Day 26

For Next Time

Final Demo session notes

Demo Videos

Each team will create a ~2 minute video presentation introducing your final project to an external audience. The video will explain your goal (what the project is all about) and show your work in action. It might also introduce the problem domain to help explain why your project is interesting or explain some crucial implementation details, but remember that 2 minutes is pretty short.

There are two main routes you can take to create this presentation:

Below are some recipes to help you accomplish this technically, but for either path today’s deliverable is the same: Create a script and storyboard for your presentation and show it to course staff. Once this outline is finished, you should start generating content for the video/animation.

Silent film option

From your storyboard, combine a series of still images and/or short GIF clips into a longer animated GIF. There are many tools you can use to do the stitching, but we recommend EZGIF, which can both create and edit GIFs including overlaying text.

Note that your “silent film” doesn’t need to remain silent. You can create an animation using this method, then convert to MP4 video and overlay an audio track following the directions below.

Video option

There are also a huge variety of options for video production, but for this class we recommend the instructions for creating an Ubuntu screen cast (you can ignore the part about creating a virtual machine) using Pitivi. Note that you can also use this flow to create a “silent film” with a bit more control.

Recording audio

Since it’s difficult to get a demo and your narration right at the same time, we recommend that you first create your video, then record an audio voiceover using Audacity, and finally compose the two using Pitivi.

Find a quiet place to record your audio. We also have quality studio microphones you can check out rather than using your laptop’s microphone.

If you’d like to include a “talking head” video clip of your team members, you can record it using the built-in Ubuntu webcam app called Cheese.

If you choose to use background music (by no means necessary), make sure you select options which are licensed appropriately.

Capturing your program in action

For still images, there is a Ubuntu built-in tool called Screenshot that will allow you to capture the entire screen, one window, or a region you select.

There are many options to record video of your screen, but for Ubuntu we recommend you start by trying Peek. To install:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:peek-developers/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install peek

If you want to use the video clips with Pitivi you should record as MP4. To embed short interactions directly on your project webpage, you can also save as a GIF.

If you saved as a GIF and you need an MP4 to work with Pitivi, you can convert it using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i foo.gif foo.mp4

Generating title slides and text overlays

Regardless of what implementation technology you use, you will likely want title cards, transitions, and credits (don’t forget to add your names and give credit to resources you use). There are many options to generate these still images, including: