A new application that may be of use to developers when creating ‘how-to’ videos has been released by Thomas Milius. Called MakeMJPEG, the program can be used to create MJPEG movies – a video format that simply consists of a stream of JPEG images that are displayed one after the other. The format isn’t as versatile as other video file types and containers, but it could form part of a handy screen recording process – and the files can be converted to other formats using other tools, such as FFMPEG.
The program works in conjunction with other applications, which will need to implement a protocol of Thomas’ design that uses wimp messages in order to have MakeMJPEG create a recording. In other words, any application to be recorded will either need to make use of the documented protocol (which is why I mentioned that it may be of use to developers, who can update their applications to make that possible), or there would need to be a separate application that could, perhaps, communicate with it to deliver frames to be recorded into the movie – in a similar way that Snapper can be used to take images of the screen, or particular windows, etc.
With the lack of such an application out there, Thomas notes that for most people his new application is quite useless at the moment – but it’s a chicken and egg situation; now that there is an application with a documented protocol for receiving the data to create the files, it’s hopefuily only a matter of time before someone writes a generic application to deliver that data – or other developers add support to their own programs if they feel it may be handy.
MakeMJPEG can be found on the ‘Computer Activities’ section of his website.
