Let’s hit the problems first. As I’ve seen on several posts on ubuntuforums.org, I seem to be having this weird behaviour where the microphone captures sound fine, but when the audio is played back, it’s at half-speed. That’s only a click or two away from fixing in Audacity. I post-process my screencast audio in Audacity anyway so that’s not a deal-breaker for me. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I know I’m not the only one experiencing it. Unfortunately I have yet to find a fix for it (granted I haven’t really done much of a search yet). I’m running Crunchbang 8.10 and love it, so moving to a newer kernel isn’t an option, at least not immediately.

The other problem I have is that RecordMyDesktop (run either from the gui or commandline) does not play well with this mic. I get a repeated ‘broken pipe’ message when recording and the audio is choppy and almost indecipherable (and at half-speed as noted above). Definitely unusable. I am thinking of recording the audio separately (but at the same time) using the Gnome Sound Recorder. It seems to record the audio perfectly well (despite the half-speed problem). I’m hoping I can just launch the audio recording alongside a video-only recording by RecordMyDesktop. I always end up splitting the audio from the video anyway during my post-processing. The only additional challenge here is making sure everything is in sync in the final product.

The sound quality improvement over my Logitech USB microphone is remarkable. While there is still some background noise, when I remove it in Audacity I don’t get that underwater, over-processed effect. The sound is also much warmer and fuller than what the headset was giving me. Not a big surprise I guess. I think it will be a significant improvement to my screencasts. The microphone comes mounted to a bracket which sits on top of my laptop screen (with protective rubber pads to prevent any marking of the laptop). I was wondering about how the distance vs sound relationship would work, but I have to say that at normal speaking volume, having the mic at that distance seems to sound pretty good. The levels are a little low, so I may have to rig up an impromptu mic stand using my mini Manfrotto tripod or something if I’m not happy with the placement. The build quality is good and it comes with a nice little case that can hold the usb cable along with the microphone itself.

Now I’m just hoping that recording the audio separately comes off as easy as it sounds. Time will tell, but I will definitely try a dry-run in the next few days to see how much harder the workflow is.

The only other major issue I have with my screencasting (besides coming up with good ideas and finding time to do them) is this dang mini-sized MS mouse that I use. It works fine, but the clicks seem terribly loud. Damn you Microsoft! Maybe a Logitech would be quieter. I’m either going to have to hunt down a new mouse with much more silent clicking or take this little baby apart and see if I can quiet down the switches somehow - if I don’t break it first.

I’ve linked to two sample audio files I recorded. Both files were recorded using the Snowflake microphone mounted on my laptop screen about 16 inches away from my face directly in front of me. Both files were amplified slightly to raise the levels using Audacity (and sped up to eliminate the half-speed problem). The first file is the raw file, the second file is the one where I’ve removed some of the background noise.

http://rfquerin.org/misc/snowflakesample_raw.mp3

http://rfquerin.org/misc/snowflakesample.mp3

I’ve posted my third screencast about editing video using Blender. This one is a quickie at about 9 minutes in length. It covers a few very useful keyboard commands along with an introduction to using the proxy feature to really start boosting your editing efficiency into high gear.

Also worthy of note is that I did the post processing in Blender as well. I wasn’t 100% happy with the flash video rendering output I got from Blender on this one, but this will just take some further tweaking, mostly to limit filesize and maintain quality. So for this screencast, the last step involved rendering to avi from Blender and then falling back to my mencoder script for the final conversion to Flash.

You can find this third screencast right here.

Here are the links to my previous Blender screencasts No.1 and No.2.

Expect more in the way of Blender screencasts and Blender video editing info. Troy Sobotka and I have been discussing where to go with this. Of course I’m going to try and drag Heathenx in as well so I can share the blame around.

ps. For some weird reason, I had a helluva time trying to get the flash version to work properly for this episode. Kudos to Heathenx for doing an OGV version (for those with Firefox3.5) with a Flash fallback for those with other browsers. Heathenx, you da man!

It’s all pretty simple once you get the hang of it, and keep in mind that I’m very much a newbie at Blender so expect a few flubs. In fact there’s a slight train wreck about 3/4 of the way through when I forgot how to create a new node for editing sound curves. I didn’t edit it out simply because I couldn’t be bothered and I also thought what the heck.. if I’m learning this application, then why pretend to know every little thing about what I’m doing when I clearly don’t.  Feel free to shake your head in disgust when you watch that part.

Also, as you might have seen in this post, unlike me, Troy knows what the hell he’s doing with Blender. Two good things have come of this, we’re discussing what other  in-depth tutorials might be worthwhile when it comes to introducing people to video editing in Blender and even better yet, he asked me how I screencast. I think it would be great if someone who really knows this stuff was able to do a little teaching.

Even though we’ve started this discussion I still thought it would be worthwhile to throw out this second screencast because I think once people get over the initial hurdle and actually produce something (anything) with Blender it only gives them more confidence to spur them on and learn more. That’s how I am anyway. I like to try challenging things, but it’s damn nice to actually achieve something worthwhile quickly to maintain and build my enthusiasm.

Anyway, I’m likely rambling (as I started to at the end of this screencast btw) so let’s cut to the chase. Here’s the link: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/_misc/bve/bve_02.html

Note: If you change the file extension on the above link from ‘.html’ to ‘.flv’ you can download the FLV file directly and watch it offline in something like VLC if you’d prefer. This goes for the first Blender screencast as well.

And what I want, is to be able to do some basic edits of the video from my Flip camera. By ‘basic’ I mean that I want to be able to edit clips, splice them together with some basic fades, add a music track, maybe add a title and a fade-to-black or two. Nothing earth-shattering, but that’s what I’m after.

I’ve used it now on two or three of my Flip videos with great success. Now while it’s fresh in my mind, and after @tmray asked me about how I did it, I thought I’d put together a quick screencast on a whim. A couple of notes first:

1. Yes, Blender is a bit daunting at first. Sure, there is a learning curve. But it’s not all that steep for what we’re trying to accomplish, but it’s there. I won’t lie to you. But I think there is a learning curve with any video editing application regardless of platform.

2. I am no Blender expert. I am well and truly a Blender newb. So if you watch this and have any Blender experience, you’ll likely find things that I’m doing wrong, or things that could be done much quicker. Don’t hesitate to post suggestions in the comments. I’m all about the learning.

3. In this screencast I cover only a couple of basic things: How to import videos into Blender, how to shorten and move them, how to create a cross fade between clips and how to output the final video. I may do a couple more screencasts on this to cover things like creating a title screen, fading to black and adding and editing a soundtrack.

Anyway, enough of the blather. You’ll find the screencast right here.
Update: I’ve now done 3 Blender screencasts. Here are the posts with part 2 and part3.

It’s turning out to be a nice place for getting feedback and discussing things like future screencast ideas. After 7 days we’ve already got just under 40 group members and over 50 images. Even if it doesn’t get any bigger, I’m already happy with the little (okay, tiny) community resource that’s been built.

If your interested in checking it out (heck, even if you don’t have any Inkscape chops you want to share), you can find it at: http://flickr.com/groups/screencasters

Episode 069 is now posted. In this one I create an Airline Safety Card style illustration from a photo. Phew.. that was a mouthful.

This one went suprisingly long, I tried to go quickly through the slightly tedious parts, but I think it went pretty well. Hope you enjoy it.

I figure the best way to get this thing back on the rails is to plunk down a post that at least lists some of the things I should be finding (making) time to do. Let’s cut to the chase. Here are a few things on my list:

1. Blog more. Not just pithy two-liners either. I used to enjoy crafting some semblance of a coherent post. Why am I avoiding it?
2. Get another screencasters episode out the door. I’ve got a couple of decent ideas, just have to sit down and do them.
3. Re-theme this weblog. Not a do or die thing, but I’ve grown a little bored with this theme and I really like some other design elements I’ve spotted in my travels recently. Plus, it gives me another reason to do some Inkscaping.
4. Get caught-up with backing up my photos. I desperately want to clear and re-format the card in my Canon Rebel XTi, but I’m hesitant until all the photos on my PC are backed up safely.
5. Bring my family blog up to snuff. Mostly that means a tremendous heap of RAW processing and image uploading to Flickr. But by picking the best of the best ones, I can cut down on that work. Cull, cull, cull baby.

I think one of the reasons I’ve been posting less and less here, is that I’ve been putting a lot of my cool links, mini-thoughts and various bric-a-brac over on Identi.ca. For those not aware, Identi.ca is an open-source microblogging implementation. I push all my Identica posts over to Twitter anyway, but if you want to check it out, head over to my Identica page and hit subscribe.

ps. I’m posting this from ScribeFire which I haven’t used in a dog’s age. Let’s hope it works ok.

Episode 065 is up. In this one I create some LCD digits from scratch and demonstrate the use of grids and grid snapping along the way.

I really thought this one would be short. But somehow it managed to get to the 17 or 18 minute mark. These things always end up being longer than they feel when you record them. How did I ever do one in under 10 minutes??

I’ve just finished and uploaded Episode 064. This screencast demonstrates the use of Inkscape’s Object->Clip->Set function for some creative bitmap masking.

Head over there to watch or download the episode and check out any of the other 63 episodes we’ve done so far.

Happy Canada Day tomorrow everybody!

Episode 061 is now up. In this screencast I demonstrate how to create a pseudo-realistic looking recycle bin type object. It could be useful for someone wanting to create icons perhaps. It only took 7 or 8 objects to create and demonstrates how some subtle uses of gradients and blurs can help get the effect you want.

I also fooled around with my Flip video camera and ended up doing a fun little intro with it. Hope you like it.