Assignment #144

More Video Capture

OK so you know how I was griping in assignment #137 that Jing and Screen2Exe didn’t capture the videos for learner.org. I got an email from the guys at Jing and they told me why.

It’s probably that you are capturing Windows Media or Real Player or
something. Jing needs hardware acceleration turned off to do that.
More about that here:
http://techsmith.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/techsmith.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.
php?p_faqid=27
Hope that helps.
have a good day,
bill scanlon
TechSmith developer

And it worked-- Right click on your desktop-Properties-Settings-Advanced-Troubleshoot-Move Hardware Acceleration Plunger to None.

Now I don’t know what that Hardware Acceleration thingy does normally so you are on your own after that.

Play!!

Assignment #137

Jing Project

This is a neat idea. Jing is a little program that sets on your desktop and, when you want it to, captures what’s on your screen. It can capture videos, or individual pictures or even do a screencast. The downside is that you need XP or Vista or Mac OS X and it captures to .swf shockwave flash and you may not have that on your computer. And the files are huge. Over 2Mgs for every second of captured video.

But it works, although it didn’t work with those Annenberg videos at learner.org. I just got the audio with those.

Keep trying guys. When you can capture everything and give it to me in a reasonable size, I’ll be your first customer—if it’s free.

Update: Gizmo Richards had a link to a better program. It’s called Screen2exe and it does things a little differently (it records to an exe file) but it’s super simple and the files are tiny compared to Jing. Still doesn’t do those Annenberg videos though.

Play!!

Assignment #151

Real Player 11

Now I know I’ve just about beat this to death but I have to admit it works pretty slick. The new Real Player 11 has a feature that when your watching any video a little button pops up in the upper right corner of the video and asks you if you want to download the video. And it works. Not the huge files of Jing and not the .exe files of Screen2exe, just the file. I downloaded 2. The Youtube video came in Flash format but the other one came in IVR format which is some proprietary Real Player format. Neither VLC Media nor Gom Player could play the IVR format. But the IVR was plenty small--60 mgs for half an hour and it even took out the buffering gaps. Here’s the CNET Quick Tip with a little more insight. http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-28974.html

Play!!