Finally! Howto Screencast on Linux

Ok, I keep trying to make screencasts under linux for the longest time. Wink was a mild sucess but as it keeps getting more and more outdated, I keep having a harder time getting it to run on bleeding edge systems (most of the stuff that I really want to screencast). Istanbul worked for a while, and really has been doing a nice job on the UI, but a series of crashes/performance issues under Ubuntu have made it unusable for me (although some people have had better luck). Even after several attempts I have never had much success with xvidcap, or its horrendous user interface. This is where recordmydesktop steps in, a simple, functional solution to the screencasters woes.

Installation was a simple compile, I’m assuming most reading the Gnome Planet should be able to track down the dependencies for their distro, I already had everything I needed installed, you might want to try a

sudo apt-get build-dep istanbul

since the dependencies are probably about the same.

Actually making the screencast was simple and light on the processor, at 75% video quality and 15 fps I was able to open applications and perform basic tasks without issue. Once I had the screencast (a .ogg file) I started to play around with import/upload options for viewing online. Playback in totem with the xine backend worked fine by default, and actually obeyed the framerate correctly (big plus, since sometimes playback appears doubletime for most screencasters). An initial attempt at uploading to youtube was a failure, and youtube showed the videos length as 0 (not a bash at YouTube, since they do not claim to support .ogg). Slightly disheartened and concerned, I figured I would have to try and convert the file.

I was looking to keep this all GUI and not mandate any long funky mencoder/ffmpeg command line conversion strings, so I opened up kino (the closest thing to a default video editor under linux) and it imported the screencast with no issues. A quick visit to the export tab and about 30 seconds later I had a xvid encoded avi matching the youtube specifications for upload. I have the results below for viewing:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAGgmsoz5TE]
The only major issue I had with the whole process was that I run my screen at a cool 1920×1200, which at the YouTube recommended resolution of 320×240 looks fuzzy and unreadable. If anyone doubts the clarity of the original file, I have uploaded it here (please be gentle!).All in all, recordmydesktop was a great experience and the closest thing to seamless and painless screencasting for linux that I have seen to date.

EDIT:
For an Ubuntu install, you may also need this:
sudo apt-get install libtheora-dev libasound-dev libvorbis-dev