Alan Pope wrote: > Hi, > > Thought I'd have another go at a screencast. This one is about installing > updates as and when > required. It's only 7 mins long and doesn't go into massive detail, but shows > the basics of > installing updates on Ubuntu. I added the header and footer at the start and > end. I'm not > entirely happy with them but it will do. If someone else has more artistic > skills than me (not > difficult) then please feel free to put together a simple slide. > > I've made this one available in both OGG/Theora/Vorbis and MPEG/MPEG2/MP2 > format. Hopefully this > should mean people can play it with little or no effort on any platform. I'd > be interested to > hear feedback from people about platforms and/or players they play on and > don't play on. > > http://quickones.org/videos/20061108_installing_updates.ogg (10.7MB) > http://quickones.org/videos/20061108_installing_updates.mpeg (34.4MB) > > I am also currently uploading the video to Google, as I believe this can help > raise the > visibility of the team - I clearly mention ubuntu-uk and the URL is shown in > the video and the > text accompanying the Google upload. Having it on Google makes for a very low > barrier to entry > for Windows users to watch these, and whilst flash player is evil and closed, > at least it can be > made to work on Ubuntu. > > If anyone is in any doubt about the popularity of Google video for this kind > of thing then bear > in mind that I uploaded all the Hampshire Linux User Group talk videos and in > the 3 months > they've been online there's been a total of around 12000 views and 2000 > downloads. > > These are "beginner level" at the moment. So I won't be surprised if nobody > here > actually learns anything from them yet. Right now I'm trying to get a handle > on the process to > make it clear and easy for others to do this. > > It's a little time consuming the first time you do this, but once you have > the process nailed > you can probably knock out a good quality 5-10 min screencast in around an > hour. That includes > watching it a couple of times too. > > In case you're interested in the technical side, I used a different > application this time. > xvidcap (available from http://xvidcap.sf.net) version 1.1.4. It records to a > large number of > formats, but I chose MPEG2 to make it easy to edit the video and then convert > to other formats > later. > > I then used avidemux to piece together the three videos (the title page, the > main > body of the video and the end page), which was mind numbingly easy to do. > > Next I used audacity to record the audio - which I did on one computer whilst > I watched the > video on another. Of course there's no reason I couldn't have recorded the > audio at the time of > the recording, or recorded it as I watched on one computer - not two. However > as I have > mentioned before, I believe that recording the audio after the video gives a > better result. > Indeed I had to record it 5 times in the end due to various > mistakes/mishaps/outtakes. > > I then cleaned the audio up as best I could (not brilliantly, but clear > enough I think), again > in audacity, and exported as a WAV. > > Avidemux was used to mix the video and WAV audio and save as MPEG2 video (no > change) and encode > the audio as MP2. That made the final MPEG version above. > > Finally I ran ffmpeg2theora on the command line with just the MPEG video as a > command line > parameter, to convert it to the OGG format above. > > Job done. > > Clearly the MPEG version is considerably larger than the OGG because it's not > compressed as > heavily. I could have re-encoded it using something like DivX for the Windows > viewers, which I > guess would probably play on many Windows clients - although not out of the > box - and media > player won't download the DivX codec automagically as I understand it. So the > compromise is a > heavy weight MPEG video for them, a nice lightweight OGG for us. :) > > Having the original in MPEG2 format should make moving these to DVD easier > too. > > I'll write up a proper how-to once I am sure this is the best method for this > kind of thing. I > appreciate that others might suggest different packages which may look > simpler from the outset, > right now I think this is the best method so far. It relies only on packages > that are > pre-compiled, and mostly (except for the ffmpeg2theora) uses GUI based > applications. > > Cheers, > Al That sounds good. I'll take a look at it tomorrow at work and show a couple of the non-Linux users and see what they think.
Having it available in MPEG 2 format should make it easy enough to convert into a DVD when we have a few of these tutorial videos. I'm hoping to do an Ubuntu install for one of the guys at work. I showed him Ubuntu on my work laptop (running the Dapper i386 Live CD) and he seemed impressed. If he does go for Ubuntu on his PC then I could write down any questions he may have as I think a new Ubuntu user would be the best sort of person to come up with ideas for what could be screencasted. Rob -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
