as I idea I would like to show how to - load XML documents - get an image over the web Stef On Feb 8, 2010, at 10:20 PM, laurent laffont wrote:
Hi,
I want to share how I record screencasts for Pharocasts http://pharocasts.blogspot.com/ in case someone wants to participate. Now there's 11 screencasts. The difficult part is to have a good idea / scenario for a screencast. Comments and ideas are welcome.
If you want to publish on Pharocasts I can give you write access. Or if you have a "draft" screencast I can edit it / re-record it for publishing. I try to record screencasts with a minimum duration of 5 mn.
These instructions are for Linux (but I'm a beginner in video stuff). I don't know which software to use on other operating systems. Have advices ?
I record with xvidcap http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net/. I define a capture zone of 800x600 (use 4:3 or 16:9 standard resolution. If not you can have poor encoding results). Set multi-frame mode (you have to right-click on the file button to access preferences, not very intuitive). I choose AVI format / MPEG 4 codec. If you open / close applications for the screencast, note that KDE has very good options to memorize / force windows positions, so they are always opened in your capture zone.(Other window managers like E17 have these sort of options). The trick is to not stop recording when you write errors, you can cut the "wrong" parts later.
To edit the video, I use avidemux http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/. It has Qt and Gtk GUI and work on Linux / Windows / OSX / BSD ..... It's really easy to use. When you want to cut a part, you define the beginning with the A button ( Ctrl-[ ), the end with B button ( Ctrl-] ), then Edit -> Cut ( Ctrl-X ). You can navigate using arrow keys. When finished, click on save (Choose another filename !!).
So now you have your screencast in .mpeg file. Note that people using MacOSX Tiger or older have problems to watch this video. So I convert in .mov using ffmpeg http://www.ffmpeg.org/ like this: ffmpeg -i my_video.mpeg -b 500k my_video.mov.
(but I think it's not the best command as the video size is bigger and quality lower).
To publish the video I use Vimeo http://vimeo.com/. I've tried YouTube and Daily Motion but the quality is lower or the video duration is limited. I had problems using the "standard uploader", so I switch to the "basic uploader" on the download page, works better.
It's really fun to record screencasts, and a good way to show development practices.
Cheers,
Laurent Laffont _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project