After more than 68,000 views of the original screencast, I have just put up a more svelte 20 Minute Wiki Tutorial for TurboGears. This screencast was much more elaborately produced, but it’s still the same at the heart of it.
I’ll be linking it up from the front page of TurboGears.org sometime soon.
I think it would be nice for the address bar of the browser to be visible, since you are commenting how you don’t like that the url is /?pagename=FirstPage but the viewer can’t really see that.
I’d love to find out more about TurboGears, but am unable to view the demonstration video since (as far as I can tell) it uses patent-encumbered Sorensen video codecs. Please, when demonstrating free software, make the videos available without requiring non-free software.
The Xiph project makes the Ogg Theora video codec, which is free of patents and implemented in various free software tools. This would allow anyone to view the video without restrictive license “agreements”.
Videos can be converted to Ogg Theora, or you can use a tool such as Istanbul to create the video in that codec initially.
Elvelind: Thanks!
Damjan: That’s a valid point. It’s something I realized after the fact and highlighted with a text overlay. One trick with the screencasts is to maximize the real estate for the main part of the presentation (and I’m recording at 720×480). In this case, I would’ve been better off with the location bar visible, though.
bignose: I’m almost positive you can view that video. The link to the “video help” page was broken, and I’ve fixed that. Here’s the page in question:
http://www.turbogears.org/preview/docs/videohelp.html
On Windows and Mac, the files play just fine (and even in-browser) using the free QuickTime player. On Linux, you can use recent versions of VLC or MPlayer.
I’ve done a lot of homework on codecs. I had to strike a balance between the quality of the output, the file size, and the ease of playability for as many people as possible. H.264 is the clear winner. Particularly for screencasts, you want to be able to read the text. With many codecs, it’s just not possible to make easily read text with a file size that’s at all reasonable. And, this style of video with both live video and screencast is quite tricky indeed, but H.264 does a great job.
So, all I’m asking is for people to have a recent version of common player software.
taz: Thanks for the efforts you’ve put in to research available codecs. The issue I’m raising isn’t availability or price of software.
The H.264 codec is one of many video codecs encumbered by idea patents, actively enforced by their holders; it’s currently illegal in many jurisdictions (including the USA and Australia) to implement or distribute free software to play videos using that codec.
This means that prospective viewers have only the option of using non-free software, such as the proprietary Windows codec libraries used by Mplayer, or the proprietary Quicktime viewer you mentioned. For people who can’t agree to the restrictive license terms of the software implementing those codecs, there’s no legal option to view videos using the H.264 codec.
Could you provide the option of viewing the video using a codec that is not patent-encumbered, such as Ogg Theora? This would allow users of free software to also access the video, without affecting existing viewers.
bignose: assuming that I am able to create a file that is of reasonable size/quality with Ogg Theora, I’d be happy to transcode.
Hey kevin, I know you’ve been looking for a screencasting tool. You probably know about this but if not, here’s a Mac tool.. I haven’t used it so I have no idea how it compares to camtasia.
Thanks Abhik! iShowU doesn’t really compare much with Camtasia (which offers a complete editing environment that is geared toward screencasting). It *does* compete directly with Snapz Pro X which has been, thus far, the finest screen recorder on the Mac. It will be interesting to try out iShowU and see how it fares.
“there’s no legal option to view videos using the H.264 codec.”
Then don’t view them? Please, I get tired of this everything must be “free” drivel. Use the right tool for the job. Kevin chose to use H.264 because he believe that is the right tool for the job.
The reason that I’ll at least try an Ogg Theora version of the video is that I’d prefer for people not to have to jump through any dramatic hoops to play my videos. Some distros (notably Debian and derivatives) don’t ship with tools that have licensing issues. H.264 produces great files that are easily played with a free and legal player on Windows and Mac. If Ogg Theora produces a reasonably close approximation, it’s not a big deal for me to offer that one additional format that can be played on Linux systems that cannot legally play H.264.
If the file size is huge or unreadable, then I’ve got no choice but to stick with H.264 alone. At least I know that it’s technically possible to play the file on Linux.
[...] Kevin Dangoor has updated the 20 Minute TurboGears Wiki screencast. He says the original had over 68,000 views! [...]
I run GNU/Linux, and I can play H.264 video just fine, without any proprietary software installed. MPlayer and Totem both play the video using ffmpeg’s Free Software implementation of H.264.
Thanks for the updated screencast, it looks great, and highly professional.
Glad to hear that you liked the video and had no trouble playing it!
The issue that bignose raises is that the H.264 codec is covered by patents. There is indeed a free and open source version of H.264 available, but it’s technically illegal in most countries. Because of that, the software probably doesn’t appear in every distro. Debian is particularly fussy about not including software that has licensing issues.
I run Debian, and the packaged version of Totem handles H.264 just fine. 
Cool. Then maybe I’ll skip the Theora thing and just add Totem to my video help page
To close the loop on this:
I’m now able to view the Quicktime version (downloaded again today 2006-12-22) with totem 2.16.4, gstreamer 0.10.10, libquicktime0 2.0.9.7 — all free software in Debian ‘etch’.
Thanks!
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Nice work as always. It’s nice to see your face too