Video tutorial viewer

[John Little]

On 8/23/06, Sebastian Heinlein <glatzor at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> taking a look at Novell's latest distribution I saw a nice feature that
> I would like to see in Ubuntu too: a video tutorial viewer that could be
> started by clicking on a "Quick tour" button placed on the desktop.
>

Novell does great things with video. I posted some of their work on my
blog. I think the video you reference is available there for those who
are interested.

http://johnlittle.org/suse_video

> My idea would be to provide an infrastructure and a central website to
> fetch tutorials (e.g. extend ubuntuvideos.com). We would not be limited
> to a simple Ubuntu introduction: Possible use cases could be an advanced
> gimp tutorial (e.g. removing red eyes from your photos) or an
> introduction to the GTK/GNOME widgets.
>

Of course I support the concept of video tutorials. Users, especially
the not quite so technical kind love them. Poll results at Ubuntu
Video seem to be supporting that notion as well:
http://ubuntuvideo.com/id_like_to_see_more

The SUSE video you mention is a great reference point. It's
straightforward and effective. Presenting users with a number of
tutorials produced specifically for each release would probably be
well received by users. Video reinforces the notion of a Linux for
human beings.

The questions I have at the moment are

1. Is adding video to the default install an option?

Bandwidth is still an issue for many Ubuntu users. Downloading video
may not be a realistic option for many. Is there room on the CD for
some short videos? Does it possibly make sense to include just a few
minutes worth of videos in the default install and then allow the user
to grab the rest online?

2. Bandwidth

If the majority of the tutorials are streamed/downloaded we might have
serious bandwidth issues. That seems like a hosting challenge way
beyond my capabilities. Do we have any idea what that demand might be
like and what kind of infrastructure we'd need to support it?

3. Ubuntu Video

IMO any video tutorials produced for Ubuntu should be distributed far
and wide. I'd like to see future versions roll out with some kind of
tool (like yours) that delivers video tutorials but I'd also like to
see those same videos rolled out simultaneously to the major online
services like YouTube and Google Video. Letting people share the
videos, blog about them, stumble across them in their YouTube or
Google browsing has a powerful marketing effect. Of course, I could
also modify Ubuntu Video to include a high profile official tutorial
component.

The real power of Ubuntu Video (potentially) is in driving users to
create their own videos and share them. Ideally the community will
pitch in and cover gaps in the official video tutorials and produce
their own Ubuntu "commercials". So ultimately, I see Ubuntu Video as a
consumer of any "official" videos. However, I'm willing to listen to
entertain more radical ideas if the resources are available.

4. Video Production

Who, what, when, where. We got the why covered though. :)

Anyway enough with the rambling. I think your prototype is a great way
to kick off this discussion.

- John

> So I hooked up some already existing tools to create an Open Source
> video tutorial viewer:
>
> * istanbul could be used to record desktop session to Ogg/Vorbis
> (istanbul is currently broken on edgy, so I could no give it a try, but
> the old gif based version worked like a charm)
>
> * using gstreamer to playback the video. So we would get support for a
> huge variety of video formats and online tutorials without any
> additional efforts.
>
> * using gstreamer to display subtitles (this seems to be broken too at
> the moment)
>
> * store the tutorial information in .desktop files. Subtitles for
> different languages could be specified by the "Subtitle[LANGCODE]"
> property.
>
> You can find a first prototype in my bzr repository:
>
> bzr branch http://bzr.glatzor.de/tutor/sebi/
>
> and run "python tutor.py"
>
> If there is interest in such an application and in providing content, I
> will continue developing.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sebastian
>
> P.S. By the way the playback start is a little bit choppy at the moment,
> but hey, it is only a prototype
>
>
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