video editing -- making a PC instructional Youtube video

[Tom_ZeCat]

I use a flash card program, Audacity, and some language pronunciation web sites to create recordings to help me learn to speak French. I started doing this when I ran out of language courses. It got so if I used some new course, it was mainly covering material I had already been through, just in a different way. By making the material myself, I could create lessons tailor made for what I needed to learn.

Now I want to make a Youtube video to help others learn how to do this. I'll be googling around the web to figure out what Linux-based video editing software I should use. It will obviously need to do video screen captures of what I'm doing in Audacity and in the other software that I use. I'm sure I can find something, but if you have a favorite video editing app that you can recommend, I'm interested in your impressions.

Here's the one thing I'm really wondering about. I've set Audacity to record straight from my sound card. It was previously set to record from my laptop's mike. I don't even remember how I did it. I'm going to need to look it up. (I THINK I did settings in something named ALSA.) Obviously, I want the video to pick up the sound of what I'm capturing in Audacity. However, I also want to narrate what I'm doing. I have a Logitech headset. It's not a USB-based one. It's one of the ones that has two plugs, one for the audio jack and the other for the microphone jack. If necessary, I guess I could get a USB-based one.

Will the video editing software be able to simultaneously get the audio from ALSA in Audacity and my voice from the headset? If not, I guess I would have to record all my actions in Audacity and then overdub my voice later, but that would suck.

I've never made a PC instructional video like this before. If anyone has pointers on how I can make this go well, I'm all ears.

[woodsmoke]

Hi
Bravo on what you have done!

And, I commend you for wanting to do the project you have described.

I also did something like this back at another distro at which I was a developer long long ago and far far away.....

But,...... that was long long ago....and far far away............

The drop dead simple way to "make a video" for YouTube is to use a cell phone! lol

And one of the main reasons is that you do NOT want really high quality.

The college required that the instructors "at least attempt" to make a "welcome video" for their classes and you would not believe the howeling and caterwauling from the faculty...I mean............ academics prattle on and strut about preening their hair and braying to the world that they are SO MUCH SMARTER THAN....those people....

They were "stuck" on the IDEAS of editing, etc, etc....not the actual practice but the HORROR of having to.............DO IT!!

Well...........the college actually had to spend some big bucks to buy "Camtasia" and install CAMERAS on the professors monitors so that they could sit at their desks, staring at a screen in a corner of the room, with their backs to the closed door...........don't want to be interrupted by.........students....

Welll I am one of probably four..... after SEVEN WEEKS.....profs to post a video......... the other's did, indeed, use Camtasia.

The point here is "me" doing the video the point is...let the phone do the work!

Annnnnnddddd ....

I went to my dive shop, it has a dive pool, with my SCUBA equipment and my cell phone....now I could have used the GoPro but it makes MONSTEROUSLY HIGH QUALITY files...

One of the dive pros very nicely agreed to "video" me, I put the gear on, stood by the pool, he recorded the video WRONG..... he held the phone vertically and that is the reason for my thread elsewhere about rotating the video... but....after I did a five minute standup, I turned around and after a BAD PUN about "diving into science" I ....did a giant stride into the pool!

(see note about GoPro as PS below)

So again.........use your cell phone..........

Do you have one with a camera on the front and back?

Get some self sticky velcro or double side poster tape and put a smidge on the side of the phone put the phone on a tripod or a book or a box or whatever, place it properly and have at it.

BE SURE TO RECORD IN LANDSCAPE....

If you have a phone with front back then you can..........um....watch yourself while you are videoing yourself! lol

if you have a phone with only a front camera...........ummmmmm lol..............TRUTH......... get a letter sized mirror in a frame for a buck someplace and put the mirror BEHIND the phone...and watch yourself backwards in the mirror.... lol

The important thing is to make sure that you are "in frame" that is about the only important thing...

So.........you now have your video.......... pop a tether in the phone, put the SD card from a camera on a tether or .........use KDE connect for the phone!! lol

Transfer it to the computer....

Pick the most efficient file format for YouTube in terms of loading it up to you tube..or if your phone produces an acceptable format then all you have to do is edit the beginning, add a title, etc..

and use Kdenlive!

If it had not been for HOURS of trying to "rotate" the video, I would have been done in ......fifteen minutes using Kdenlive.... really drop dead simple.

convert if you need to...or you can use FFmpeg (Video Converter in Kubu file menu)

Remove the part of you sitting back to the chair in front of the phone, or scurrying around to sit down....

Add titles, or whatever....

done....

The really IMPORTANT thing is to NOT do one big file. Instead break the work up into "several" short segments, maybe five minutes each. Lable them "my video 01" "my video 02" etc.

That way you have a "comprehensible" amount of material to "edit". You can use the same title for all of them, just changing the number. They will relatively quickly upload to YouTube, although there are other file hosting systems but they are not nearly "videoey".

YouTube can be really "laggy" if you have not purchased file space.

Sooo good luck, probably someone else will drop by to offer a "more better" solution and if you go with that, then go for it...I won't be hurt!

Annnnd come back with what happened, mabye a snippet of the video?

woodsmoke

PS

But....I bought a GoPro Black to take with me to the Bahamas to film stuff underwater....so I thought I'd use that........but then changed my mind because of file size restrictions at the college drop box.

ummmm you can control the GoPro with your smart phone so that you are kind of like "the weather person"... a green screen behind you...naaah.... the beach, the trees, or.....the other side of your room..! But...you are facing the GoPro and controlling it while you watch yourself on the phone...

Annnnd it will record a video and also, at intervals that the user sets it automatically also takes stills!

But that is a kind of ideal situation.........

[Tom_ZeCat]

An ingenious solution, thanks. However it's probably not the right one for me. I've never fully dived into the cell phone craze. I have one that I rarely use. It's just a pre-paid Tracphone, not an iPhone or an Android. I think it does have a camera that does stills, a feature I've never used. I guess I could look to see if that thing does video. I honestly don't even know.

I hadn't even planned to take video of myself, but rather just video of my screen showing Audacity, the language-speaking web sites, LibreOffice Impress, etc., while I narrate my actions. I guess it might make it more personable if I did video of myself. If I need to do that, I could use my old Canon PowerShot S3 IS on a tripod. It's an older camera and is nothing fancy, but it's probably better for Youtube if the resolution is only basic, as you've stated.

I will look into Kdenlive. Hopefully it can record the video from my laptop's screen, the audio from my sound card, and the audio of me speaking from my headset. That's the main thing I'm wondering about, if it will take audio simultaneously from the sound card and from my headset mike. That way I can explain what I'm doing as I do it and not have to go back and overdub.

I do plan to break this up into a series of short videos, parts 1, 2, 3, etc. That should avoid the Youtube lag and keep things from being long-winded. I've found its more effective to learn things in small pieces at a time, something I intend to cover in the video regarding language learning.

Oh, and thanks for the warning about shooting in landscape. It's really easy to rotate a still, but obviously not so much with video.

[claydoh]

There are a number of screen capture programs that will record both your screen and an audio source

http://www.webupd8.org/2013/06/simpl...ul-screen.html
I'll bet this is perfect for what you want to do. It did work for me with a quick test, though I am missing some codecs (for mp3 and mp4 recording), etc, it did record a nice mkv of me talking at my screen. the encoder codecs should be trivial to get, i just didn't bother grabbing them.

[richb]

Here is another option. Vokoscreen.

http://youtu.be/S2qveyYKFo4

[claydoh]

Nice!
A bit crashy for me (at least I kept losing my webcam input), and no audio, but still nice.

There are quite a few choices, thank goodness. Kazam, qt-recordmydesktop, and a few others give good options to try. I was simply impressed with simplecreenrecorder as I installed it and it worked right out of the box using the defaults. I had grabbed it, used it, and uploaded the result to youtube in a matter of a couple of minutes.

last time i tried a bunch of them, almost all of them had some problems or crashes, or slowed my oldish laptop down. simplescreenrecorder was a pleasant surprise as I had none of these.

[richb]

I will give simple screenrecorder a try. It looked nice in your post. Vokoscreen pretty solid for me. You have to make sure the Audio is turned on in the settings.

[GreyGeek]

Here is another option. Vokoscreen.

http://youtu.be/S2qveyYKFo4

That was great!

[richb]

That was great!

Thanks GreyGeek. I should have trimmed my beard and combed my hair.

[claydoh]

I will give simple screenrecorder a try. It looked nice in your post. Vokoscreen pretty solid for me. You have to make sure the Audio is turned on in the settings.

yeah, I found it. I would think selecting my mic would have turned on the audio. it also made my system slightly choppy, though not ridiculously or anything (core duo pentium 1.8, though with 4gb ram and an ssd). Just noticeable. Then the webcam webcam part would crash. Still overall nice, I would still offer it as a suggestion to users looking for this sort of thing.

[claydoh]

Thanks GreyGeek. I should have trimmed my beard and combed my hair.

It's a good think mine crashed then. The beard is fine, my hair was far messier than yours. Heck I wouldn't have said your hair was messy in the first place. Mine, though, was still bed-head

[richb]

I got choppy results until I changed to codec mpeg4 and format mkv, in the Video tab. My laptop is an Intel I5, 1.8Ghz, Dual core.

[claydoh]

Sorry, I meant my 6 year old laptop got a little slow, choppy, while running the program. Just slightly.

[richb]

Got it.