Comments on: When Screencasting Goes Terribly Wrong

By: Ian Ozsvald

Ian Ozsvald — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:27:16 +0000

Hi heathenx – your post makes for interesting reading. I’ve yet to properly try screencasting on Ubuntu (using recordmydesktop) – a quick test showed that it worked and that’s as far as I got. Everything I do is recorded on Windows (with HyperCam or CamStudio).
I’m also curious to know how well things work when using a VM, I’d always assumed that the VM would eat up too much cpu (or that the virtual graphics would update too slowly) so that screencasting wouldn’t work? Obviously not!
I’ll ask you about this in the Group (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/showmedo), I think some other authors would be curious to know about this too.
btw – your second video is up and it looks very nice, I’ve bookmarked it for future reference.
Ian.

By: heathenx

heathenx — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:03:03 +0000

@Serge

Don’t get me wrong. Ubuntu does have cutting-edge technology. That is a fact. What it lacks is some of the latest and greatest software in the repos. Some open source software moves pretty quickly. Take recordmydesktop, for instance. How many versions behind is the one in the repos? openSUSE didn’t have the latest and greatest either but it was a few point releases ahead of Ubuntu’s. I’ll take stable apps over beta apps any day but sometimes I need features that older software doesn’t have. The repos get updated eventually, it just takes then a little longer sometimes.

KDE4 is alright. I’m not quite ready for it yet. I will be when openSUSE officially releases it for openSUSE 11.0 later in the year. 4.0.1 is definitely better than 4.0.0. openSUSE has a live cd that you can test. I have it installed in my VM. It runs pretty well but it’s awfully bare at the moment.

By: Serge Gielkens

Serge Gielkens — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:41:59 +0000

I found that interesting. I have never before thought about using a VM to have a standard desktop at hand. I should keep that in mind.

It’s funny. I thought that Ubuntu was intended to provide cutting-edge technology with Debian stability in mind. I would have expected openSUSE to be more conservative. I do not use either one of them, so this is all based on perception,

But this reminds me of one thing. If I am not mistaken, you downloaded recently KDE 4. What are your experiences with it?

By: heathenx

heathenx — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:19:29 +0000

@Serge

No. openSUSE is not lagging behind. I use version 10.3 and it is more cutting-edge than Ubuntu regarding the applications that I use. Read that last sentence carefully because I am not ripping on Ubuntu in any way. It alway seems like Ubuntu is very conservative about their repo packages. I know that they do this for stability and I’m not complaining about that. That makes sense. However, my openSUSE packages are usually newer than the ones on Ubuntu. That’s what I like about openSUSE (that and because I have been using that distro for years). Besides I’m a KDE guy at heart and openSUSE puts a lot of love into KDE.

The reason that I wanted to screencast in VM Ubuntu was that I thought it might be a little more familiar to some people. Also, I have a widescreen display and I didn’t want to record in a widescreen resolution since showmedo uses a 4:3 resolution. I don’t screencast my entire desktop, ever, so I wanted to use a “default” looking desktop if I had to do so. openSUSE is pretty popular but when people see that Ubuntu desktop in all of it’s brown glory then most folks know what they are looking at.

By: Serge Gielkens

Serge Gielkens — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:21:58 +0000

I can feel what you have gone through. Do you see now why rendering separate frames instead of a movie does make sense? This does not apply to recordmydesktop though but to rendering with for example Blender.

“I was going to record it in a VM on my openSUSE machine and I was going to use Ubuntu as my VM. I won’t go into details of why I chose to do this so it’s not worth talking about.” Interesting setup and yet not worth talking about?

Is openSUSE lagging behind or do you have an old distribution?

Anyway, keep the good work up.

By: heathenx

heathenx — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:57:59 +0000

Thank-you

By: swmiller6

swmiller6 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:56:08 +0000

@heathenx

That makes sense… BTW your screencasts for inkscape are great!!!!

By: heathenx

heathenx — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:50:58 +0000

@swmiller6 No, we're not going to post them on our website. They are not Inkscape screencasts so they do not fit in well. That's ok though. You can view them at ShowMeDo. Only my first screencast has been published so far. My second one is still pending review. Richard will be adding a couple to the series as well.

By: swmiller6

swmiller6 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:27:26 +0000

I hate it when nothing seems to go your way.. Looking forward to these videos, Will you be posting the videos here too?

By: heathenx

heathenx — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:17:10 +0000

The package in the Ubuntu repos is pretty old, however, I don’t think it’s necessary to upgrade. Especially if it works flawlessly for you. As far as I can tell there aren’t any new features exposed to the user anyway. I’m sure it’s all under the hood stuff. The new container isn’t really a big change. Everything plays and converts like like it did in the past.

I’m dragging ass today. Tired. Once I get two pots of coffee down me then maybe I’ll perk up. Staying away from donuts. They’ll likely slow me down further.