Re: [Usability] screenshot & recording desktop video

[Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>]

This is an email sent to a smaller group by Jonathan Blandford; it
contains some (IMHO) useful questions to ask that I hope someone in
this discussion can answer.

> So, my personal opinion on this issue is that
> 
>  1) Screenshooting videos is a pretty neat idea and could be really
>     useful, but:
> 
>  2) It doesn't belong in the screenshot dialog.
> 
> They are pretty distinct tasks, and the workflow of them is different.
> Right now, when you hit PrtSc, it takes a screenshot of the full screen
> and presents the dialog to you.  Alt-PrtScn takes a sshot of the current
> window and then presents a dialog to you.  I think it would be a really
> bad idea to start recording a session immediately on a keypress, so I
> think you would have to tell the user that they're about to start
> recording their desktop.  I would hate to popup a dialog immediately to
> ask which you want to do and break the immediacy[1] of the current
> screenshooter.
> 
> Instead of overlapping with that dialog, why don't we make Shift-PrtScn
> begin screen recording.  That way, you can popup your dialog without
> affecting the current printscreen functionality.  I imagine that there
> could be some code overlap there (/tmp file handling and gnome-vfs
> saving being the biggest ones), but the vast majority of code would be
> different.  I would suggest that you put the code in gnome-utils,
> though.
> 
> As a quick question, how does this fit in with vino/vnc?  Are people
> going to use this to try and share their desktops?  Or is this just a
> quick video?  I still don't fully understand what the use cases of this
> is.  That doesn't mean that it isn't cool, but I'd like to understand
> that first.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Jonathan
> 
> [1] Though I _really_ need to speed up the drop-shadow code to make it a
> bit more immediate. S-:
> 

[End jrb's email.]

On 6/7/05, jeroen xs4all nl <jeroen xs4all nl> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> So with Ronald Bultje & Zaheer Abbas Merali we now have some code to
> record a video of your desktop (without all the hassle of running VNC
> etc.). Just start recording a video of your actions. See
> http://zaheer.merali.org/?p=116 and
> http://blogs.gnome.org/nb.cgi/view/rbultje/2005/06/03/0.
> 
> Zaheer implemented this in python as a notification area icon. I've been
> thinking this might be better integrated into the existing Screenshot
> button in the panel. I'm not sure on the best approach UI-wise though. So
> i'm asking for comments here. I have basically 2 ideas:
> 
> 1. "Hide" the "Record desktop video" functionality in the popup menu of
> the Screenshot panel button. You then popup a dialog asking the user where
> the video should be saved, what type of video (Theora, AVI, mpeg4) it
> should be saved as and how long (seconds) or unlimited. Once the user
> presses the "Start recording" button, the panel icon changes shape to
> indicate it's recording. It then either records for a predetermined amount
> of time, or it stops when the user presses a certain key combination or
> clicks on the Screenshot button in the panel.
> A problem with this approach is that there is very little feedback to the
> user when the recording has stopped. Perhaps it's better to record first
> and then ask how/where to save it?
> 
> 2. Modify the screenshot dialog so the user can say "no i don't want a
> static screenshot, record a video instead". After that, the same workflow
> follows as described above. I'm not sure this is a good approach since if
> done incorrectly, you could clutter the screenshot dialog (it's really
> simple & easy to use atm). We might just add an option to indicate the
> user wants to record a video and then for how long (seconds) or unlimited
> (user-action to stop recording). And then after it has recorded the video
> only then ask how & where to save it. Problem with this approach is that
> you get 1 dialog for 2 different functions. For example: the current
> dialog has a Save (iirc) button for saving the screenshot. How would this
> work if you could also start recording a video in that dialog?
> 
> I want to prevent having 2 panel buttons both for recording your desktop
> (static & dynamic (video)).
> 
> Comments?
> 
> Jeroen
> 
> p.s. Please CC me since i'm not subscribed to the usability list.
> 
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