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Categories: Discussions

Screencasts

5 responses

Remember the discussion a few days ago about a SUMO screencast contest? We’ve thought about it a little bit more and decided that it’s going to happen! This is going to be a great opportunity to be creative with new technology while really helping other Firefox users at the same time.

We’ll post more info as we carve out the details on spreadfirefox.com. In the meantime, does anyone know of any good video capturing software that could be used for this? Ideally, it should be free and cross-platform, since we want as many people as possible to be able to participate. We’re aware of the Jing Project for Mac or Windows; are there any other good tools? What’s the best software for Linux?

5 comments on “Screencasts”

  1. Jeff Walden wrote on

    Last I heard Istanbul was a decent screen recorder for people who don’t mind using GNOME applications. (In my opinion the rest of the people should just get over it. :-) ) I haven’t actually played with it to any great degree, tho.

  2. Omnisilver wrote on

    Hi !

    What kind of format do you want tu use ? Ogg, Flash, animated GIF, APNG ?

    It’s difficult to choose a make a good choice between freedom and compatibility …

    For the software, i know several good screecasters under linux, but no one of them is multi-plateform, except vnc2swf/pyvnc2swf (but it product flash video :/).

    Under linux only, there are byzanz who make Animated GIF and Istanbul/Recordmydesktop wich make OGG video.

    Xvidcap make mpeg video.

  3. AndyEd wrote on

    Wink is a nice open source solution with the ability to do text call-outs.
    http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

  4. David Tenser wrote on

    Omnisilver, the best format is probably Flash, since it’s pretty much cross-platform. Animated GIFs would be nice but are probably not feasible.

    You’re right about the problem with choice/freedom vs compatibility, and ideally we’d pick a fully open solution. However, that’s unlikely because of the extreme compatibility issues we’d face, effectively making the screencasts useless for the general public.

  5. Omnisilver wrote on

    AndyEd -> no, Wink isn’t open source, it’s a freeware. That’s why i don’t talk about it, but it is effectively quite good ;-)

    David -> yes, we have the same problem on geckozone … the web need a free video standard :/