Tuesday, June 21, 2016

How to make screencast on Ubuntu 14.04

There is a lot of software for screencasting, subtitles making and video mastering for Ubuntu and you can create awesome demo with a lot of effects.
But what if you want to create a simple demo by using only free software?
Unfortunately I could not find a one application for Linux to screencast, create subtitles and add subtitles to the video. I had to use 4 different applications.
So I'm going to tell you how to:
  • Create screencast video
  • Create subtitles with the custom style
  • Add subtitles to the video


Screencating

 Screencasting is the easiest part. Just use the Kazam - https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/kazam/
Kazam is very easy to use and it works perfectly!
Just launch it and press the button "Capture":


To stop recording:
  • Right click on Kazam icon in the tray
  • Press "Finish recording"


Kazam saves your video in mp4 format. That it!

Create subtitles

We are going to create not just subtitles but subtitles with some style: font color, font size and subtitles position on the screen. For this task we also have a very nice application.
It is Aegisub - http://www.aegisub.org/
First of all create a text file with subtitles - just write line by line everything you need in one text file.
Then use Aegisub to add timestamps for your text.
Launch Aegisub and add video:


Then one by one copy lines from your file and set correct time. Use right top window for this: play video to the moment you need then write text, set time and press enter:


It is not difficult but it is a little bit boring.
After you finish with this go to the Style Manager:


Open Style Manager, select "Default" in the "Current script" window and press the "Edit" button:


You will have a window with a lot of options for your subtitles style:


Select whatever you want, do not forget to set margins.
Save your subtitles to the ".ass" file.

Adding subtitles to the video

This part of creating demo is a trouble.
Actually there are a lot of applications to do this. I tried many of them and for some reasons most of them didn't work for me. The main problem is that I wanted to keep my custom subtitles style but most of them just ignore the style. If you don't care how your subtitles looks like or in what place of the screen they are - use any application but if you care about subtitles style use Avidemux - http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/
Launch Avidemux and open your file. On this stage a got a warning from Avidemux:


And even in Safe mode my Avidemux crashes.
It looks like this bug is fixed in latest Avidemux version. But I'm going to tell how to avoid it.

How to avoid Avidemux crash

To do this we need one more application: HandBrake -
https://handbrake.fr/
Launch HandBrake. Open your video ("File" -> "Source")


Go to "Video" tab and select video encoder "MPEG-4".


And you can change Bitrate here if you want.
Click "Start" and you will have ".mkv" file. This file you can use in Avidemux.

Back to the Avidemux

Launch Avidemux, open ".mkv" file from previous step or use mp4 file from Kazam if your Avidemux doesn't crash with it.
Select Format you want.
Select codec and click "Filters".
Add subtitles - select file with subtitles that you created by Aegisub application:


And save your video:


It will take some time.

Summary

How to make screencast on Ubuntu 14.04:
  1. Screencast by Kazam
  2. Create subtitles and customize style by Aegisub
  3. Add subtitles to the video by Avidemux

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