For some time now I’ve been thinking to present a weekly based report about some tools that I find interesting somehow, so that people who use Linux might find those as useful as I do. As I now have my own blog (which no one reads btw!) I thought “why don’t I do this?”.. and so here it is.
This week I’ll talk about Istanbul, a desktop session recorder aimed at Free Desktop compliant Window Managers like Gnome, KDE and XFCE.
There’s not much to say about this wonderful application, that docks into your Notification Area, besides “it rocks!”. As a software developer I find this particularly handy when creating screencasts for sharing my problems or solutions with other developers, showing use-cases to technical writers, etc. But everyone may find it interesting since its unique feature, to record desktop sessions, have lots and lots of different uses.
Notes:
1 – the only format available for output is Ogg/Theora.
2 – I was going to make a video “How To get AIGLX + Beryl working on Edgy with a i810 graphics card”, but since I’ve got it already to work I am too lazy to uninstall it and do it again. But I promise that you’ll see Istanbul in action in other posts.
Critics and suggestions may be dumped in this post comment’s. Feel free to post one š
@pires 
“How to get Beryl working on a desktop” defenently would be a great screencast session.. Not just to show how easy it is to set up as the great return value it give! All the gelly workspace and window decoration is impressive.
Ponderate on posting some tweaks, and/or some Xorg options that would improve beryl performance.. š
By the way, have you met xvidcap for screencasts? You can select the area in your desktop that you want to record. It works fine with beryl here.. š
Hey Miguel! I’ll probably do that screencast over this week, as soon as I try some other stuff and have time to capture it. Anyway, about selecting an area inside your desktop for recording it’s also possible with Istanbul as also 2D and 3D capture options are available.
Cheers,
PP
Hi I’m new to Linux and am enjoying learning a new medium but a bit slow after a serious illness. besides they say a mind is a terrible thing to waste and use it or lose it applies. Lucid, I expect to hear or see something when I depress the activate red button, nothing happens and so far I’m unable to locate a resultant OGG Theora file. Trying to create a file for legal issue, to be shown in court. Advice? ed.