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 _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe