Alex Little

Now that I’m back in the UK and have access to a reliable fast internet connection, I’ve uploaded some of the videos I’ve taken over the last 18 months. They’re almost all unedited (except the Debre Damo one – except I didn’t do the editing) although I may try to edit some of these clips together…

Sulphur Springs in the Danakil:

Juggler at orphanage Christmas show:

Visiting the Debre Damo Monastery:

There are plenty more short videos that I’ve uploaded too.

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.

Realising the other day that I don’t even know what Amharic or Tigrinya sound like when spoken I’ve now found a few learn Amharic videos on YouTube… the one below gives some basic phrases to use whilst shopping or eating out:

Though not sure I’ll ever be able to pronounce ‘… ligezaw ifeligalehugn’ (meaning ‘I would like to buy…’)!

The LOJSociety has posted up several more Amharic instruction videos which I’ll start to try and learn.

Unfortunately I’ve not found any videos for learning Tigrinya, though I did find out that Tigrinya and Amharic do use the same script/alphabet (Ge’ez) – but unsure yet if that actually makes things any easier or not!

If anyone has any pointers to videos of how to learn Tigrinya, then please pass them on.

Teachers.tv has a video showing the work VSO is doing in Ethiopia.

I’ve just spent a frustrating couple of hours unsuccessfully attempting to get my Asus Eee (running Ubuntu Hardy Heron) to allow me to record short videos using the built in webcam and mic.

I started off by applying these fixes and have checked that it all works fine using skype. I first tried recording using ‘Cheese’ – this resulted in the video working fine – but no sound ( I also tried with plugged in mic/headphones). So I installed ucview and gave that a go instead,  but his was quite erratic too, most of the time it would appear to record, but then on playback, only the first frame would be visible, and no sound (using either built in mic or a plugged in mic). I also found that sometimes ucview wouldn’t stop recording even after I’d clicked the button and I had a to kill the process to get it to stop.

I then went back to looking at cheese only to find that it now won’t start, the top window bar appears, but with big grey square underneath – no menus or webcam preview. Restarting, removing and reinstalling all made no difference

Really not sure what is causing these problems, from googling & reading wikis and blogs most other people seem to have got ucview and cheese working fine – so just me then If anyone has an idiots guide as to what to check then feel free to send on to me

I’ve been trying to get this working in the hope that when I go away to Ethiopia I’ll be able to record short video blogs to post up – but I may have to fall back to just using my digital camera and the video/sound recorder on that, but would’ve been nice to be able to use the webcam and mic.

On a different note, I hope that Ubuntu updates will soon include FireFox3…