Make Videos of Your Tech-Support Questions

Make Videos of Your Tech-Support Questions

Have a friend or relative with tech-support troubles? Show him how to record a movie of his Ubuntu problems and send it to you, you ever-helpful, all-knowing Ubuntu guru, you.

We've all been there: Uncle Gussy is on the phone to you trying to explain a computer problem he's having, but his description isn't helping in the slightest: "Welllll, I click on the thingie, and then this doohickey opens, so I click on that, and then the computer does something weird." Gee, thanks, Uncle Gussy!

If you were smart enough to set up Uncle Gussy with Ubuntu (and being a good niece or nephew, that's what you did, right?), you could just tell him to use Istanbul to record what he's doing on his computer into a patent-free, open source Ogg Theora video file. Uncle Gussy could then email you the file, which would vastly simplify your job as family tech support.

To find out more about Istanbul, or to keep up with its development, check out http://live.gnome.org/Istanbul. Don't know what Ogg Theora is, or are only familiar with Ogg Vorbis? Then go read Wikipedia's article on the subject, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_Theora.

When you first set up Uncle Gussy's Ubuntu box, make sure Istanbul is installed. First look for it, to see if it's already on the machine:

$ whereis istanbul
istanbul:

Nope. OK, you need to put it on there. Make sure you have the universe repository enabled [Hack #60], and then install Istanbul:

$ sudo apt-get install istanbul
         

You may find that apt wants to install several other packages as well, chiefly related to gstreamer, so go ahead and indicate your approval. Once apt has finished its business, you need to start Istanbul so you can configure it, so select ApplicationsIstanbul Desktop Session Recorder. You'll know Istanbul has loaded when you see a large red dot to the left of the clock on the top panel, as shown in Figure.

Istanbul on the top-edge panel

Right-click on Istanbul's icon and choose Preferences, which brings up the window shown in Figure.

Istanbul Preferences

It's a good idea to check the box next to "Encode after stopping record (uses less CPU)" for the reason given in the setting's name. Also, to reduce file size, change Frames Per Second from 10.0 to 1.0. Of course, this also means that Uncle Gussy will have to move slowly and deliberately as he records his movie, but that can only help you when you're viewing it. As for the Network Stream section, that would more than likely be far too complicated for the likes of Uncle Gussy, so just leave those prefs alone. Click Close, head on home, and then wait patiently until the next phone call from Uncle Gussy.

You should test Istanbul before Uncle Gussy uses it, to make sure it will work correctly. If Istanbul doesn't quite work, try playing with the Preferences. In particular, uncheck "Encode after stopping record," which sometimes fixes otherwise inexplicable Istanbul problems. This will take up more CPU, as Istanbul will encode the file on the fly if you uncheck this box.

The Ogg Theora encoder loves to gobble up CPU cycles, so whatever you can do to reduce that load would be good. Checking the box next to "Encode after stopping record" was a good start, but you should also walk Uncle Gussy through temporarily changing his screen resolution to 800x600 if at all possible.

Now for Uncle Gussy's debut as Cecil B. DeMille. Tell him to start Istanbul by going to ApplicationsIstanbul Desktop Session Recorder. To start recording, he clicks on the large red circle, which changes to a stop box to indicate that recording is in progress. He then performs the actions he wants you to watch and decipher. Tell him to go slow and make all his actions deliberate, so that you can easily comprehend what he's doing.

When he's finished, he clicks on the stop box, and the icon changes once again, to a gray icon that GNOME uses to represent a hard drive, to let him know that Istanbul is encoding. If your uncle has a fast computer, or his movie is short, he may not even see that last icon, in which case he'll be back to the red circle. If Uncle Gussy is done with Istanbul, he can close the program by right-clicking on the icon and choosing Quit.

There should now be a new file named desktop-recording.ogg in Uncle Gussy's home directory. Tell him to email that to you, and shortly thereafter you'll be able to see exactly what's going on with his Ubuntu machine. It's the next best thing to sitting next to him while he screws upI mean, useshis computer.

You may find that Istanbul is still a bit buggy, but it's getting a lot of attention from developers, so keep an eye on it. More and more, developers of various Linux distros are going to rely on Istanbul when users complain about various bugs and problems.

Istanbul is supposed to work with KDE, and therefore Kubuntu, but it's impossible at this time to access the Preferences menu by right-clicking on the Istanbul icon. Other than that, the program works, so make any changes to Preferences while in GNOME and then switch over to KDE to actually use the program.

Scott Granneman