I finally took the time to get screencasting working. It is actually quite easy to get going on a gentoo linux.
I just:
USE="x11vnc" emerge vnc2swf
That is not the most recent version, so I grabbed the most recent tarball of vnc2swf:
wget http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/vnc2swf-0.5.0.tar.gz tar -zxvf vnc2swf-0.5.0.tar.gz cd vnc2swf-0.5.0 ./configure; make; su -c 'make install'
The first gentoo emerge isntalled both x11vnc and vnc2swf for recording a standard x display to a vnc file. The last example I installed the most recent vnc2swf (version 5.0).
After testing this out big, I slapped together a quick script to record some actions on screen. Yes, you can add a bunch of other junk to this to get it nicer (patches welcome):
#!/bin/bash
#
# screencast
#
# Used to quickly record whatever is happening on my computer.
#
# 2 second delay
RECORD_DELAY=2
if [ -z $1 ]; then
echo -e "$0 starts vnc session and records it to an swf and html wrapper.\n"
echo "Usage:"
echo -e "\tscreencast filename [seconds_until_record_begins]\n"
exit 1
fi
if [ ! -z $2 ]; then
RECORD_DELAY=$2
fi
# get ready for some real noisy output from both of these!!!
x11vnc -display :0 &
sleep ${RECORD_DELAY}
vnc2swf -nowindow $1.swf :0 > `basename $1 .swf`.html
exit 0
Has anyone plugged this app. into gnome desktop or into a gui app?
This is the only use of flash that I can say is decent.
Also, check out my first attempt which is reminiscent of old video art like Nam June Paik and the Vasulkas.
Also, how do others who have generated screencasts get the lovely playback controls with timeline on their screencasts?
instead of using vnc2swf, you can use Istanbul (which records using Ogg Theora) or byzanz (which records using an animated GIF). both have a UI, and istanbul uses an open format.
Hey Jon,
It seems that a lot of people are starting to us Istanbul for recording screencasts. It creates Theora videos, instead of flash. I think there is even a Java Theora player so you can put it in your webpage
Istanbul Webite:
http://live.gnome.org/Istanbul
HOWTO at Fedora:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ScreenCasting
Have fun,
Ted
Check out my tries:
http://www.gnome.gr/writing/
http://simosx.livejournal.com/269.html (old)
It’s good to either clip the desktop or lower the resolution, so that the flash animations are smaller and can fit in the browser window.
I think the playback controls come at least with pyvnc2swf.
To get the timeline, I use Wink, which is free ($0) but not open source.
It’d be nice if you filed a Gentoo bug to get the vnc2swf updated.
Done! Thanks for the prodding.
I prefer open source apps, but this is one of those moments where I need a tool to be able to propose ideas and most people have a flash viewer/player on their system.
I would love to use the other ones, but its just not practical for my needs right now.
I can understand that comment when comparing against Istanbul’s Ogg Theora, but I’m willing to bet that more people have an animated GIF viewer/player on their system than a flash player.