Linux screencasting tool ‘Kazam’ updates, gains bug fixes galore

By , Published October 14, 2010

Screencasting made simple is the ethos behind Linux screen-recording tool ‘Kazam‘ and the latest release sees it hammer home this point with improved features and a slew of bug fixes.

New and improved

So lets get down to the specifics of what’s new in the 0.11 release: -

  • Kazam finally has a logo, created by Robert McKenna
  • You are able to select which screen to record from
  • You can now ‘pause’ in screencasts
  • Options to choose video and audio quality
  • Easier selection of upload URL
  • Ability to go backwards from export window
  • Warning when overwriting

The biggest improvement in Kazam 0.11 doesn’t come in the shape of new features, as welcome as they are, but in the big improvements to overall stability.

Amongst the 28 bugs fixed in this release are: -

If you have previously tried Kazam and experienced issues then this latest release marks the perfect point at which to get reacquainted.

Download

Kazam has two PPA’s for easy installation and upgrading.

  • A stable PPA for users who want stability over new features
  • An unstable PPA for users who want new features at the possible expense of stability

Both PPA’s support Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 and can be added by entering the following commands into a Terminal: -

Stable:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:and471/kazam-daily-stable

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kazam

Unstable

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:and471/kazam-daily-builds

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kazam

Help

If you want to help improve Kazam Screencast you can find the project page @ launchpad.net/kazam

*Kazam records at your desktop resolution uncompressed, and outputs in h264 and flac at 44.1khz in the mkv container, fact fans. Thanks Michael.

Related posts:

  1. Kazam Screencasting tool 0.1 released – the bar just got raised
  2. Kazam – making screencasting tools modern
  3. Shutter screenshot tool updates; Gains Ton of new features
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  • http://interesting.co.nz Benjamin Humphrey

    :)

  • http://twitter.com/wrede Caspar von Wrede

    ” veritable genocide”??

    To be brutally honest with you, I personally would enjoy reading your blog a lot more if you left out the “quirkiness”. It can be a good thing, its just that you are not all that good at it. Sorry.

    • http://interesting.co.nz Benjamin Humphrey

      Feel free to go elsewhere then, because quirky is what we do. Bye!

    • http://interesting.co.nz Benjamin Humphrey

      Feel free to go elsewhere then, because quirky is what we do. Bye!

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_2FGCPYWHBQYQIKHBS6V6I3SBAY New

        Good to see a nice considerate response ;)

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      I think the quirkiness is staying put, but I appreciate your take.

      That particular phrase wasn’t meant to be quirky. It’s a wording I over-use in drafts and normally edit out during proof. Old habits die hard.

      Aside from the words ‘ace’, ‘superfluous’ and ‘however’ I also over use ‘veritable …. ‘ :(

      ‘a veritable smorgasbord of features’
      ‘a veritable figurehead of fine design’
      etc

      • daas88

        For those things I use asdfasdf or gazorninplat ^^

    • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

      It’s a new release of a piece of software, If all you want is New Release, Changelog, PPA it’s not exactly hard to skim past the fluff.

    • Anonymous

      I think that what Caspar was trying to get at is that Genocide is not really a word that one can use to describe papercuts. I know Joey was going for a hyperbole, but it is a bit much I guess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

      I still enjoy reading this blog, but do admit I was taken aback slightly when I saw that word in this context

  • http://twitter.com/P4G0 Patrick Gotthard

    How does Kazam record the Desktop? Uncompressed or compressed? I like recording uncompressed screencasts but XVidCap is not the best solution for that…

    • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

      It records at your desktop resolution uncompressed, and outputs in h264 and flac at 44.1khz in the mkv container.
      It gives you the option to open in a video editor, save uncompressed to disk or export to youtube aswell.

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        I think i’ll include that in the post, thanks

        • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

          I’m presuming the h264 is a temporary measure until VP8 matures, hopefully.

          • https://launchpad.net/~and471 Andrew

            I would love to change it to a free format (such as Dirac lossless or similiar) but any hlep I can get with this will mean it happening sooner :)

          • http://www.facebook.com/dinamicX Popescu Sorin

            i can make coffe :-) 2 bad i can’t code :/

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        I think i’ll include that in the post, thanks

    • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

      It records at your desktop resolution uncompressed, and outputs in h264 and flac at 44.1khz in the mkv container.
      It gives you the option to open in a video editor, save uncompressed to disk or export to youtube aswell.

    • dakira

      Actually it uses the x11grab feature from ffmpeg. You could do exactly the same by using the cmd-line. Kazam is just a GUI wrapper around it (a really nice one). The grabbed frames are encoded to h264 on-the-fly.

  • Anonymous

    Wow, Kazam is really coming along, just tried it and it worked flawlessly!

  • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

    I presume the Dev will show up in the comment section at some point so I am gonna ask this here. How come my mouse pointer has a big thick black outline around it?

    • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

      I’m not the author, but I’m reasonably sure it’s because of compiz’s mouse shadow. It happens regardless of what recording software you’re using.

    • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

      I’m not the author, but I’m reasonably sure it’s because of compiz’s mouse shadow. It happens regardless of what recording software you’re using.

    • https://launchpad.net/~and471 Andrew

      Yup Tommy is right, it is an ffmpeg bug. sorry about this :/

  • dakira

    Kazam is one of the best tools I’ve seen, yet. Unfortuantely there are some limitations due to its nature of being an ffmpeg wrapper. Off the top of my head one thing that won’t be possible is mouse-follow like in other screencasting tools (i.e. you define a recording frame-size and the recording-area follows your mousepointer).

    Whishlist for the next release:
    - allow me to records certain windows only (with and without border)
    - allow me to select the recording area
    - include screenkey

    • zekopeko

      Ah crap. I didn’t know it was simply a ffmpeg wrapper. Why can’t the devs use gstreamer? It’s in virtually every Linux distro.

      • http://thealphanerd.wordpress.com/ Calvin

        can gstreamer capture the desktop?

        I know VLC can be a makeshift screencaster.

        • zekopeko

          I don’t see why not. It’s basically a media coding/decoding framework. PiTiVi uses it.

        • https://launchpad.net/~davidnielsen David Nielsen

          The Istanbul screencasting tool uses GStreamer, s yes it can and not just in theory.

      • http://thealphanerd.wordpress.com/ Calvin

        can gstreamer capture the desktop?

        I know VLC can be a makeshift screencaster.

      • https://launchpad.net/~and471 Andrew

        I REALLY want to use gstreamer, however I have no experience with it. however I have deisgned Kazam so that replacing ffmpeg with gstreamer should be very easy.

        If anyone has experience with gstreamer – ‘wink ‘wink :)

        • http://www.twm-kd.com/ BigWhale

          Gstreamer is a major pain because of its cryptic documentation. I used it from the command line a lot and I did a tiny bit of development with it.

          Perhaps I could look into it?

    • Anonymous

      an alt method may be to use compiz to follow the mouse, zoom , etc?

      of course nothing is better than seeing this implemented in the program itself

  • http://twitter.com/shingalated shingalated

    Does anyone know of a good tool to do LIVE screencasts of your desktop that can be shared online?

    • http://twitter.com/cumulus007 Cumulus007

      YOu can use VLC for that. VLC can do both the recording and the broadcasting work.

    • Anonymous

      look to the program/suite called WebcamStudio (unleash ur inner google-fu grasshopper)
      it is (basically) the open source version of windows/mac camtasia studio.
      it works its magic in a java platform, so make sure you have lots of ram/spare cpu cycles but if ur rig can handle it, it works quite adequately for most purposes.

  • Anonymous

    is it impossible to provide a gui way?

    • http://www.google.com/profiles/harveycabaguio Harvey

      Stop it, seriously.

    • http://twitter.com/mickstep Michael Stephenson

      Mod’s can’t you just ban this guy?

  • Anonymous

    is it impossible to provide a gui way?

  • Anonymous

    Great program.

    • https://launchpad.net/~and471 Andrew

      You can still upload that file on YouTube, or use another app to convert it before hand

      • Anonymous

        No I mean if I click ‘Edit with: Kazam Screencaster’ instead of ‘Save for later use…’, there is no way to go back to ‘Save for later use…’ as it forces me to choose YouTube, VideoBin or hit ‘Cancel’. I made a screencast, selected ‘Edit with: Kazaam Screencaster’, realized that ‘Edit’ really mean ‘Upload to YouTube’, wanted to save it in it’s original, higher quality MKV format, but was unable to.

        • https://launchpad.net/~and471 Andrew

          Ah ok, in this case, you can click the ‘Back’ button in the Edit window.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UFCNPNEKQKJJL5VU7TGFUSQIUA mmhmm

    Get with the FKN program KAZAM.
    Cant use this in 11.10, 11.04, etc etc, WTF is the point?

    Why make software if youre not going to let everyone use it.

    Rubbish

    • Andrew Higginson

      Hey come on… I made this a while back and unfortunately didn’t get the response in terms of new developers that I wanted.

      there are also technical limitations in terms of codecs which means I am not spurred on to continue developing it.

      This doesn’t mean that others can’t pick it up though, but next time you start spouting off comments like that, please remember there is another human being on the other end.

      • dakira

        Hey! Kazam was so great. Too bad you had to move on. Do you mind posting the ffmpeg parameters you used in kazam?

        • Andrew Higginson

          Take a peek in the ffmpeg.py file on code.launchpad.net/kazam. They should be in there.

          • dakira

            Great. It’s all there, thx!

 
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