Videos in avi and ogv formats (at least) can be uploaded in PingPong using the Add icon under Contents, and choosing Import. At the moment you can only "Add a page using this imported video file". The page will show up under Contents. If that is not where it should be published, it is possible to mark that page, click on Properties, and unmark "Include when publishing". The video can then be copied, by marking it (while being in the Edit tag) and doing CTRL-C CTRL-V into e.g. a test or some other page. In fact, the original page can be removed once the video has been moved to the right location.
The Blue Yeti worked to plug right into RHEL 6. To activate it as a continuous microphone, and to use it with Skype, I had to open System/Preferences/Sound, and under input mark Yeti Stereo Microphone Analog Stereo. I was not able to make the earphone plug in the microphone work. The sound went to the regular earphones.
To make the microphone work with ffmpeg, I had to first deactivate it in System/Preferences/Sound (well, later it did also work without this deactivation), and then do:
arecord -l
which gave:
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VB Analog [ALC269VB Analog]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Microphone [Yeti Stereo Microphone], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Then I could use the (preliminary) command:
ffmpeg -f alsa -ac 2 -i hw:2,0 -r 5 -s 1920x1080 -f x11grab -i :0.0 -vcodec msmpeg4v2 -qscale 2 filename.avi
If I didn't deactivate it first, the command reported that the device was busy. The flags needed for the microphone are:
-f alsa -ac 2 -i hw:2,0
In particular the last one decides to use that microphone. I need to check out all the flags, to optimize the settings.
The following flag gives the number of pixels included, from the upper left corner (this corresponds to my current Display settings):
-s 1920x1080
A hint is to change the display settings to lower values while recording (anc change the above accordingly), to reduce file size.
The qscale flag specifies the quality of the video. A lower number gives a better quality, but larger files. It is probably best to record using high quality, and then convert it to lower quality when publishing:
ffmpeg -i filename.avi -qscale 10 filename_qscale10.avi
To activate the microphone, just click on the sound icon in the upper right corner of Ubuntu and chose "Sound Preferences". Choose the "Input" tag and mark "Yeti Stereo Microphone Analog Stereo". Do the same under "Output".
Then run:
recordmydesktop
Unfortunately, I was not able to hear myself while recording, but the recording had the sound.
Recordmydesktop outputs in ogv format that can not be shown by my box account, so I converted it using ffmpeg (had to do this on another computer since I was not able to install ffmpeg on my old laptop for some reason):
ffmpeg -i out.ogv -qscale 10 out.avi
The higher value of qscale reduces the quality and the file size.
From the man page, for audio conversion:
-ab bitrate
Set the audio bitrate in bit/s (default = 64k).
The microphone is activated using System/Preferences/Sound. Choose the "Input" tag and mark "Yeti Stereo Microphone Analog Stereo". Do the same under "Output".
I also had to tell recordmydesktop to use that microphone:
recordmydesktop --device hw:2,0
The device number is given, as above, by:
arecord -l
HOWEVER, the framerate for the video turned out something like one frame per 5s. The --fps flag did not help me much.
Check the notes I have saved about screencasts in mail. E.g. from distance presentation.