cheese, ekiga, what next?

[woodsmoke]

Hi
The college wants the teachers to start doing more "video stuff" in terms of teaching, talking head all that. Drawing on the screen to work and equation all that.

The college bought a Windblows program called "Camtasia" which is not being well utilized, the few people who have used it basically re in their office facing the camera and drone at length.

However, one of the microbiology teachers really is making the thing dance and it kind of inspired me.

What I've been doing is taking my GoPro to the creek or woods or beach and do a standup there controlling it with my Android...

HOWEVER.......my life has caromed off into another direction.

The state education department has decided in it's infinite wisdom that "since teachers just use kits anyway"... grrr that they would "enhance" the elementary edcation requiremets for science.....

to move AWAY from requiring a physical science that includes physics, chemistry, earth science.... that along with a chemistry requirement...

to..........just plain physics!

Those kids don't need to know nuthn' about rocks and stars and all that stuff anyway.........I can just see the smug look on the bureaucrats faces.. ( grrr....

So........I am now just going to teach..........physics strarting next semester.

But...........sneaky me...........I'm going to include "rocks / astronomy / etc". as an at home activity..........

So..........I need to find an equivalent to Camtasia...

I first installed cheese for the old Logitech white ball webcam and it was not found.

I then installed Ekiga and now everything works, including cheese....

So..........now I need to pick a Linux equivalent to Camtasia........gain, headshot or screenshot with drawing on the screen etc. video and still.

Here is a website that lists some of the equivalents.........

so I am eliciting opinions..........

http://alternativeto.net/software/ca...platform=linux

thanks ahead of time!

woody'slifechangesgainsmoke!

[GreyGeek]

Just teaching physics? Sounds perfectly logical to me. After all, EVERYTHING physical is best explained using physics. Rocks? That involves the physics of erosion, tectonics, volcanoes, etc... Stars? Optic, nuclear physics, gravity, light, etc... It's obvious to me that to teach physics properly you'll have to include those other areas as examples and homework.

[woodsmoke]

leave it to the GG to be ahead of me in my plan....

Ya gotta remember that burarats love to "categoize" and split hairs....

but yes. that part of my nefarious scheme..

However, still lookin for comments on the software.

woodsmoke

[vinnywright]

vokoscreen is doing ok @hear ,,,,,no drawing on the screen but will do full screen,full screen with web cam,just a window or a region .

saves in mpeg4 or libx264 codecs and .avi or .mkv containers and will play back in VLC Dragon or avplay + has a "mail to"option and system tray play,pause controles.

vinny@vinnys-HP-G62:~$ apt show vokoscreen
Package: vokoscreen
Priority: optional
Section: universe/video
Installed-Size: 1,115 kB
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Joao Eriberto Mota Filho <eriberto@eriberto.pro.br>
Version: 1.9.0-2
Depends: libasound2 (>= 1.0.16), libc6 (>= 2.14), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libopencv-highgui2.4, libqt4-network (>= 4:4.5.3), libqt4-test (>= 4:4.5.3), libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1), libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.6.1), libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.1), libx11-6, libav-tools, mkvtoolnix
Download-Size: 702 kB
Homepage: https://github.com/vkohaupt/vokoscreen
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Origin: Ubuntu
APT-Manual-Installed: yes
APT-Sources: http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages
Description: easy to use screencast creator
 vokoscreen can be used to record educational videos, live recordings
 of browser, installation, videoconferences etc. You can capture an
 alone video or video and sound (via ALSA or PulseAudio).
 .
 The program is very simple and uses a minimalistic GUI. It also can
 capture your face using a webcam in the same time, so this feature is
 especially suitable for screencasting purposes.
 .
 This program uses the avconv features and saves the capture in some
 formats, as AVI and MKV for video and MP3 for audio.

VINNY

[woodsmoke]

thanka thanka thanka verrah much! I'll try it.

woodsmoke

[vinnywright]

OK so I was sure Vokoscreen was getting the Audio,,,,,, but no it was chopy and drops out altogether after 15-30 seconds ,,,,,,as well with avconv on the CLI .

So a workaround was needed and hear it is .

the Audio is a bit off track because as you stitch the vids together the audio will not stand free space in the stream ,,,,,,,you can however open the .avi in Audacity and insert silence at the appropriate time stamps and space it back out right .........I did just that to get it this close to right but wifey was needing me so it got left in this state
this came from using 3 sound files and 3 vid files stitching eatch Audio and Video first then all the video's together ,,,,, I should have just combined the video's then made a sound file wile watching the combined vid and then adding just the 1 sound file to it.

VINNY

[dibl]

Very nice, Vinny -- thanks for doing that! I was so intrigued that I installed vokoscreen on my siduction/KDE system and had a play with it. This is ver. 2.0.0-2 from the debian unstable repo. I also see a ver. 2.0.16-beta in the debian experimental repo.

On mine, it did record the audio (via webcam mono mic), but on playback the volume was turned so far down that it was almost inaudible. But I could turn it up and hear myself just fine. My ancient Logitech webcam doesn't do a great job on video capture, but it does work. Nice information to learn!

[vinnywright]

Very nice, Vinny -- thanks for doing that! I was so intrigued that I installed vokoscreen on my siduction/KDE system and had a play with it. This is ver. 2.0.0-2 from the debian unstable repo. I also see a ver. 2.0.16-beta in the debian experimental repo.

On mine, it did record the audio (via webcam mono mic), but on playback the volume was turned so far down that it was almost inaudible. But I could turn it up and hear myself just fine. My ancient Logitech webcam doesn't do a great job on video capture, but it does work. Nice information to learn!

glad some one liked it what I do not get is that ffmpeg and avonv used to get the audio with the command line foo I have copied down @hear ,,,,although very low volume despite having all mic levels up in alsamixer .

but now in 14.04 their is no option for ffmpeg (in the main repo's) and I get chopy braking in and out for a few then nothing Audio .
BUT with Audacity I get clear lowed Audio ,,,,,,,,,,go figure.

this on the laptops internal mic ,,,,maby I should try an external.

O by the way ,,,,I saw a few post of your's over on the siduction forums just a quick browse through as I was DLing the Paintitblack-lxqt.iso think I'll go back and get the KDE ver of the more stable release .

my wifi wont turn on on ,,,,,,but I didn't try to hard either

sense 13.10 is EOL it's partition can be used for something new

VINNY

[dibl]

my wifi wont turn on on ,,,,,,but I didn't try to hard either

Yeah, no "Additional Drivers" utility on Debian. There is a little kubuki dance that you need to do -- I think it's pretty well covered in the manual. Starting with your laptop on an ethernet cable, and after you install the OS:

1. Enable "contrib" and "non-free" in the default debian and siduction repos, and apt-get update.

2. Install the "firmware-linux" and "firmware-linux-nonfree" packages and maybe wicd-gtk or wicd-kde if you like it better than network-manager.

3. Reboot and run ceni in a root terminal to configure the wlan0 interface.

and either you're done, or there's more fiddling for certain atheros or broadcom chips. PM me if you still have problems with it.

[GreyGeek]

leave it to the GG to be ahead of me in my plan....

Ya gotta remember that burarats love to "categoize" and split hairs....

but yes. that part of my nefarious scheme..

However, still lookin for comments on the software.

woodsmoke

Look here for GPL science software for Kubunut. A lot of it is in the repository ... Stellarium, Step, Elmer, root (from CERN), Gerris (flow solver), Geant321...
Tracker is neat!

Have fun!

[vinnywright]

Yeah, no "Additional Drivers" utility on Debian. There is a little kubuki dance that you need to do -- I think it's pretty well covered in the manual. Starting with your laptop on an ethernet cable, and after you install the OS:

1. Enable "contrib" and "non-free" in the default debian and siduction repos, and apt-get update.

2. Install the "firmware-linux" and "firmware-linux-nonfree" packages and maybe wicd-gtk or wicd-kde if you like it better than network-manager.

ya I did read this part on eather the Siduction or Debian manual pages (I was being rushed)

3. Reboot and run ceni in a root terminal to configure the wlan0 interface.

and either you're done, or there's more fiddling for certain atheros or broadcom chips. PM me if you still have problems with it.

this part I did not remember ,,,,,,,,,thanks .

probably wont get around to it till this weekend ........but if I get stuck ,,,,,,a PM it will be

VINNY

[woodsmoke]

Well this thread has been nothing short of.....amazing....all the contribs....but Vinny....you hit the nail on Camtasia's head! lol

Turns out that the Windblows version will install on a Linux system but there are two parts...one is the screen recorder and the other is the "studio"...the recorder will work under Wine but the studio will not...

sooooo I was visiting with the prof that teaches microbiology and uses Camtasia...and guess what....since our previous conversation.......he has dropped Camtasia to just use MS powerpoint(studio whatever the name is now) and "talks over" it and it saves a .wmv file...

After using Camtasia at the college...turns out that Vokoscreen has all of Camtasia's capabilities in one app except for "painting on the screen".... and....ok....if one then plays the Vokoscreen one could "select a box" to emphasize something...but....

again.......the proof is in the pudding of actually DOING IT....."Just running the mouse over a place"...is what ....it seems....that most people do with Camtasia and then they just "talk"....so.... I did a Vokoscreen thing using Calligra Stage...saved it and played it and it woirked great!....

If anyone else has input I think that this thread could be very useful for a lot of "office people"...

woodsmoke