Screencast with a gstreamer pipeline November 1, 2005
Posted by Carthik in ubuntu.trackback
I suppose it should be possible to use all the cool tools that the gstreamer framework has to capture the screen, or an application window, and record sounds concurrently to produce screencasts.
I thought that someone should have already used the gstreamer pipeline editor to come up with such an app, but I may be wrong, ’cause I cannot find it. I even think I read about some gstreamer developer mentioning it once, but a search reveals nothing. Too bad the planet-planet software does not save old entries. I would have liked to search the Gnome and Gstreamer planets.
So does anyone know of a gstreamer-powered screencasting tool for Linux?
A screencast is a multimedia demonstration of an application, or of the entire desktop. I already know of vnc2swf and wink. The former is a pain to get running, and to use, and the latter is not a native Linux app, and is also not an open-source tool.
Ubuntu Blog 
Is this what you’re talking about http://live.gnome.org/Istanbul ? It was featured on an article from “The Fridge” called Touring the Universe.
~Andrew S.
Thanks, Andrew. I tried Istanbul. That was not what I was thinking about though. Hopefully I will find it someway or the other.
But with Istanbul you can stream to a Icecast-Server.
P.S. I enjoy Ubuntu Blog very much!
Thanks Lambert. Istanbul is working very buggily. Most of the time it just dies midway, and when it doesn’t the .ogg file is unplayable most of the time. I can’t seem to change the default options without causing it to crash either.
I hope you continue to enjoy this labor of love 😉
Hi,
I can not fine the “referer” link at my management portal. that’s very helpful and important to me. how do you think I can do to get back that function? to see how many and where the “hit” come. no response from the FEEDBACK. please help.
Thanks & Regards,
Richard
WordPress.com questions don’t belong here. Stop inconveniencing people, please. Flailing around, and asking every tom, dick and ubuntu will not solve the problem. We should be grateful things are as they are, considering we pay nothing, there are no displayed ads, and that this is still alpha/beta software.
hi, if that comment bothered you, i would like to say sorry.
zhaol, Sorry if I sounded too edgy. I am bothered by the missing “referrers” pages too 🙂
Istanbul is all we have on the gstreamer front i guess. So it’s also the starting point if someone wants to move forward.
From my point of you i’d be very more than pleased by a prepackaged swf2vnc wrapped somehow inside gnome/ubuntu desktop.
ciao
vnc2swf – havn’t used it can’t comment.
wink – on the other hand -(it’s a ) fine tool (I) use it all the time.
Agreed it’s not open source – however it does a fine job.
Any chance of wink on ubuntu by default ? (satish said he was …keen on providing it… )
vnc2swf (after you set it up) is excellent. It can do audio recording with the screencasts and the videos compress extremely well into the Flash format.
Wink is good for ‘guided’ screencasts (with tooltips and next/back buttons and such) but I prefer vnc2swf for screencasts overall.
has anyone packaged vnc2swf for Ubuntu?
We, OpenUsability.org, urgently need a tool for recording usability test sessions with Linux. Please have a look at http://www.userbrain.de/recorder/ for further information.
This is something I tried doing a while ago (stream screen to icecast) and never got very far with. I also had really terrible luck with istanbul.
gst-launch-0.8 ximagesrc ! ffmpegcolorspace ! videorate ! video/x-raw-yuv,framerate=\(double\)10.0 ! videoscale ! video/x-raw-yuv,width=800,height=600 ! theoraenc ! oggmux ! shout2send ip=IPADDRESS password=PASSWORD mount=screencast streamname=Test description=”Screencast\!\!”
Hopefully this will help, please let me know if you have any success. 🙂
I’ve had terrible luck with Istanbul. vnc2swf on the other hand has been quite helpful.
vnc2swf -nowindow fred.swf $VNCHOST:0
vnc2swf has been ported to Python, which made setting it up and testing it a breeze. You might be referring to the older C version?
> has anyone packaged vnc2swf for Ubuntu?
Yes.
Here’s an apt repository with an vnc2swf package for Ubunty Breezy:
deb http://lumumba.uhasselt.be/takis/breezy ./
[url=http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net/]xvidcap[/url] is the best one I have used.. If you are using ubuntu download the 1.1.3 testing .deb from the sourceforge site.. you will need to create a symlink for the libpng.so.2 error but after that it works extremely well..
xvidcap looks good, but it crashes all the time (eg. stops recording)…
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clockers barnstorming Pusan reconfigurations conquerers?…
But with Istanbul you can stream to a Icecast-Server.
Thanks Lambert. Istanbul is working very buggily. Most of the time it just dies midway, and when it doesn’t the .ogg file is unplayable most of the time. I can’t seem to change the default options without causing it to crash either.