Useful Util: Recording [screen capturing] movies info Flash (SWF)

April 7, 2004 9:35 PM Comments [5] Posted in ASP.NET | Movies

What a fantastic 'doh! I should have thought of that' idea.  Using a Cross-Platform VNC Viewer to record Flash Movies of a user's movements.  This could replace Camtasia for me, cheaply and easily.

Sample Movie

Update! Double DOH!  Jon Galloway points out that I blogged first and read later.  It only runs on *nix.  So, I have to fire up my Linux VM or keep using Camtasia.  Crap, caught between a rock and US$299.

Comments [5]
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Wednesday, April 07, 2004 10:02:14 PM UTC
Cool idea. Looks like it's a Unix only tool, though: "Vnc2swf runs on UN*X. Currently I don't have any plan for porting to Windows." (from the link in the article).
Jon Galloway
Thursday, April 08, 2004 1:35:11 AM UTC
CamStudio does something similar for free. I suppose it's not as performant as Camtasia, but it's woth trying. It must have been good enough, since Macromedia bought it and it's selling it under as RoboDemo. The last freeware version was 2.1:

http://www.brothersoft.com/Multimedia_Graphics_Screen_Capture_CamStudio_3944.html
Ervin
Thursday, April 08, 2004 10:01:26 AM UTC
You could try the Virtual PC 2004 / Windows Media Encoder 9 combo to record full screen VM sessions.
Peter
Thursday, April 08, 2004 3:41:33 PM UTC
If you are recording for a demo, you may want to give Wink a shot (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/). Hint: if you capture only a single window, don't move it while recording.

The other solution is to use WMP 9 Encoder: IIRC, it has a mode specifically designed for recording display activity that avoids the usual messy artifacts.
Richard Tallent
Thursday, April 08, 2004 6:10:03 PM UTC
There is a small utility called ScreenFlash that records everything you do into a Flash movie and only costs $169 (crap, it used to be $79).

http://www.unflash.com/
Michael Caron
Comments are closed.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer’s view in any way.