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I need to produce demonstration video screencasts for my iPhone app... I'm referring to those such as this one for the Reddit iPhone app (the one on the right, not the YouTube video).
I'm assuming the best way to do this is to record the simulator using a screen recording utility, does anyone have any other methods? What tools have you used successfully?
For my screencast here, I ran the application in the iPhone Simulator and recorded it all using ScreenFlow. I can't recommend ScreenFlow highly enough, as it really simplifies the whole process. ScreenFlow records your entire screen, but it provides excellent editing capabilities for cropping the video to the relevant 320 x 480 (or 480 x 320) section, as well as fading in and out title graphics or lettering. I also used SimFinger just to provide a good cursor, but I see that the latest release of ScreenFlow now has that capability built-in.
For a microphone, I actually used the USB one from Rock Band. It's a surprisingly good Logitech microphone that's recognized as soon as you plug it into your Mac.
I needed to do a little post-processing of the MP4 output to make sure that the video could be played natively on the iPhone. I've used both VisualHub and iMovie to produce MP4 videos with all the right settings to play on the device. Both have simple iPhone export profiles.
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned QuickTime's built-in screencasting feature.
Here's a little guide on how to make a "decent" screencast on Mac OS without any additional tool.
You will have better results if you use it with SIMBL, which was mentioned by a lot of people. it is not a screencasting application, but a tool to make your iOS screencast look better.
The author of Tweetie recently wrote a post about what he does, and a tool he wrote called SimFinger. Yes, it does record the simulator. If I were producing an iPhone screencast, that's where I would start.
SimFinger and ScreenFlow are great if you can shoot in the simulator.
If you have to shoot on the device (e.g. when accelerometer, GPS, camera, etc. are used) you currently have to resort to the jailbreak world. The app "Display Recorder", available for $5 in the Cydia Store, allows to create an AVI movie of the iPhone's screen content. This works across all apps. There's a YouTube video showing it. The movie files can then be uploaded to YouTube or pulled off the iPhone via the built-in web server.
You can try one of those few integrated solutions out there. I know one's called "capsim" and there's a new one called "sound stage"
Screen capture applications like ScreenFlow and "Snapz Pro X" work fine if you don't need to record mult-touch or accelerometer. However if you do, then you must choose another solution. Either film with a video camera or use iSimulator and then record the simulator using applications like ScreenFlow and "Snapz Pro X". For information how to install iSimulator see http://bobueland.com/cocos2d/?p=358
Another solution (that I haven´t tested yet) is to use screen mirroring. That is if you have iPad2 or iPhone4S. You need to buy Apple Digital AV Adapter (39 $ as of Nov 2011) and then you can mirror the iPad or iPhone screen onto an external screen.
For free Mac OS X screen recording with iPhone ad looking results, you can use use the Screenium demo app to record a flawless 30 second video of your iPhone simulator without limitations or overlays. Once you start making money from your app, the full product is cheap. Encoding to iPhone format provides a good lightweight output. Turn off the mouse for SimFinger. You can view an example video at 3k Top Chinese Characters. Definitely use SimFinger to add that realistic shine, and the iPhone device reflection users expect.
Longer term, I will buy the iSimulate iPhone app to see whether interacting with the iPhone's touch screen instead of the mouse to drive the screencast can give smoother, more realistic results (this also has advantages if you use the accelerometer or multitouch).
The solution I'm going with is SimFinger to provide the "finger" and SnapZ Pro X for recording. I read a great excerpt from an upcoming book on HTML 5 that convinced me that I should take the extra step of transcoding the .mov output from SnapZ Pro to Ogg for viewing in browsers that don't support .mov files. Get the XiphQT Quicktime component (I'd link to it, but I'm currently prevented from posting more than one link -- go to xiph.org), and QuickTime Player 7 will do the transcoding for you - no QuickTime Pro needed!
ScreenFlow looks great, but I already had SnapZ Pro and can't currently justify $99 when I can do it just as well with what I've got plus some free downloads.
I have used this free solution here for iPhone Simulator Capture, which is a SIMBL plugin that works by capturing the screen from the iPhone simulator. It is a bit raw, but good deal for the price.
There are two ways of doing it that I know of, for anyone who wants to create screencasts using tools available for free:
One: you can use CamTwist and Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder to create FLV files. Details here on my blog.
Two: You can use Jing to create swf files.
Here's one of the screencast on my blog.
Please also notice that I'm not displaying the full iPhone screen on my blog, but you can easily do that.
Related
I have a problem getting my audioclips to play on ios devices in webgl. I have seen other games with audio working so i know it is possible. Now after 3 days of trying to fix the issue with no luck i really hope you can help me with the problem. I know a solution where you can add some meta tags and save it as a Webapp on your phone. But that is not the solution i am looking for.
Here is an example of a game where the audio works fine in an ios browser http://temple-run2.com/
I quote:
Note that Unity WebGL content is not currently supported on mobile devices. It may still work, especially on high-end devices, but many current devices are not powerful enough and don’t have enough memory to support Unity WebGL content well.
more info
As so, uncontrolled behavior may (very likely) occur on mobile devices.
I know a solution where you can add some meta tags and save it as a
Webapp on your phone.
What is wrong with just building to iOS nativly?
If you really need 3D content in a webbrowser that's supported on mobile devices, take a look at threejs
I am trying to construct an up to date device matrix for our dev teams that lists the mobile devices that we should target.
This is a question that I see come up over an over again. I appreciate that there is no ideal device matrix as each project will have its own requirements, but I think that it could be easy to say that the most popular devices and OS' such as iPhone 5 and iOS 7 would be included as they are a market leading device and OS combo.
Other devices such as iPhone 3Gs would have fallen off the list because now it is just not a significant device in the market.
Ideally the matrix should include Android and iOS phones and tablets.
In general I am looking for one that captures the majority of the market but excludes those that are not worth testing for.
Are there any resources that present this in an up to date clear consumable format?
For iOS devices, take a look at the iOS Support Matrix.
Well, if you are interested in market shares of Android, then go to the play developer console, create an app and take a look at the statistics. It will show you which versions of android are most used in the category that you set for your app. To get an idea of what phones are most used, take a look at this chart http://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-phones Testing on some of these and some lower end phones should be satisfying.
In case of iOS for graphics performance, test on a iPhone 4. That has retina display but not very good GPU. If that performs well, then it will do well everywhere.
Otherwise, regarding any mobile stuff, test on any device that satisfies the requirements of your application. Test for screen size and performance if that is crucial.
i* resolutions: http://www.iosres.com/
Android resolutions: don't suppose anything, plan for flexibility
Once you are Ok with what you see on your device and in the simulator, then go ahead and start a private beta with TestFlight, Hockey App or any other platform.
In general, everything depends on your app. Whether it has hardware needs or should work on any device, or only with OS versions above some level... The definitive answer depends on your exact requirements. There is no holy grail and you should rather plan the way you'll handle any issues.
I want to do this with my app and device:
Connect VGA, DVI, or HDMI monitor to appropriate 30-pin adapter cable
Connect adapter to iPhone4/iPad2
Mirror iDevice screen content on monitor screen.
This all used to "just work" on iOS 5. There's even proof of it working in a YouTube video of our demo from last year (see http://youtu.be/xjKk1EJ1yAI, to skip to the image jump to 1:40 in the video and hit play). All I did was plug in the iPad and voila there it was...
This now seems to "just not work." Do I have to write a whole bunch of code to make this work with every app I build or is there a setting in the Info.plist file that I should set? Should I build for iOS 5.1 to make it work again, even though the device runs iOS 6+?
I will write the code if I have to, but I'd be a lot happier if it just worked again. The "similar questions" feeature on SO was helpful in letting me know that I'm perhaps out of luck and pointing to some solutions, like Rob Terrell's TVOutManager, but I wasn't able to find an answer to this specific question in that list.
EDIT: I only tried this with an iPhone 4 running iOS 6.0.1 and the VGA adapter. I haven't tried again with an iPad (also with iOS 6.0.1), and the video was using the HDMI adapter. I will try those and update accordingly (but probably not until Monday for those updates).
Is there a way to capture video of a screen from your own application? As far as I see there is no way to do it with UIImagePickerController (cameras only), but maybe there is a way to do it with iOS 4 AV Foundation or Core Video?
There seems to be two ways of capturing the content of the application while it's running:
Use the private API UIGetScreenImage() function which seems to be accepted by Apple now;
Use the following thread's captureView method to capture the image.
You'll have to capture it at many times per second (I guess 24 times should be ok for human eye persistence) then you'll have to produce the movie. Perhaps you could use the ffmpeg iphone port.
Alternatively, if you'd like to capture your application's running for a demo, your best bet would be to run your application on the simulator and use a Mac OS X screencast software to capture it. See also SimFinger which "bundle of little tricks to make a screen capture of the iPhone Simulator suck less".
Finally, perhaps the following StackOverflow thread might help you produce better screencasts.
SimFinger and ScreenFlow are great if you can shoot in the simulator.
If you have to shoot on the device (e.g. when accelerometer, GPS, camera, etc. are used) you currently have to resort to the jailbreak world. The app "Display Recorder", available for $5 in the Cydia Store, allows to create an AVI movie of the iPhone's screen content. This works across all apps. There's a YouTube video showing it. The movie files can then be uploaded to YouTube or pulled off the iPhone via the built-in web server.
I'm trying to find out whether Appcelerator's Titanium is good for iPad app development, or if it can even be used as such?
There seemed to be an announcement in April 2010 of a 'Titanium Tablet' package, although I can find no further mention of this. From the forums (where I've also asked this question, but have yet to receive any responses) it sounds like people are developing iPad apps, but I've yet to receive a definitive answer.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
Toby
Yes, you can use Titanium to develop iPad apps. There are a few iPad only UI elements in the API: here
Yup, Titanium works for iPad apps. Like Dave said above, there are some (two to be exact, as of today) iPad specific API's, other than those you would just use all the other existing APIs and when you create your project in Titanium Developer, you would choose iPad as the project type.
The API documentation (linked to the iPad specific APIs but the list on the left has all available ones for Mobile Dev):
http://developer.appcelerator.com/apidoc/mobile/latest/Titanium.UI.iPad-module
To get an idea of what you can do, take a look at the Kitchen Sink Apps. There are two, one for the iPad, which is basic and really only shows the iPad specific API usage for the most part. The other is for the iPhone which has nearly every available API on display. They are ugly apps but they do the job of showing you what's possible and give some decent reference code. You can find the kitchen sink apps on Git hub (link below) and go here (http://developer.appcelerator.com/doc/kitchensink) to see how to run them in them the simulator (requires xCode which is free from Apple).
Also, you can find some showcased iPad apps built with titanium on the Appcelerator website (link Below), just search the page for the word iPad.
Kitchen Sink Apps : github.com/appcelerator/KitchenSink
Appcelerator Showcase : appcelerator.com/showcase/applications-showcase/
(sorry for the non linked URLs but Github will not let you post more than one link unless you have more than 10 reputation points)
Currently you can build iPod, iPad, Android. BlackBerry is also available if your a paying member.
Source is also on Github if you want to have a look first.
http://github.com/appcelerator/titanium_mobile