rejon.org is Jon Phillips.

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?