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What is screencast? It is actually the digital recording of the computer screen, often with an associated audio. Why would we like to do this? Sounds like a good question. Well, often we need to record the screen to make a tutorial, or record a problem that we are having. There are many programs that can be used for this purpose such as gtk-recordmydesktop, recorditnow, xvidcap, etc. But, out of all the above, my personal favorite is gtk-recordmydesktop. In this article I will explain how to use it to do a screencast. I would also like to point out that I currently use Ubuntu 10.04 on a 64-bit machine. Installing the Software Recordmydesktop can be downloaded from the Ubuntu software center.
Knowhow of the Software Recordmydesktop can be found in Applications>Accessories>Sound & Video. The layout of the software is quite plain. On the left-hand side, there is a screen which shows the current area which will be recorded. On the right-hand side, we have options to control the video and sound quality. The recording will take up more space if we use higher sound and video quality. On the bottom left-hand corner, we have two options which are 'Select window' and 'Record'. With the first, we can select the area on the screen which we want to record, while the second option will start the recording. On the bottom right-hand side, we have two options, namely 'SaveAs' and 'Quit' - to save our recording, and exit the software. Now, let us explore the 'Advanced' features of this software by clicking on that tab. There are four tabs, and we will cover each one of them one by one:
Files Under this tab, the first option controls the overwriting of existing files. By default, if we try to save a file by a name that already exists, then the new file will be renamed. If we checkmark this box, then this functionality will be disabled. Assume we don't want that, and hence we won't check the box. The next option specifies where the working directory is, ie, where the recordings will be saved. We can easily change this option if we want. Performance In this tab, the first option ‘Frames per second’ is self explanatory. The second option lets you encode the video simultaneously while recording, but this will also require a lot more processing power. The third option is checkmarked by default - which means that no compression is done to our recording. The fourth option, if enabled, will reduce the processing power required but may make the recording a bit blurry. The last option should be enabled only while recording 3D windows. Sound In this tab, the first option lets us specify the number of audio channels. The second option sets the sound frequency. The third is set to 'default', which means that the device is discovered by the software automatically. I would not recommend tampering much with settings in this tab.
Misc I would recommend once again not to change the default options in this tab. But you may change the type of mouse cursor. If the Follow Mouse option is enabled, then the recording area will follow the mouse. Using the software Run the software. Then click on the 'Select Window', select the appropriate recording area, and then start the recording. On the Ubuntu top panel (one where the time is displayed), you will see a circular red object - which you can click to end the recording, or right-click it to pause the recording. Once you stop the recording, you will see a window which is doing encoding as shown in figure-3; don't close it. Then you will be asked where you want to save the video. Hurray! Now go and enjoy your first video recording or screencast!