Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Software for Linux Screencast

I bought a new Dell XPS 13 running Ubuntu 14.04 out of box with the Sputnik project. Nothing fancy, just the low end non-touch model. For those who cried foul that I am suppose to buy a cheap Laptop and install Linux from scratch, I know how you feel, sorry I sort of cheated. But I just want to have a Linux laptop without having to be my own tech support when it comes to things like fixing WiFi drivers and hooking up external monitors (although they were not as smooth as I would've expected, but that is for another post). Overall I am happy that I have a small, nicely engineered Linux laptop.

However, when it comes time to showing my work and do screencast, I remember seeing an article last year about free Linux software that includes some screen recording and video editing software. Here is the original article 20 Free Open Source Softwares I Found in Year 2015 if you are interested.

From the article I found the two tools I was looking for, Simple Screen Recorder and OpenShot Video Editor.

Here are the two most helpful articles on setting them up and getting them running. At least for Ubuntu, they are straight forward as to adding the repository and do apt-get install.

Screencasting with Simple Screen Recorder

http://www.openshot.org/ (Go to Download, and for me I chose the PPA method)

I used the default settings to record in 30 fps with the entire monitor at 1920x1080. Then use OpenShot to export it to HD 1080p 30 fps MP4 video.

Here are two screenshots of the software:







































Here is a sample of the final MP4 that I did.



Happy coding! Let me know in the comments if there are some settings you are interested in that I did not cover.







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