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Creating screencasts on Windows the Open Source way

written by Michael on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 19:57

I’ve been starting to record some screencasts, and this is what I used on the Microsoft Windows platform:

CamStudio was used to capture the actual area of interest. It can record the screen either to a avi or swf file, where I always go for the avi format as it is easier to deal with at post production.

For post-production I am using VirtualDub, where I put in my logo as a “watermark” in the image as well as trim out any unwanted parts of the recording (typing errors, getting things in the right position to begin with etc.) as well as changing the frame rate and co lour depth. Once done I save it again to a AVI file (using both Xvid and the CamStudio Lossless codec).

For putting stuff on the web I was searching high and low for something that could convert my avi file to a flv file, hopefully without spending any money. CamStudio already comes with a converter that can create a flash (swf) file with built-in player, but I have already got a flv player on the site and want to keep things consistent. Then I stumbled upon a post in a forum that pointed out that ffmpeg could do the conversion for me, and I quickly downloaded the sources from SVN and compiled it under Cygwin. A few minutes later I had created my first screencast, and started tweaking the parameters for optimal output.

What I’ve got so far is a sound-less clip. My next step is to start recording some voice-overs with Audacity and combine that with the recorded video in VirtualDub to produce the final product.

For the Linux side of things it should be basically be much the same stuff, but I have not explored that part yet. However, many of the tools used either originates from the Linux side, or have a Linux port. For the tools that doesn’t a replacement needs to be located.

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One Response to “Creating screencasts on Windows the Open Source way”

  1. comment from Ian Ozsvald
    March 26th, 2008 at 18:53

    We have a number of screencasts on ‘how to make screencasts’ for Mac, Windows and Linux in our screencasting section - you’re welcome to take a look and to share your own screencasts if you like.
    Cheers,
    Ian. (co-founder of ShowMeDo)

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