Help Me Record a Live Screencast that is Stored In the Cloud

October 13, 2010 10:28 AM

What (if any) solutions are out there to record a Live Screencast, and have this screencast stored *in the cloud* immediately?

Specifially, I have a slooow internet connection and I am recording training videos (screencasts) while giving training over the web. My connection is fast enough for the screencast, but it will take FOREVER to upload these videos!!
So - I need a solution that can capture my screen and store it on a website, or S3, or comparable, without having to UPLOAD it. Also, this is on OS X, not windows.

Any ideas?
I know about all the usual screencasting softwares eg camtasia/screenflow/etc. I'm looking for something different that specifically meets the need above. Thank you!!

posted by Merlin144 to computers & internet (6 answers total)

ScreenToaster is awesome for this.
posted by jbickers at 10:30 AM on October 13, 2010

If you're compressing your screencasts the right way, they should be pretty tiny. Camtasia's always produced email-sized files for me.

It's annoying to have a second step, but I think it's your best bet for the moment. Most professionally-produced live online content is archived separately from the live stream, as it's actually fairly difficult to reassemble a complete file from a live stream (among other things, most live streaming services won't attempt to retry dropped packets beyond a certain threshold). There are various server products that do have this DVR-like functionality, although it can be difficult to implement. I don't know of any consumer-level vendor who supplies it for screencasts (and even most of the pros shy away from it, because it can be a huge bandwidth/cpu hog on the server end).
posted by schmod at 10:41 AM on October 13, 2010

I think LiveStream allows this as well as ustream.tv
posted by andreinla at 11:09 AM on October 13, 2010

My connection is fast enough for the screencast, but it will take FOREVER to upload these videos!!
So - I need a solution that can capture my screen and store it on a website, or S3, or comparable, without having to UPLOAD it.

Umm, "upload" is a generic term for any sending of traffic, live streaming or not. If you can't upload a screencast to s3 when time isn't a factor, adding realtime constraints won't help.

The first option is to record less data, by reducing the screen size, sound quality, etc. Probably not a good idea if you want people to read things from your computer screen. The other option is to compress harder. You can record and then compress it locally, so you don't have as much data to transmit later, at the expense of more CPU time needed for everyone who views it. The people I know who use OSX and need this sort of thing swear by Handbrake.
posted by pwnguin at 11:31 AM on October 13, 2010

Try screenr. It's like what you described, though instead of storing to a remote directory like S3, you use a custom link to access your screencast. Note the 5-minute limit per recording, not sure whether that will cramp your style.
posted by reeddavid at 1:21 PM on October 13, 2010

Adobe connect , adobe acrobat connect pro, or whatever it is called now..
posted by 3mendo at 6:03 PM on October 13, 2010