Slashdot Mirror

At Michigan State University, we have a Techsmith Relay server. The instructor just puts in the USB thumb drive, the auto-run runs, and they just have to type in their lecture's name and hit "Start". It is recorded to the USB or automatically uploaded to our capturing server if they are on the network. It can automatically be pushed out to our LMS (Angel / Moodle), or posted on a webpage for people to access. Works on both Win and Mac, and doesn't need anything installed, which is super-nice.

I've recorded a LOT of sessions with Camtasia as well. Great product, with tons of bells and whistles, but it does require the user to do the work of editing and encoding. That's great for me (I can edit it before I post), but not great for people who just want it to get out of their way.

http://www.techsmith.com/

These guys for one. Or these folks. And these people. This is supposed to be very good. Also, these guys. Seriously, you could have just said you don't know anything about the capabilities of .NET in the first place. Or you could have just said nothing at all.

It is the best application out there for Usability studies. Put 10 people through some set of tests on your application and by the time you analyze your recordings and data you will understand where your customers are getting stuck/confused. A great thing to add is to have your developers watch the sessions live as remote observers, just hearing people's thought process if your tester keeps prodding them is invaluable. http://www.techsmith.com/morae.asp

The clip is made with "Camtasia", a program from TechSmith inc..

But that product is only available for Windows, so how was it used to capture a screen video of a Linux computer? And how was it used to show a Vista computer booting (since presumably the Camtasia ScreenCam software cannot be loadet at that time)?

No flaming intended - this is an honest question.

:-)

- Jesper

It really doesn't need to take that long. At my work place, we use Camtasia all the time to produce tutorials. I can do a 1 minute tutorial in about 10 minutes (including producing as a Flash movie). When I'm dealing with about 100 instructors, none of which have the same schedule so they can't show up for training on a new technology, this is the fastest and easiest way to train them all at their own leisure.

shamless plug And the best way to see how the general public interacts with your web site and appreciates it is to use http://uservue.techsmith.com/ end shamless plug

Wouldn't screencasting software be of use here? I've successfully used Camtasia Studio to remove the Windows Media DRM from time-limited content that I'd paid for, although the output files were huge.

but I have not found anything that provides the same level of functionality,

I have used Camtasia studio before and from what I have read from Istanbul it only does something like 1% of what Camtasia studio can do. Granted, the "basic" functionallity is still the same (capture in video a section of the screen), but then again Istanbul is far, far, FAAAAR away of being a replacement of camtasia.

Originally, Buys says, the videos were encoded in QuickTime H.264, but "thanks to the feedback form [on the site] I quickly learned that this was far from optimal." Flash video seemed a good choice, except the software he was using to encode the video produced Flash that didn't work in Linux. "I received emails asking for Ogg-Theora videos, so I converted all the original QuickTime videos." Now, he installs the distribution of choice in Parallels Workstation on Windows and captures the virtual machine in proprietary Camtasia. "I've been looking for an open source replacement, but I have not found anything that provides the same level of functionality," Buys says. After the Camtasia capture, he exports the video first as Flash and then as a .mov file. "[I] convert the .mov to Ogg-Theora with ffmpeg2theora, then upload all the files to the server."

These videos were recorded using Camtasia Studio from TechSmith : http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio

1. And what exactly can you do with apt-get under OS X? Yeah, you can run many Linux applications under it. Only those that don't touch anything else except X11. Btw, there is Bash available for Windows alongisde cygwin.
2. Actually I don't think anyone took this seriously when you mentioned Finder. Even the greatest Mac zealots don't praise Finder.
3. Point taken, although I will mention OpenBSD.
4. iMovie - Movie Maker, iPhoto - Image viewer (not the same, but there's still ACDSee), iTunes - wow, I don't think I can download that, GarageBand - point taken (but it's not nearly what people preach about it), Mail - Outlook. Right Movie Maker is crappy and doesn't count, but hey it can export to an open format. I won't even mention all the apps that are available for Windows.
5. Is this even a point? Exactly how hard is it to download Java for those 30% of people who actually need it?
6. Again, I just can't take this seriously. Would Windows score higher if it had an assembler bundled?
7. Right clicking and setting permissions is difficult?
8. If you say Sys Pref is better then it must be. What? You mean it's hard to run a FTP service? Windows already has a built-in firewall.
9. How about if I prove you wrong? Notice that this trojan was released for Tiger even before Tiger officially shipped? But wait, there's more! I wonder why Slashdot doesn't post news about this :)
10. There are a lot of articles written about this so I won't bother. To put it short: it doesn't use the graphics card for rendering windows, it deosn't use PDF and it doesn't use vector graphics. Simply put - not a whole lot better then Windows already does. Check arstechnica if you don't believe me.
11. Everyone's personal opinion. Although Apple locks you in on that theme wihtout any (legal) way for you to change it, it does (to me) look better than Luna. Maybe I'm to used to Luna? Anyway, maybe I should download the ac conversion pack for Windows...
12. MSN, Yahoo, Google toolbars. There I said it. And no, Spotlight is _NOT_ what WinFS is supposed to be.
13. Explain to me how can a Windows PC be slower because of Registry? You seem to have no idea what the Registry really is. Is you Mac slow, because you have to many config files?
14. And Windows doesn't? Try looking inside Documents and Setings\User\Application Data\
15. Explain to me what are real, actual UNIX permissions? /home is \Documents and Settings. Moving from one Windows machine to another is also very simple. Try running the Files and Settings Transfer Tool some time.

Again, I must say this site is really something. I don't have a negative feeling against OS X, but give credit where credit is due. Don't be a fuckup and actually admit it is not perfect. I mean, you Apple zealots are really something. _NO_ Windows user will ever tell you their system is perfect. There are many things in every OS that are superior to some other, but spreading FUD and acting like a child isn't really helping you.

Try looking at "home projects" like SkyOS. Look specifically at their implementation of "Spotlight" (http://www.skyos.org/downloads/indexing.avi, codec: http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio/codec.asp ). I'm sure the real Spotlight is way better.

Such things do exist in limited numbers, and there are more efficient video codecs than MPEG for them, optomized for displaying things more typical of computer programs. See e.g. http://www.techsmith.com/products/studio/tour/reco rd.asp

But for those that can't wait, one of the best I've found so far is to save in a lossless AVI format; the codec is LCL (lossless codec library), created by Kenji Oshima.

I looked into it, and from what I can tell, it's like huffyuv; each frame's a keyframe, so there's no prediction from the previous frame.

TSCC does this; it was designed for screen captures, so it appears to encode differences pretty well. It worked far better than huffyuv on a something with low motion, anyway. So this _might_ be better for a cartoon, for instance.

Video Capture Capture on-screen activity, including mouse movements, as a standard AVI video file. Optionally add a voice-over. For even more powerful video capture, check out Camtasia Studio.

It's not GPL'd, but I can't think of a better and smaller program. It's well worth 40 $ IMHO.

It can capture video at any quality/codec and have many useful options.

It can also do simple screenshots of anything (entire screen, a region, a window, the active window, a button, etc. etc.)

And then you get a screen capture program like Snag-It (30 day free trial) that can capture video overlays.

Did I just break your copyright protection?
Or are the Snag-It people responsible?