How to create a screencast in Ubuntu Linux

In Ubuntu Linux, you may not find a software in the league of  Techsmith Camtasia Studio to create screencasts.  Nevertheless, it is possible to create very good screencasts in Ubuntu Linux. Only, you have to make use of several tools instead of one.

These are the steps needed to create a screencast in Ubuntu Linux.

Install the necessary software

You need to install the following software to create screencasts in Ubuntu Linux.

• Xvidcap -  A software which helps you to capture the things going on on your desktop to either individual frames or an MPEG video. This is the most important piece needed to create a screencast in Ubuntu Linux. Using xvidcap, you can record an application window, a region of your desktop or the whole screen.
• Avidemux – This is is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. I use this video editor to remove unwanted parts from the captured video.
• Audacity – Is a free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. Audacity is useful if you want to later edit the sounds included in your captured video.
• FFmpeg2Theora – This is a very useful command line tool that enables you to convert and manipulate all kinds of  video to the Ogg Theora video file format (‘codec’).

You can install all the above mentioned software in Ubuntu Linux in a single shot as follows :

$ sudo apt-get install xvidcap avidemux audacity ffmpeg2theora

Recording a Screencast

The following are the steps required to create a quality screencast in Ubuntu Linux. I am not going into the details of how to use the respective software. For that, check out the links provided in the reference below.

1. Record the screencast video using xvidcap software.
2. Record the introduction and ending pages. It can be images displaying the title of the screencast, credits, license under which the video has been published and so on. Record for 5-10 seconds or however long an introduction and ending your video needs.
3. Add the introduction and ending videos to the original screencast video by opening them in the Avidemux video editor. And save the work as one single video.
4. Record the audio separately using Audacity sound recorder / editor. This can be done while watching the screencast video.
5. Add the audio track to the video track using Avidemux and save the resulting video. This will be your final result; unless you want to encode the video into another video format.
6. Encode to Ogg/Vorbis/Theora the resulting video using ffmpeg2theora. This is an optional step and is needed only if you want to convert your video to open file format. For instance, if you want to upload your video to YouTube, this step is not needed as YouTube does not accept ogg files.

References
Popey.com , Wiki.Ubuntu.com .

As you can see, there are a whole lot of steps required in creating good quality screencasts in Ubuntu Linux. But the end result can be truly satisfying.