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Screencast: SunRain Theme Installation on Buildout

olha — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:00:49 -0500

Helpful links

SunRain Plone Theme home page
SunRain Plone Theme area on plone.org
SunRain Plone Theme area on PyPi
More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: Estate Lite Theme Installation

olha — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:45:40 -0500

This video tutorial comes as addition to previously recorded screencast on Estate Lite Plone Theme Installation on a traditional (non-buildout-based) Zope instance for Plone 3.The following tutorial covers Estate Lite theme installation on a buildout-based instance.

Helpful links

Estate Lite Plone Theme home page
Estate Lite Plone Theme area on plone.org
Estate Lite Plone Theme area on PyPi
More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencasting in Linux

olha — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:42:16 -0500

Today I finished my new video tutorial about making screencast in Linux. This screencast is the result of my recent work on making video screencast in Linux. I have been trying many applications for recording screencasts, recommended by different users. My intention was to make such video material that will be classified as HD video on YouTube. Besides, I tried to achieve the same quality of video and audio that I learned to get on Windows.

So, I can say that screencasting in Linux can be as easy as screencasting in any other operating system. The most difficult issue is to select the most suitable software among many and many available applications. In any case, I prefer using free open-source applications, so my search for suitable software was limited to free applications.

After dozens of videos recorded I learned one of the important lessons and here it is: Tip 1: Record audio and video streams separately. What this gives me is the control over 2 streams which I can edit, clean, and finetune. Besides, in this case synchronization issues do not emerge, and I have no problems with making audio and video synchronized.

The principle of my recording screencasts was the following: I recorded video and audio streams separately, then I edited and cleaned them. After that I combined them into a single video which I later uploaded into YouTube.

Step 1. Capture Video Stream

For video capturing I used qt-RecordMyDesktop that is a fine desktop session recorder for Linux. Even though RecordMyDesktop allows recording both video and audio streams, I preferred capturing video stream only (to disable audio recording make sure 'Sound Quality' box is not checked).

With 'Select Window' button I selected the necessary window to make the recordings within. With hitting the 'Record' button I launched screen capturing. The important note worth mentioning here is the size of the window to record. If you want to upload your screencasts to YouTube and want them to be recognized as High Definition (HD) videos, make sure to keep the recommended aspect ratio, and video resolution that should be 16:9. So, Tip 2: While recording video stream keep to the recommended window size proportion - 16:9. In my case I recorded within Firefox web browser window that was 1270 px width, so the height of the window was 714 px (1270 to 714 is the same proportion as 16 to 9).

As a result of the recording I got out.ogv file, which I had to convert to a suitable format for subsequent work. What I used for this purpose was a mencoder, I run the following command in the terminal to convert my .ogv file to .avi:

mencoder out.ogv -o out.avi -ovc lavc

where out.ogv - is the input file, recorded with RecordMyDesktop, out.avi - output file needed for future word, -ovc lavc - is the the codec used for conversion.

Step 2. Record Audio Stream

To record the audio path I used Audacity sound editor. I usually open the video file in the background and while it is played I record audio stream for it. This gives me an understanding about how long the audio should be and this is how I can make my audio and video streams synchronized.

Audacity is a good application for making audio stream clean and distinct. It allows to get rid of the background noise that is usually recorded but it makes the audio sound a bit 'dirty'. Tip 3: Always try to minimize background noise while recording, if it still bothers you - use a good sound editor like Audacity to get rid of it. Here are the instruction how to do this:

Select a piece of the audio with no voice, only the background noise.
Go to Effect -> Noise Removal -> Click on Get Noise Profile
Select the whole audio stream and again go to Effect -> Noise Removal and press OK.

Now listen to what you've got now. Sounds better, doesn't it? What is left to do is to export this audio track in the .wav format.

Step 3. Combine a video with an audio track

The final step of the screencast making is to combine video and audio steams into a single video file. For this I used Avidemux application. Simply open necessary video .avi file, add the audio stream at Audio -> Main Track, and insert the External WAV (the one recorded with Audacity).

Now that our video is complete - save this video at File -> Save -> Save Video. That is it! The screencast is ready for the upload to YouTube!

Here is the video tutorial about making screencasts in Linux using applications mentioned above:

Screencast: Plone Captcha Field

olha — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:51:21 -0500

Helpful links

Plone Captcha Field home page and documentation area
Post feedback about this product in TalkQuintagroup Plone Forums Plone Captcha Field area
More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: Plone Captchas

olha — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:51:16 -0500

Plone Captchas is simple captchas implementation for Plone, designed for validation of human input in insecure forms. It plugs to all Plone forms: default commenting mechanism, sent_to & join forms, forms created with PloneFormGen.

Helpful links

Plone Captchas home page
Post feedback about this product in TalkQuintagroup Plone Forums Plone Captchas area
More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: Plone Tabs

olha — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:29:50 -0500

Plone Tabs (quintagroup.plonetabs) is a user-friendly product for managing portal tabs, site & user action, folder & object buttons within Plone interface without the need to go to ZMI. Plone Tabs also allows to change items order by simply drag-and-drop.

Helpful links

Plone Tabs home page and documentation area
Post feedback about this product in TalkQuintagroup Plone Forums Plone Tabs area
More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: Plone Google Sitemaps

olha — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:09:10 -0500

Plone Google Sitemaps (qPloneGoogleSitemaps) is a Plone add-on for enabling different kinds of Google sitemaps on a Plone website. Such sitemaps help Google to identify site URLs and the data under each site section. With Google Sitemaps enabled, search engines could track the URLs faster and more efficiently, optimizing their search by placing all the information on one page.

Helpful links

Plone Google Sitemaps home page and documentation area
Post feedback about this product in TalkQuintagroup Plone Forums Plone Google Sitemap area
More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: Plone Theme Customization - Flow Skin

olha — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:35:10 -0500

The following screencast covers main topics of Quintagroup Plone Themes basic customization: replacement of Plone Skin default logo, site actions, top area text as well as replacement of home page and inner sections images for rotation. Watch this video to learn about flexibility of Plone Themes that Quintagroup offers to the community on the example of Flow Plone Theme.

Quintagroup offers Plone Theme Customization service which is a simple way to personalize your theme to the way you really need. This is a right choice if you want to add some fine-tuning changes for the theme and can not achieve the necessary result by yourself. You can order Plone Theme Customization service together with any of our Premium Themes.

More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: Plone SEO

olha — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:22:32 -0500

The following screencast covers such topics as Plone Search Engine Optimizer product installation on buildout-based instance for Plone 3.2 or above; Plone SEO configuration and management issues.

Helpful links

Plone SEO home page and documentation area
More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: Plone Comments Use Cases

olha — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:40:12 -0500

This video tutorial is a second part of a screencast about Plone Comments product.

Helpful links

Plone Comments home page and documentation area
Plone Captchas home page
More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: Plone Comments

olha — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:39:19 -0500

The following video tutorial covers such topics as Plone Comments product installation on buildout-based instance for Plone 3.2 or above; Plone Comments management and setup. It also includes one of the possible use cases of using Plone Comments Plone add-on.

Helpful links

More information about Plone Comments product:

More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Screencast: How to Install Estate Lite Free Plone Theme

olha — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:36:39 -0500

This video tutorial covers installation of free Estate Lite Plone Theme from Quintagroup (distributed in a .tgz and .egg file) on traditional (non-buildout-based) Zope instance for Plone 3 in Linux.

You can find written instructions on Plone Skins Installation in How to Install Free Plone Themes on Plone 3 article.

More screencasts from Quintagroup can be found in the Screencasts section.

Quintagroup Screencast Channel on YouTube

olha — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:54:49 -0500

This is a place where you can find Quintagroup's Channel. Today we are presenting the first screencast in our channel - How to purchase Plone Theme from Quintagroup. This video tutorial describes the way you can buy Plone Themes developed by Quintagroup from http://skins.quintagroup.com website.

See more Screencasts from Quintagroup in the Screencasts section.

Quintagroup's new office

olha — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:14:17 -0500

It is time to separate! Part of our team - our dear developers team - moves from our good old office into a brand new one! The repairs completed, new furniture is in, everything clean and light - so we move in! We used to be all together at 3 adjacent rooms for more than 3 years. Now that the company grows, and there are more and more of us, our old office became toocramped and too noisy...

So, our brand-new office room. It is located in the same building as the old one, but one stage higher. We're separated now but still close enough. :) Space, glorious space! Big and light room with 10 working places and a cozy kitchen-restroom.

You might have see our new office room, as we celebrated World Plone Day 2009 there. But then, 1 month from now it lacked furniture and green plants; now it is all packed. Everything on its place and everybody at their working desks.

So, thanks to everyone who worked hard so that now we can arrive everyday to this pleasant place!

Portlet Cumulus for Plone

olha — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:01:14 -0500

Cumulus Portlet (quintagroup.portlet.cumulus) from Quintagroup allows you to add tag cloud portlets to display your site's tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but it is more visually exciting. This is the WordPress WP-Cumulus plugin ported to Plone as a portlet.

When you add this portlet anywhere in the site it will display all site's tags. You are free to set cumulus portlet options so that it fits your site design, color scheme etc. Among portlet options you can find:

Width and height of the flash tag cloud portlet
Smallest and largest tag size
You can set main and optionally second color of the tags for creating multi-colored tag cloud; optional highlight color when mouse is over it and background portlet color
Possibility to enable transparent or compatibility mode
Rotation speed. Remember that clicking the tags might turn to be a little hard, depending on your speed setting :).

P.S. Click on the image on the right to be taken to the page with portlet cumulus demo.

Portlet Cumulus is now on PyPi. Give it a go!