claus.reinke:

Perhaps the "make a video" slogan doesn't quite explain what is intended - it didn't to me!-) Reading John Udell's short article

What is Screencasting? http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2005/11/16/what-is-scre...

gave me a better idea: the screen video part is the modern, animated version of manuals with screenshots, now with audio or text caption annotations (a canned demo). He also gives some tool references, and some suggestions for focussing the bandwidth on useful contents, editing, privacy considerations, etc. Almost certainly, this

...

2. type 'recordmydesktop' 3. do something with haskell 4. hit control-C 5. upload out.ogv to youtube

is not a useful recipe - screencasts need planning of the steps one wants to demonstrate, editing out of aimless moving around or thinking about what to show next, annotations that guide the viewer (text labels or audio track that explains what can be seen, or what keyboard shortcuts are used, or what the plan is), and probably several attempts to get one useful result (minimal bandwith/length/.. with maximal "ah, that is how I do it" or "ah, that is how it works" or "cool, I want to install that" effect).

But with a little effort, this could be very useful, more so than simple screenshots, lots of text, or combinations thereof, if the focus is not so much on producing a video to watch, but on showing potential users what they are going to see, and how to work with it if they decide to install it. For instance, I'd now like to replace my old tour of haskellmode for Vim with a screencast.

Great! Yes, this is exactly what I hope. It is so much clearer why I would want to use something when I can see it in use.

As a windows user, I tried playing with CamStudio and that almost seems to do the job (capture, annotation, replay, conversion of .avi to compressed .swf) but I don't like the resolution of the .swf it generates (screen text isn't as readable as I've seen in other screencasts). Perhaps I'm missing an option to improve the quality, or can anyone recommend another free tool for windows, from positive experience (wikipedia has a whole list of tools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software )?

For the purpose I have in mind, it would be good to have many small pieces of screencast, one for each feature, or even better, one continuous screencast with the ability to link directly to sections dealing with particular topics - a hyperlinked animation. Is that supported by some (free) tool?

That would be very cool.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 03:01:52PM +0100, Claus Reinke wrote:

Is there anyone here with experience in screencasting of text-based applications, who could offer advice on how to produce screencasts on windows/xp? The basic screencasting (capture+annotation/editing) is not the problem, eg, CamStudio seems ok, and Wink gives me more control for mostly input-driven sessions (where I want screenshots whenever something useful happens, not long videos of my mousepointer wavering about the screen;-). Both can generate .swf.

This doesn't exactly answer your questions, but I figure it might be useful to you or someone else anyway, so here goes: This is what I found out when making: http://projects.haskell.org/camp/unique (based on hazy memories and incomplete notes, so may not be entirely accurate). YouTube recommends: * Video Format: MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) * Resolution: 640x480 pixels * Audio Format: MP3 * Frames per second: 30 * Maximum length: 10 minutes (we recommend 2-3 minutes) * Maximum file size: 1 GB Google video recommends: - MPEG4 (mp3 or mp4 audio) at 2 mbps - MPEG2 (mp3 or mp4 audio) at 5 mbps - 30 frames per second - 640x480 resolution - 4:3 frame - de-interlace I think making .swf is a mistake, but I'm not sure. I recorded sound and audio separately. I don't remember what I used for sound, but that's the easy bit. I probably used either audacity or arecord. To record the video, I think I did this: # Make an xserver-in-a-window, the same size as the video will be Xephyr :1 -screen 640x480 -br -dpi 100 -kb & # Give the X server a window manager sawfish --display :1 & # Put an xterm in it xterm -display :1 -rv & # Stop the shell telling me I have new mail mailpath[0]=/dev/null # Record the video recordmydesktop -o v1.ogv --no-sound -fps 30 -display :1 Then, using audacity, I chopped the audio up into smaller files as necessary. Finally, I used kdenlive to combine the audio files, the video (which looks like actually ended up coming in 3 pieces, but I don't recall why), and the opening/closing picture, with the pretty fades etc. This bit was the hardest to find a good tool for, on Linux. I rendered it in 2 or 3 formats (at 640x480 etc, following the you tube / google video recommendations), and uploaded the one that looked best. You-tube immediately(ish) makes a low quality version available (320x240?), and a high quality version(480x360?), with more readable text etc, is available a little later.

The problem comes when trying to scale down the size to what would fit in a browser window (what a viewer would see, without having to scroll around) - text becomes hard to read (quality, not size) if I scale from 1280x800 to 640x400, and if I try to work in a screen area that fits 640x400 in the first place (so no scaling would be needed), I can't really show anything..

The intended topic is still haskellmode for Vim, updating the old screenshot tour from

http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/~cr3/toolbox/haskell/Vim/vim.html

so there'd be a gvim window and a browser window (in real life, also a GHCi window, and quite possibly a cygwin window, but lets keep it simple), and the most interesting info is not in graphics, but in the texts, source code, menus, tooltips, ...,

I had two xterms 42 columns wide, and 10 and 11 lines tall. They could have been 63 columns wide, but I wanted images to their right. I would recommend working in a 640x480 screen area. If you can't show anything in that area, then people won't be able to see anything in your video (at the size/quality youtube shows it, at least). Thanks Ian

From: haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:haskell-cafe-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Claus Reinke

The problem comes when trying to scale down the size to what would fit in a browser window (what a viewer would see, without having to scroll around) - text becomes hard to read (quality, not size) if I scale from 1280x800 to 640x400, and if I try to work in a screen area that fits 640x400 in the first place (so no scaling would be needed), I can't really show anything..

The intended topic is still haskellmode for Vim, updating the old screenshot tour from

http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/~cr3/toolbox/haskell/Vim/vim.html

so there'd be a gvim window and a browser window (in real life, also a GHCi window, and quite possibly a cygwin window, but lets keep it simple), and the most interesting info is not in graphics, but in the texts, source code, menus, tooltips, ...,

Claus

Vimeo supports HD video, of a sort. I've not used it, so can't offer any real advice, but anyways... Their compression FAQ (http://vimeo.com/help/compression) suggests they support a resolution of 1280x720, which looks like it might just be enough for you. Alistair ***************************************************************** Confidentiality Note: The information contained in this message, and any attachments, may contain confidential and/or privileged material. It is intended solely for the person(s) or entity to which it is addressed. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient(s) is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer. *****************************************************************