Short answer: there is. A bit longer answer will take a bit more explaining. One of the biggest changes is full support for GStreamer 1.0. Finally getting rid of old static binding for pygst for which I was told (by many people) that it doesn’t really work with Gtk3. Well, it does work, sort of, and it is quite a volatile combination. Regardless, GStreamer 1.0 will not be a hard-coded requirement. Kazam will now detect which version of GStreamer is installed and which audio/video encoders are available and will adjust itself accordingly.
On Ubuntu 12.10, which is a primary deployment platform for Kazam, GStreamer 1.0 will be installed by Ubuntu Software Center. The only issue with GStreamer is that adder plugin is broken and recording of two audio channels is not working. I am hoping for a quick resolution of this bug from the upstream.
I am happy to report that Keybinder-3 got into Ubuntu 12.10 and keyboard shortcuts will work without any additional external packages from various PPAs. All the credit here goes to @kenvandine who kindly did all the work for this to happen.
If the gods of time management have mercy on me, then Kazam Screencaster will also get a complete UI overhaul. Ideas that came up at UDS-Q design session and all the work that @mpt and @me4oslav. You can check all the mock-ups and wire-frames with some comments by m4cho. Note that not all the changes will get into 12.10. Unless I suddenly decide to quit my job. ;) Kazam Screencaster is becoming much more that it was. After some persuasion, by two previously mentioned guys, I yielded and decided to expand on what the scope of Kazam is.
I will be turning it into one-stop-recording-facility-with-ease-of-use-and-simplicity-as-a-primary-design-goal. Beside screen casting, Kazam will also offer screen capturing and sound capturing. Both are just a few more steps down the capturing road. Capturing of screens, windows and regions of screen will be available to users. As for the sound goes, Kazam will not be Audacity, but it will offer basic sound capturing functionality.
When the time is right I will start working on Kazam Screencaster Service. Fully functional capturing service with easy to use API that will allow further integration with Ubuntu and Unity.
Update: Here’s the latest video of Kazam and new region selection window.
New version of Kazam Screencaster was just released. Please note that this an unstable release and you can expect trouble. You can report bugs to Launchpad and you can personally unleash your wrath in #kazam on irc.freenode.net. :)
I’ve been working on Kazam Screencaster. One of the features which disappeared when I made transition from Gtk2 to Gtk3 are global hotkeys (shortcuts). In previous version there were implemented with a little help of python-keybinder.
Python-keybinder still didn’t receive an upgrade, so I was forced to seek another way. After some googling I figured that Xlib provides everything I need. Awesome!
Not really. I made a working python example and when I transfered the code to Kazam everything blew up. It is not really smart to mix Xlib and Gtk. I started digging again. So, keybinder used Gdk for capturing all those keys.
I can do that! Right? Well, I can’t really. Gdk_window_add_filter() wasn’t included in Gnome introspection for some reason. Why? So far nobody knows.
Until I figure this out and get someone to do some work on introspection, Kazam will be left without global shortcuts. I hope this time will be measured in days, not weeks. :)
Call for testing and an open season for bug hunt. We will be hunting bugs in Kazam Screencaster and Gwibber Microblogging client. To help with the testing you will need the latest version of Ubuntu 12.04 – Precise Pangolin with Gwibber 3.4 (3.3.90) and Kazam 1.0.4 (1.0.4.1 NCC-1701E) installed. Gwibber testing will be exclusive to Precise Pangolin, Kazam testing will also cover Oneiric Ocelot. You will have to manually install Kazam by running the following command:
$ sudo apt-get install kazam
Instructions for Gwibber manual tests are available here. Instructions for Kazam will hopefully be published by tomorrow.
Everyone who would like to participate in this testing event is welcome to join #gwibber and #kazam on irc.freenode.net where event will be coordinated. For questions, contact BigWhale.
Many thanks to Kiberpipa, they provided us with a place to stay and their infrastructure. Slovenian LoCo Team will be live streaming the whole event and we will have a Google Hangout setup so anyone can join.
Good hunting and keep in mind that we are also accepting new feature requests. :)
UPDATE: Kazam was accepted to Ubuntu Universe. If you are running Precise Pangolin, the use of PPA is unnecessary. Current version number had to be changed to 1.0.4, because of Ubuntu requirements. If you had 1.2.x version installed, simply remove it and reinstall.
Kazam Screencaster reached certain maturity and I am happy to announce a stable 1.20 release. Codenamed as NCC-1701D it hit PPA repositories just yesterday.
For Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin you can use a stable PPA repository:
Ubuntu packages were also tested on Linux Mint and you shouldn’t have any problems running Kazam on Linux Mint 12. I also tested Kazam on Fedora 16, everything should work as expected, but you will have to solve all the dependencies by yourself, because I cannot provide a working RPM package.
All of the issues reported so far were fixed. A short list of smaller new things that were added:
region size is now displayed in the region window,
screen resolution change is detected and video source selector is now updated accordingly,
debug option –debug was added it should be used when reporting bugs, expect a lot of debug output,
countdown window and about dialog box made prettier,
App indicator menu and Gtk Status Icon were slightly changed,
various changes in packaging, some RPM info added to setup.py
For the end, the latest screen shot from Precise Pangolin and a rumor that Kazam was uploaded to Ubuntu Universe repository and is waiting for review.
