[TriLUG] Instructional Video Capture Software

Sun Aug 7 13:29:16 EDT 2016

One of my fav subject, AV and studio work! Spent some years at the CBC and
Quebecor Videotron. It is amazing how tech has progressed in 20 years, and
how much free open source software is available. Of course hardware is
still needed, and sometimes you have to go with closed source, but still...

I've done a good bit of NLE video editing in Blender when I was just doing
screen recordings for data science classes I was teaching at work. But when
I started to need actual video as part of the presentation (opengl
visualization of big data...),  I started to use a standalone HDMI recorder
device with a daisy chained monitor. That way you just put what you want on
that screen. Zero skipped (dropped) frames, even with HD videos scrolling,
or synchronized audio / video animation of digital signals. Could never
achieve that in quicktime, Captivate etc. NLE from this on a Mac using a
commercial product (see 2 paragraphs down for a Linux professional
solution). This works great as a portable solution too, along with a Tascam
digital audio recorder and microphone.

Another option, which I use for my wife photo/video studio: add a (or a
few) SDI / HDMI capture card(s) to a desktop dedicated to this task and run
OBS and this ends up working like a studio switcher. I also have custom
hardware I built to simplify switching. Without the video capture cards,
OBS over the network doesn't work that well except for very slow screen
refresh, even with gigabit. With video capture, works good, full 1080p.
With 2.5K and 4K quite common nowadays, that's not that high a resolution,
unless you need to stream, then you might want to consider some lower
resolution. But you can do that on the fly, on demand. Source material
should keep original resolution if at all possible.

In that kind of setup, you'll probably want to also use a professional NLE
with color correction. I'd say you'll have to do post-prod the majority of
time. If you have some budget, BlackMagic DaVinci Resolve is available for
Win/OSX/Linux for $995. Note that this is the real deal, not iMovie or
Adobe Premiere, so you need to spend some time learning it (there's a free
limited version for mac and windows too).

The other thing you haven't addressed is audio. If you want professional
results, you need to spend money on a good studio condenser microphone and
a good balanced preamp with 48V phantom power and a sound capture card.
External sound recording modules work better. On the microphone, buy the
lowest noise floor microphone designed for recording voice/vocals you can
afford within your budget. 14db A weighted equivalent noise level is where
I draw the line usually. I have various microphones with various sound
pickup patterns (omni, figure 8, cardiod, hypercardiod, pzm etc) depending
on the location, what is being recorded, if I want ambience etc. Some
people have a particularly sibilant speech pattern, and that will require
processing. Music and jingles are also part of what makes a video
"professional looking" (or sounding in that case). Mastering the whole
audio track to proper eq/levels etc also makes a huge difference. Ardour is
a good starting point as an audio workstation.

Another option: you could pay someone to do it. Don't underestimate the
amount of effort needed to get to a finished product.

Francois

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 10:33 AM, Scott Chilcote via TriLUG <
trilug at trilug.org> wrote:

> Hi LUGgers,
>
> My employer has been asked to provide some instructional videos that
> provide basic instruction on how to get started using some of our web
> applications.  These are to help our primary customer train new employees.
>
> ${BOSS} came to me and said to find a screen video capture product with
> the right bells and whistles.  I looked around and found no shortage of
> such products for Linux, e.g. recordMyDesktop, VLC, ScreenStudio, KRUT,
> Simple Screen Recorder, VocoScreen, Kazam, OBS, and more.
>
> Most of the recorders I've seen can limit the recording to a single
> window, which seems useful for web-application specific video capture.
> They don't support video editing, adding labels and callouts, etc., so I
> expect we'll need to use something like Cinelerra, OpenShot, and/or
> something else to clean up and add finishing touches.
>
> I mentioned the variety of free and open software I'd found for Linux to
> ${BOSS}, but he wasn't impressed.  He "isn't trying to save money"
> "wants something we all can easily use", "has useful features", and "has
> professional results".
>
> Being a total newb when it comes to this, I'm hoping there are trilug
> members who have experience they can share?
>
> I'm particularly interested in being able to add arrow pointers and
> callouts to the video, so that the voice-over can effectively identify
> product features.  Some animation relating to these wouldn't hurt.
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
>    Scott C.
>
> --
> Scott Chilcote
> scottchilcote at ncrrbiz.com
> Cary, NC USA
>
> --
> This message was sent to: Francois Dion <francois.dion at gmail.com>
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