Alex Little

I’ve used Camtasia Studio (Windows) a few times before for creating some training/how-to screencasts, but now I wanted to have a go doing something similar using open source software (on Ubuntu Jaunty) instead. To make it more interesting I also wanted to run it all on my Asus Eee PC (4G) – not exactly a machine designed for heavy video processing.

First issue was how to record the screen, for this I used RecordMyDesktop. A very simple program to install and run, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Selecting the area to record (I wasn’t selecting whole window) was a bit fiddly and sometimes took me several attempts to capture the right area, without chopping off a side or two.

If you’re recording a for a long time and your screensaver kicks in (or screen goes blank for power saving), you’ll need to disable the screensaver and power saving – unless you particularly need a recording of it.

What I had most trouble with – and only came up with a workarounds solution to – was capturing the audio. RecordMyDesktop wil capture the audio fine but had problems getting the recording volume level right without creating a lot of hissing. The hardware on the Asus for sound isn’t exactly fantastic. In the end I found that I had best results when using a jack lead to plug the headphone output into the microphone input! If anyone has a better solution to this or some advice about on the recording levels to capture the audio more reliably, then please let me know.

So, now I’ve created a .ogv (OGG video) file but want to edit it a little. I wanted a really simple video editor for 2 reasons, firstly I don’t wand to spend the time learning a bit video editing package and, more practically, secondly, I don’t have a huge amount of disk space left on my 4Gb drive!

I opted for Aviremux, though unfortunately this doesn’t accept OGG video files, so I used mencoder to convert to AVI (basic instructions).

For the actual editing I used Aviremux. I found it very easy to get started with and use – unlike some other video editing software.

In the end I found that my original screen recording had sound out of synch with the video – not in the initial few mins of the capture, but further in. I’m not sure why this should be the case – if anyone has any idea why, I’d be pleased to hear them.

Overall, it was a little frustrating getting this to work. I’ve not managed to achieve what I set out to do, but think this was more to do with the hardware than anything else.