[ubuntu-in] Screencast using Istanbul

[Onkar Shinde]

On 5/17/07, Ravi Shanker <ra21vi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Friends,
> About the idea to upload istanbul created screencasts to youtube, I have
> something to share. I don't think it would really be feasible idea. Why?
> First, istanbul has many limitations,
>         * you cannot set the video quality
>         * the quality looks like set to 80%
>         * text is unreadable when video is downsized

The istanbul applet has a context menu from where you should be able
to set various options. The options that are not exposed through UI
should be editable from gconf-editor.
Text becoming unreadable when downsized might well be problem of
Theora or the way it is downsized, I am not sure.

> Youtube takes and re-sizes the source video to 320x240, quality of video
> deteriorates very much, and text completely becomes unreadable(think of
> 1024x786 video being re-sized down to 320x240, by 3.2 ratio) .
> There is other desktop session recorders better than istanbul, it is
> gtk-record-mydesktop and xvidcap.

I would always prefer using Free format instead of any Restricted
format. I agree that there might not be enough support for some Free
format but we can always find some solution.

> Any solution? Well since to make the thing redable, we will have to
> record and focus that section of screen where there is current activity
> is. Also, the output video size should be 1.33333 ratio, no package
> mentioned does allow choosing the desktop area using manual size entry,
> its driven by mouse so we can't fix it to some custom size accurately.
> For youtube since the acceptable format is 320x480, we will have to
> first record the full desktop video using gtk-record-mydesktop and then
> edit it using some video editors where we will have to crop down the
> things to fit in 320x240 size without resizing (to prevent text
> readability).

Istanbul allows you to record part of the screen. You may want to try that.

> So, it becomes tough task to produce quality video for screencasts. If
> there is someone who knows video editing on Linux using
> Lives/Cinelerra/Kino/Jahshaka, then we can do it.
<snip>
>
> The other solution is not to use the Youtube, where there is size
> limitation. ....
>
</snip>

There is a java applet from fluendo which can play Theora/Ogg video.
If we decide to host videos on some other server than youtube then
this can be useful. People who have nough bandwidth can watch these
videos online. Others can download then from some other machine. When
we get enough video tutorial we can make a CD which can be distributed
by community members with Ubuntu CD.



Onkar
-- 
Passion - Some people climb mountains - others write Free software.
Don't ask why - the reason is the same.