How To: Take Screencasts Of Your Linux Desktop
Now many people want to take screen casts a.k.a video captures of their Linux desktop to maybe show someone how to do a specific task or something like that. Video Screencasts are much better than the ordinary still screen shots.Taking screen casts is really easy, I am going to show you how to do so using two programs the first is called Xvid cap which you can download from the repositories of your Linux distribution.
When you first start Xvid cap you get a red square like the one in the image below:
This red square is your recording area means that anything inside this square will be part of your video and anything outside it will not. You can resize the square to fit your needs. To start recording simply click on the red button like the one in the image below:
Now your recording has started, if you would like to pause your recording for a while just click on the pause button, and to stop it completely click on the stop button. When you click on the stop button you will get an option to save the video, and your done you have just made a screen cast in Linux. Xvid cap by default encodes in real time using Xvid(obviously) as a video codec and mp3 for audio
The second tool is called Istanbul, and it is very simple. Like Xvid Cap you can get Istanbul from the repositories of your Linux distribution. The first time you start Istanbul you get nothing but a small red button in your task bar or panel like below:
To start a recording simply click on the red button like the one pictured above, the red button will turn into a gray stop sign and clicking on the stop sign will stop your recording and and a dialogue box will prompt you as to where to save the recording, and your done, its that simple. Istanbul unlike Xvidcap saves in the open source codec Theora for video and Vorbis for audio.
Download Cool Desktop Wallpapers from these great sites
Wallpapers are the first thing you would change when you are customizing your system but sometimes it is hard to find decent wallpapers that suit your taste but don’t worry I am going to provide you with many sites where you would find any kind of wallpaper you want, so here is the list:
1. Social Wallpapering – This is my favorite, its a community based Website where users rate a wallpaper, if you like some wallpaper you rate it +1 if you don’t you can rate it -1
2. Socksoff
3. Interface Lift – this site is quite popular mainly because of their huge collection and they have wallpaper for any kind of screen size, for your cellphone too including Iphone
4. iunewind.com – the wallpapers here are very colorful and neatly designed
5. HdrWalls – HDR images are created by taking multiple shots exposed for the highlights, mid-tones and shadows separately and then merged into a single image. This process results in incredibly vivid images. These high quality photos are the only kind that you will find at HDRwalls.com
7. Wallpapr- a web 2.0 site which shows images from flickr , just select the number of images you want to see or alternatively type a keyword so it shows images related to that specific keyword
8. deviantART
10. Pixelgirl
11. Desktopography
12. Veer
13. Vlad Studio
14. Customize.org
Enjoy!
