I thought that yesterday’s post about the YouTube video preview was kind of neat. I even demonstrated it with this screen video capture.
Now, as Paul Harvey would have noted – there’s more to this than you would think.
I mean, how hard could it be? That was my thought as I started to write the post. Actually, quite a bit later, I had a solution. But, it wasn’t easy with the computer that I was using.
I had booted my computer into Windows 10 to do something else when I thought that I would write the blog post. It should be easy; it’s just text and I throw in a screen capture.
Not!
I seldom do new things on Windows 10, opting instead for working in Linux Mint on this computer. But, I was in Windows, so why not?
Writing the post was easy. Now for the screen capture. At present, the feature only works with Opera and Chrome. I loaded Opera and did the mouse over and it worked fine. Now to capture the video.
I was stumped. I don’t typically use Windows for something like that. But, for a quick capture, Jing is my go to application on the Macintosh. It does capture a part of the screen and there is a video capture element but I’ll be honest; I hadn’t used it in a long time. So, I was off to download the Windows version, installed it, and then did the process of animation and capturing it. When I went to save the result, there was only one file format for it. .swf
Sigh. Well, I could always beg forgiveness. As I tried to upload it, WordPress indicated that it didn’t like this file format. That’s probably a good thing, for a number of reasons. It’s actually too bad since the file size was pretty small. I had to find something different.
I popped up the Application Menu and started to look for something that looked like it would do the trick. Nothing I had installed set off any bells until I got to the Xs. There’s the XBox application. I remember reading somewhere that this application could do screen capture. That makes sense for gamers who want to do their thing. I found the article; did a quick enough read to get a lead on how to do it. Off I went, the animation in the browser looked good but when I asked Xbox to do the screen capture, it complained about the video driver on the computer. It was a fair enough complaint; this is an older machine.
What to do? What to do?
Then, I remembered that I had installed the Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder extension in the Chrome browser. Down went Opera; up went Chrome. Maybe this will do the trick. I’d never used it to capture video before.
I went through the process again and it worked perfectly. I had myself a .mp4 file that did what I needed.
Back I go to WordPress and try to upload the file. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t allow for uploading .mp4 files in the free version. Rats. When I look at the size of the file, I could see why. Even though it was a small video clip, it still was a fair sized file.
Maybe I could just ask you, the reader, to try the experiment for yourself.
Nah, that’s the coward’s way out.
There has to be a better way. Maybe .mp4 isn’t the best solution after all. Really, I just needed to show the video from 10 000 m. It’s the description that is the most important part.
How about .gif format? I wonder if I still had that .gif maker on this computer. But, before poking around and looking for it, I remembered my old web friend, Zamzar. Its claim to fame is to convert one file format to another and, sure enough, there was a .mp4 to .gif option. I just had to wait a bit for an email link to grab the resulting file.
That’s OK; I had other things to do. Within seconds though, I had the notification that the file was ready. So soon? I downloaded it and it worked beautifully. WordPress liked it; it was small; and it did the job I needed.
And, as Paul Harvey would have said, now you know “the rest of the story“.
Why would I be surprised at you invoking Paul Harvey? (I’m going to walk around all day with that voice in my head). I wonder how many of the younger crew in our #pln will need to go and Google that! I am amazed at your tenacity, and willingness to keep hunting for a solution. I’m looking forward to working on building my resilience this year with fewer time constraints. Sometimes, when I’m encouraging my students (or myself) to keep trying another way to solve a problem, time gets in the way, and leads to major frustration. I think it’s a big factor we need to look at when we’re trying to help build resilience and perseverance.
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