vnc2swf-users

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] How to record withOUT audio

[Oscar U. <osc...@pr...>]

Vncrec is indeed much faster at capturing the vnc session to file, but converting to FLV using edit.py is still very slow.  Is there another utility can be recommended for this purpose?

Thanks


Sent out an email on this before, but did not see it got thru for some reason. 


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "The Amigo" <the...@gm...>
> Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:00:36 -0600
> 
> 
> I wanted to do something similar, but found that pyvnc2swf takes way too
> much CPU time.  Instead, I tried running vncrec and piping the output to
> gzip.  It uses about 80 times less CPU cycles than pyvnc2swf!  I also found
> that "gzip -9" is both stronger compression AND less CPU time than "bzip
> -1".
> 
> Since my goal was to use the recordings as logs, not for frequent playback,
> it doesn't bother me too much that the files I have are raw VNC streams, and
> would benefit from running through pyvnc2swf for playback (a tedious
> process, but only for use on rare occations).
> 


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Re: [Vnc2swf-users] How to record withOUT audio

[The A. <the...@gm...>]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Oscar Usifer <osc...@pr...>wrote:

>  This is indeed a good work around, but converting to a streaming flash
> video is slow, (as you pointed) out using pyvnc2swf's edit.py. Is there a
> faster version or another converter that can be used?
>

I haven't yet found a better way.

vncrec can be used to play the raw vnc stream right away, but it has no
playback controls.  When reviewing a 4 hour session and looking for a short
piece in the middle, it's nearly useless.  So far, using pyvnc2swf to
convert the entire thing to flash is the only way I've found to get plaback
controls and a time counter.

Complicating this is the way pyvnc2swf is written... it can't process the
vnc file as a stream, so you can't just zcat the compressed file.  Instead
you need a lot of temp disk space to uncompress the entire vnc stream
first.  The temp file gets even larger because vncrec can't record
compressed vnc streams (e.g. tight, copyrect) so I have to use raw encoding
to get vncrec to work.  I'm just glad that I very rarely have to review vnc
logs, and leaving the (relatively small) log.vnc.gz files around isn't bad.

-- 
The Amigo

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] How to record withOUT audio

[Oscar U. <osc...@pr...>]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "The Amigo" <the...@gm...>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:40:30 -0600
> 
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Oscar Usifer <osc...@pr...>wrote:
> 
> >  This is indeed a good work around, but converting to a streaming flash
> > video is slow, (as you pointed) out using pyvnc2swf's edit.py. Is there a
> > faster version or another converter that can be used?
> >
> 
> vncrec can be used to play the raw vnc stream right away, but it has no
> playback controls.  When reviewing a 4 hour session and looking for a short

I saw that vncrec requires Xvfb to run in script mode. Would eliminating X11 in code be difficult?

> Complicating this is the way pyvnc2swf is written... it can't process the
> vnc file as a stream, so you can't just zcat the compressed file. 

Also, how complicated would it be to revise this to use a stream based system? I have not yet dive into the source to really know but I see this work would be useful if I knew it would pan out. Do you have a sense of the how hard this would be?

Thanks!
OSC

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Re: [Vnc2swf-users] How to record withOUT audio

[The A. <the...@gm...>]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Oscar Usifer <osc...@pr...>wrote:

> I saw that vncrec requires Xvfb to run in script mode. Would eliminating
> X11 in code be difficult?
>

Not sure, it'd be quite helpful because taking what looks like an easy way
out:
   Xvfb :1 &
   export DISPLAY=:1
   vncrec -record - ip.ad.dre.ss:0 -shared -viewonly -encodings raw | gzip
-c9 > logfile.vnc.gz
means that the script needs to be smart enough to find a unique (available)
display number for each simultaneous instance.  Cutting the X11 requirement
out of vncrec would make scripting much easier.

Also, how complicated would it be to revise this to use a stream based
> system? I have not yet dive into the source to really know but I see this
> work would be useful if I knew it would pan out. Do you have a sense of the
> how hard this would be?


I suspect it's doable, but I haven't looked into that either... I don't know
Python, so that'd slow me down a bit.

If you do manage to make that enhancement, that'd be cool.  Although I've
since changed jobs and no longer have need for vncrec at all, but others may
find it quite helpful.

-- 
The Amigo

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] How to record withOUT audio

[Reid E. <ra...@tn...>]

I don't think it's quite what your asking, but I wrote an X11-less  
version of vnc2swf a while back, and recently updated it to the latest  
version of vnc2swf:

	http://rae.tnir.org/vnc2swf/vnc2swf-nw

It's a pretty simple stripping of all things Tk from the script,  
obviously. Ideally, it would be nice to use, say, Qt, since that's  
available on all platforms without X11 being necessary.

Not quite what you were asking for, but hey.

Reid

On Thu Nov 13, 2008, at 1:01 PM, The Amigo wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Oscar Usifer <osc...@pr... 
> > wrote:
> I saw that vncrec requires Xvfb to run in script mode. Would  
> eliminating X11 in code be difficult?
>
> Not sure, it'd be quite helpful because taking what looks like an  
> easy way out:
>    Xvfb :1 &
>    export DISPLAY=:1
>    vncrec -record - ip.ad.dre.ss:0 -shared -viewonly -encodings raw  
> | gzip -c9 > logfile.vnc.gz
> means that the script needs to be smart enough to find a unique  
> (available) display number for each simultaneous instance.  Cutting  
> the X11 requirement out of vncrec would make scripting much easier.
>
> Also, how complicated would it be to revise this to use a stream  
> based system? I have not yet dive into the source to really know but  
> I see this work would be useful if I knew it would pan out. Do you  
> have a sense of the how hard this would be?
>
> I suspect it's doable, but I haven't looked into that either... I  
> don't know Python, so that'd slow me down a bit.
>
> If you do manage to make that enhancement, that'd be cool.  Although  
> I've since changed jobs and no longer have need for vncrec at all,  
> but others may find it quite helpful.
>
> -- 
> The Amigo

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] How to record withOUT audio

[Yusuke S. <yu...@cs...>]

Hi,

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:01:38 -0600, "The Amigo" <the...@gm...> wrote:
> 
> Also, how complicated would it be to revise this to use a stream based
> > system? I have not yet dive into the source to really know but I see this
> > work would be useful if I knew it would pan out. Do you have a sense of the
> > how hard this would be?
> 
> 
> I suspect it's doable, but I haven't looked into that either... I don't know
> Python, so that'd slow me down a bit.

Actually, it is not that hard, as pyvnc2swf already has a mechanism
to handle streams. But over years I've almost forgotten the internal
structure of the program, so I have to re-study my own code.
I'll post a patch here when I have a time.

Because the original intention of this program was to create a
short (10mins or so) tutorial movie, I never imagined that someone
wants to record hours of video for logging purpose. I'm just unaware
how popular this tool is, but is this kind of demand large now?

Yusuke

[Vnc2swf-users] pyvnc2swf-0.9.5 is out

[Yusuke S. <yu...@cs...>]

Hello,

I took a time this weekend, and now I can announce a new release:

  zip: http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/pyvnc2swf-0.9.5.zip
  tgz: http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/pyvnc2swf-0.9.5.tar.gz

This version of vnc2swf.py can take a vncLog file input as stream 
with -V option:

  $ cat log.vnc | ./vnc2swf.py -n -o log.flv -V

Furthermore, it can generate a flv stream directly:

  $ ./vnc2swf.py -n -t flv -o - | send_somewhere

With this and a web server combined, you can now broadcast
your live desktop on the web!

  $ tcpserver -vRHl0 localhost 10000 sh -c 
    'x11vnc -quiet -bg -nopw -viewonly -localhost -cursor -wait 10 -defer 10 >/dev/null 2>&1 && 
     echo HTTP/1.0 200 OK && echo Content-Type: video/x-flv && echo && 
     ./vnc2swf.py -n -t flv -s 0.5 -o -'

(Okay, I know this is just a crazy idea, and hope no one is gonna
take this very seriously... anyway)

Enjoy!

Yusuke

On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:36:11 -0500, Yusuke Shinyama <yu...@cs...> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:01:38 -0600, "The Amigo" <the...@gm...> wrote:
> > 
> > Also, how complicated would it be to revise this to use a stream based
> > > system? I have not yet dive into the source to really know but I see this
> > > work would be useful if I knew it would pan out. Do you have a sense of the
> > > how hard this would be?
> > 
> > 
> > I suspect it's doable, but I haven't looked into that either... I don't know
> > Python, so that'd slow me down a bit.
> 
> Actually, it is not that hard, as pyvnc2swf already has a mechanism
> to handle streams. But over years I've almost forgotten the internal
> structure of the program, so I have to re-study my own code.
> I'll post a patch here when I have a time.
> 
> Because the original intention of this program was to create a
> short (10mins or so) tutorial movie, I never imagined that someone
> wants to record hours of video for logging purpose. I'm just unaware
> how popular this tool is, but is this kind of demand large now?
> 
> Yusuke
> 
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Re: [Vnc2swf-users] How to record withOUT audio

[Oscar U. <osc...@pr...>]

Yusuke,

Thank you for writing this code. It has be come the defacto standard as far as I know. If you could please add stream based conversion, and improve performance, a great deal of projects that build on the output would greatly benefit.


OSC


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Yusuke Shinyama" <yu...@cs...>
> To: "General discussion about vnc2swf" <vnc...@li...>
> Subject: Re: [Vnc2swf-users] How to record withOUT audio
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:36:11 -0500
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:01:38 -0600, "The Amigo" <the...@gm...> wrote:
> >
> > Also, how complicated would it be to revise this to use a stream based
> > > system? I have not yet dive into the source to really know but I see this
> > > work would be useful if I knew it would pan out. Do you have a sense of the
> > > how hard this would be?
> >
> >
> > I suspect it's doable, but I haven't looked into that either... I don't know
> > Python, so that'd slow me down a bit.
> 
> Actually, it is not that hard, as pyvnc2swf already has a mechanism
> to handle streams. But over years I've almost forgotten the internal
> structure of the program, so I have to re-study my own code.
> I'll post a patch here when I have a time.
> 
> Because the original intention of this program was to create a
> short (10mins or so) tutorial movie, I never imagined that someone
> wants to record hours of video for logging purpose. I'm just unaware
> how popular this tool is, but is this kind of demand large now?
> 
> Yusuke
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
> Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
> Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
> http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
> _______________________________________________
> Vnc2swf-users mailing list
> Vnc...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vnc2swf-users

>


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