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by cmehdy 2142 days ago
This looks really nice, and I do think it fits an increasing need in a field where typically only major universities or brilliant individuals (putting in a ton of time) on youtube usually find a place.

I have a couple questions for you:

- It looks like one can record a screen or a video and make "static" slides, but do you have plans to have an in-browser annotating tool ? Something where one can annotate the slides along with their recording, and edit/cut/redo parts of that whenever they make a mistake (I'm thinking of videos like eigeinchris[0] where slides are annotated as he speaks - being able to edit mistakes is something youtube just doesn't really offer so far and that would have benefited him)

- What about exports? Can a teacher export a set of static slides from that presentation into a format they can later distribute/share? Can they generate a video from the whole presentation which can also be shared as a file and uploaded elsewhere (vimeo, youtube, etc)?

- And just out of curiosity (and if it's not asking for too much), what's the tech stack you use for testing purposes? I've got experience with that sort of thing and I can imagine a bunch of interesting issues you must be running into!

Lastly: good luck with this product and all the best!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/eigenchris/videos?view=0&sort=d...

2 comments

- We don't have this. But we have been thinking about a more dedicated recording "mode". However, because we're in the browser we have some limits on what you could annotate. Inside of Tella would probably be fine, but outside of Tella would be tricky (e.g. you're recording another window).

- We support exporting to mp4. So you'll get version of the video that you can distribute (beyond just sharing the link to Tella). We don't have plans on a slides-only export though.

- We use ReasonML, Mux (for video), and Roomservice.dev (for the real-time component).

Thanks for the kind words!

Just curious about how you technically do the export to MP4. Can you share any details? Do you play it back in real time and record it, or do you have a way of exporting it quicker than real time?? What technical approach do you use if you don't mind me asking? Thanks!
Quickly summarized we use puppeteer headfull with docker to do a recording of the video. So you’re right, it’s playing it back, not faster than real time. I might write more about the specifics in the future. It’s mostly open source code, you can start here: https://github.com/Ventricule/html2screen
Thanks for the reply. I was wondering if you were using the headfull chrome approach! I for one would definitely love to read some more specifics on this in the future when you have time! (And if there's anything you can open source please do!). I did a quick side project proof of concept of automating recording a webpage with video and other elements a few months ago. It's a shame there's not a way of just using headless chrome but my research let me to the headfull docker approach, so I'm happy to hear I landed on the same approach you did! Did you discover any novel tricks beyond what's been written about/open sourced already? What was the trickiest part for you?
No worries! Html2screen was a very good start, I modified it to support audio recording and got it to a pretty good state in a couple of days. After that the hard thing was just to run it automated on AWS. I used AWS Batch and Step Functions for that. When it’s a bit more stable I’ll definitely write about it and might open source it later. If you want to discuss more, feel free to email me at michiel@tella.tv
+1 for roomservice to add multiplayer to any React app with a few lines of code
Not sure if you were asking about testing purposes specifically. To be honest, we don't have a testing stack yet. I am planning to use https://www.checklyhq.com/ for end to end tests.
Checkly CTO here: We have a cool discount for early startups. Would love to help out there. Also: very cool product!
That's great! I've made an account already a while ago, but didn't have a lot of time to set it up right yet. Would be cool to talk! (michiel@tella.tv)
Hi, do you roll your own visualizations or are you using an off-the-shelf product to measure your own business metrics?

I’ve always been curious how companies like your monitor their business metrics?

Not sure if it was a question for us, but we use Segment and Amplitude mostly for business metrics
How should a startup reach out to learn about the discount?
There is a link on the FAQ on our pricing page https://www.checklyhq.com/pricing or shoot me an email at tim at checklyhq dot com.