for the MoS 2007. http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/MoS2007 / https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MonthOfScreencasts2007

• Translation - Recruit more transcribers and translators to build on the number we already have. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreencastTeam/TranslationStatus / http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/Subtitle_Usage

• Screencasting Screencast - We get asked for a "how to make screencasts" screencast at most meetings. This needs to be made, based on our "how to screencast" wiki page (which also needs some love):- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreencastTeam/RecordingScreencasts

• Screencasts in Ubuntu - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScreencastsInUbuntuSpec - This spec aims to deliver screencasts directly on the desktop within a robust but compact player. We need to see this through UDS Boston with the aim of getting it in 8.04.

• Make things easier - Making quality screencasts isn't easy. We need to look at ways to make that process easier for people to contribute to.

• All in one screencasting - Somewhat blue sky thinking, we would like to spec up and help develop a desktop application which can perform many of the typical screencasting tasks over and above just recording screen activity.

• Improve Accessibility - With subtitles (many already done) we can provide access to tutorials to people with hearing difficulties. Screencasts also provide access to tutorials for people with dyslexia.

Experience

• Eat our own dogfood - We only use free tools to make the screencasts. That includes qemu, xvidcap, avidemux, audacity and ffmpeg.

• HD Screencasts - We're the only people making screencasts about Ubuntu in HD720p.

• Video podcast - Using 3rd party tools such as Feedburner and Miro we have maintained a solid subscriber base for the Month of Screencasts. This shows there are people who want to watch video tutorials, and will subscribe to watch regularly produced content.

• Video encoding - Using free tools such

• Popular Screencasts - Some of our screencasts are incredibly popular. http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/Installing_Ubuntu_with_Windows_Dual-Boot & http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/Downloading_and_Burning_an_Ubuntu_ISO are both over a year old but still get more views than any other screencast.

• Search ranking - Google for ubuntu screencasts:- http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ubuntu+screencasts and we occupy most of the first page of hits.

• Feedback - We get a lot of good (and a little not so good) feedback, and lots of suggestions for improvement:- http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/MoS2007#comment