Here are some rudimentary steps to create avi's from an OpenOffice.org Impress presentation using recordmydesktop for use on a 1024x768 projector.This article assumes you have recordmydesktop, mplayer/mencoder, and ffmpeg installed. If not use your distributions package manager to install. I needed to be able to do this to use the created avi 'background' in Lyricue - a fantastic presentation application used by our church.
- Create your graphics in GIMP.
- Create your Impress presentation using those graphics – use a mixture of On Click animations (to start, for example) and timed animations.
- Make sure your desktop display resolution is set to 1024x768 (or the same as your projector). (n.b. 1280x1024 is NOT the same aspect ratio as 1024x768!)
- Start your Impress Slideshow with initial background – once recordbydesktop is running, you can continue with the first animation with your first OnClick graphic animation.
- Run the recordmydesktop command:
- recordmydesktop --no-cursor --no-sound -o desktop.ogv
- Swap to the ready-to-go Impress presentation and step thru it as necessary. Once the presentation is finished, press CTRL-ALT-S to stop recordmydesktop recording (n.b. I had to alter my Gnome keyboard shortcuts because initially recordmydesktop couldn't assign that keyboard combination due to Gnome keyboard assignments(shade-up). Alternatively you can get recordmydesktop to use a different keyboard combination for 'stop recording' - check the recordmydesktop man page for more detail. Note there is also a Pause keyboard combination with recordmydesktop.
- Run the mencoder command to convert OGV to AVI (xvid)
mencoder desktop.ogv -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1 -o desktop.avi
- Run the ffmeg command to chop out the cruft at the beginning (and end if necessary):
ffmpeg -ss starttimeinseconds -vcodec mpeg4 -sameq -i desktop.avi desktopdone.avi
- Enjoy! (i.e. test on projector)