7 ms·

Show HN: Record your screen, share and instantly know when people watch

124 points by michaelrlitt 10y ago

scrabble 10y ago
Other than the Chrome icon on the "Get It" button, there's no real indication on the page that this is a Chrome only extension. I like the design though. Looks pretty slick. What's the target use case?
- devongall 10y ago
  One of the makers here, good question. We think there's a number of use cases - customer support (screen cap what they're doing wrong) and sales (personalized sales pitch) being the most obvious for the time being. Also, good point on the Chrome Extension messaging, will fix.
  - arve0 10y ago
    Could teaching be a market?
    - devongall 10y ago
      For sure. I think there's a great opportunity for teaching/training/product walk-throughs. We have a couple customers using the full-fledged Vidyard platform for running training courses, excited to see how this screen recording tech gets adopted by them!
- kuon 10y ago
  I thought about something similar for interface testing, bug report and feedback. Linked with issue tracking tools.
  - scrabble 10y ago
    I think even UI/UX review would be good. Like looking at things that pop up on Show HN and doing a short video covering usability and design of the thing. Seems to me that it would be easier to cover UI/UX in video format than screenshots and pictures. I'm by no means an expert in that area though.
    - eight_ender 10y ago
      During the beta I've been using it for showing off new UI/UX and features in Github pull requests as well as getting support to attach screen caps of software issues to their tickets. Might get QA to start using it to document defects as well. Works great.
stevelow 10y ago
Hi, I'm Steve, one of the developers on the ViewedIt team. If you have any questions about ViewedIt, we're listening and are happy to answer them. ViewedIt recordings are powered by the chrome screen recording apis - https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabCapture https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabCapture for browser tab recording, getUserMedia for screen & webcam, and the MediaRecorder api to record the streams.
- shapov 10y ago
  As a person receiving the screen recording, do I have the option to opt-out, and not report my viewing metrics back to the creator?
  - SamBam 10y ago
    +1. Similarly, as a creator do I have the option of opting out all my viewers of metrics, so that the issue never even comes up for them? If I'm creating a video, I don't want the people I'm sending it to to feel like I'm getting marketing data from them (assuming I'm not).
    - shapov 10y ago
      Yep, I was thinking that it will make the viewers feel like someone is standing over the shoulder watching.
  - dccollie 10y ago
    Hey, I'm also a developer on ViewedIt. As the viewer, you can't opt-out of analytics. The analytics are only identifiable as you (the viewer) if the recorder sends you the video through gmail as ViewedIt will append your email as a query string param to the ViewedIt link. If shared through social media, you'll still send analytics back so that the recorder knows how many views their video got, but you as the viewer won't be identified in those views.
- webwanderings 10y ago
  Is this private or public?
derjur 10y ago
As a sysadmin/IT person, this looks pretty helpful in making user training pretty easy. The user tracking would help with ensuring that our userbase actually watched our policy videos too. Love it.
miko_t 10y ago
This is great! Now I won't have to write paragraphs explaining design decisions to my clients. That single click to gmail is bae.
japhyr 10y ago
This sounds nice: Is ViewedIt really free? Yes! We believe in the power of video creation and storytelling and want to give it to everyone. But how will you support the project as it grows?
- devongall 10y ago
  The product is built by Vidyard, so we make money on the enterprise platform. The use of ViewedIt will always be free. I talked about this a little more here: https://medium.com/@devongall/https-medium-com-devongall-the-future-of-communication-588495c960ec https://medium.com/@devongall/https-medium-com-devongall-the...
eight_ender 10y ago
I was a beta tester for this and it's pretty great for sharing screen caps of UX issues in our software and showing off new features in Github pull requests.
rjv 10y ago
Looks very promising! Are there limitations on the length of recordings?
- devongall 10y ago
  Yes, length is limited to 1 hour unfortunately. Hoping to extend this in the future, but right now for performance reasons we restrict it a bit.
rayalez 10y ago
Looks great! - Can I download the video? - Can I automatically share it on youtube? - Some basic editing functionality would be awesome.
- dccollie 10y ago
  Those are features that we may offer at some point. ViewedIt runs on Vidyard's platform which supports all those features for paying accounts.
artur_makly 10y ago
nice work. it solves our sales outreach hacks
- devongall 10y ago
  Cool! We're working on some other sales productivity tools alongside this - would love to hear what you guys have been doing. I'm devon [at] vidyard [dot] com.
aesthetics1 10y ago
Where are the videos stored? What does a user need to view a video?
- devongall 10y ago
  Videos are stored in S3, and then syndicated to our CDNs around the world. The player is HTML5, with a flash fallback, so users shouldn't need anything special to watch.
dandare 10y ago
hi, this may be exactly what I am looking for if ... I don't want to send the video via email, I want to save it in one of the usual formats to my disc, is this supported? Right now your extension returns "Error 503 Connection timed out", I am sure it will be fine shortly, I just wanted to ask.
- devongall 10y ago
  Hi - sorry to hear you've hit some difficulties! support[at]viewedit[dot]com should definitely be able to help! At this point, download isn't supported. It's something we may do in the future, but for now the hope is that the built in sharing makes download obsolete. Would love to hear areas where DL is important - feedback[at]viewedit[dot]com Thanks!
  - dandare 10y ago
    When you apply to YC they ask for an unlisted YouTube video :)
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    > but for now the hope is that the built in sharing makes download obsolete. Would love to hear areas where DL is important Just in general: Murphy's law. At the worst possible time, the ISP will be down, the wifi adapter will drop its connection, you'll exceed your data plan, or you'll be at the customer's place who's weird about outside machines on their network. "Stuff happens". More options are always better, even if you hope you never have to use them.
- tiagobraw 10y ago
  ffmpeg might be helpful in your use case: ffmpeg.exe ‐f gdigrab ‐i desktop ‐framerate 30 ‐vcodec libx264 ‐preset ultrafast new‐output‐video‐file.mkv
tyleo 10y ago
A tip for Windows users who would like something like this for other applications: If you are on Windows 10 you can press Windows+G to open the game-bar in any application. It supports capturing video content. Edit: This does not bring up a prompt to send the video.
pawanpe 10y ago
Nice tool, thank you! An extension to post on Youtube directly will be great!
- michaelrlitt 10y ago
  Thx for the feedback - consider it on the roadmap!
fishfilet 10y ago
Will there be a way to list existing recordings & delete them ?
- devongall 10y ago
  One day soon we hope to add a library - this is where you'd find features like this!
evo_9 10y ago
From their terms: "you retain all of your ownership rights in your content however you hereby grant Vidyard and its affiliates a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable, license to use, reproduce, perform, distribute, and display such content. Furthermore, you grant Vidyard, its affiliates, and sublicensees the right to use your name and/or user name in connection with the content."
- rosstex 10y ago
  what the shit
- will_hughes 10y ago
  It sounds like a typical case of contract-lawyer boilerplate stuffing where nobody in charge read it or cared enough to change it. Similar to what Facebook, Twitter, etc have done in the past. Still, they need to fix that if their business model really isn't to resell your screen-shared content.
- jd_old_n07 10y ago
  Hey there, Jon here from the Vidyard team. I can assure the group that the intention was never for Vidyard to do anything with user content other than to provide the service. Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. An update to the Terms of Use for ViewedIt will be rolled out shortly.
tapmap 10y ago
All I am getting is a "waiting" page.
DenisM 10y ago
No mention of supported platforms?
userbinator 10y ago
I thought the name was ViewEdit, as for me that seems to be the more likely parse of a product name (verb verb vs. past-verb noun.) Intentional pun?

124 points by michaelrlitt 10y ago

Other than the Chrome icon on the "Get It" button, there's no real indication on the page that this is a Chrome only extension. I like the design though. Looks pretty slick. What's the target use case?

devongall 10y ago
One of the makers here, good question. We think there's a number of use cases - customer support (screen cap what they're doing wrong) and sales (personalized sales pitch) being the most obvious for the time being. Also, good point on the Chrome Extension messaging, will fix.
- arve0 10y ago
  Could teaching be a market?
  - devongall 10y ago
    For sure. I think there's a great opportunity for teaching/training/product walk-throughs. We have a couple customers using the full-fledged Vidyard platform for running training courses, excited to see how this screen recording tech gets adopted by them!
kuon 10y ago
I thought about something similar for interface testing, bug report and feedback. Linked with issue tracking tools.
- scrabble 10y ago
  I think even UI/UX review would be good. Like looking at things that pop up on Show HN and doing a short video covering usability and design of the thing. Seems to me that it would be easier to cover UI/UX in video format than screenshots and pictures. I'm by no means an expert in that area though.
  - eight_ender 10y ago
    During the beta I've been using it for showing off new UI/UX and features in Github pull requests as well as getting support to attach screen caps of software issues to their tickets. Might get QA to start using it to document defects as well. Works great.

stevelow 10y ago

Hi, I'm Steve, one of the developers on the ViewedIt team. If you have any questions about ViewedIt, we're listening and are happy to answer them. ViewedIt recordings are powered by the chrome screen recording apis - https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabCapture https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tabCapture for browser tab recording, getUserMedia for screen & webcam, and the MediaRecorder api to record the streams.

shapov 10y ago
As a person receiving the screen recording, do I have the option to opt-out, and not report my viewing metrics back to the creator?
- SamBam 10y ago
  +1. Similarly, as a creator do I have the option of opting out all my viewers of metrics, so that the issue never even comes up for them? If I'm creating a video, I don't want the people I'm sending it to to feel like I'm getting marketing data from them (assuming I'm not).
  - shapov 10y ago
    Yep, I was thinking that it will make the viewers feel like someone is standing over the shoulder watching.
- dccollie 10y ago
  Hey, I'm also a developer on ViewedIt. As the viewer, you can't opt-out of analytics. The analytics are only identifiable as you (the viewer) if the recorder sends you the video through gmail as ViewedIt will append your email as a query string param to the ViewedIt link. If shared through social media, you'll still send analytics back so that the recorder knows how many views their video got, but you as the viewer won't be identified in those views.
webwanderings 10y ago
Is this private or public?

derjur 10y ago

As a sysadmin/IT person, this looks pretty helpful in making user training pretty easy. The user tracking would help with ensuring that our userbase actually watched our policy videos too. Love it.

miko_t 10y ago

This is great! Now I won't have to write paragraphs explaining design decisions to my clients. That single click to gmail is bae.

japhyr 10y ago

This sounds nice: Is ViewedIt really free? Yes! We believe in the power of video creation and storytelling and want to give it to everyone. But how will you support the project as it grows?

devongall 10y ago
The product is built by Vidyard, so we make money on the enterprise platform. The use of ViewedIt will always be free. I talked about this a little more here: https://medium.com/@devongall/https-medium-com-devongall-the-future-of-communication-588495c960ec https://medium.com/@devongall/https-medium-com-devongall-the...

eight_ender 10y ago

I was a beta tester for this and it's pretty great for sharing screen caps of UX issues in our software and showing off new features in Github pull requests.

rjv 10y ago

Looks very promising! Are there limitations on the length of recordings?

devongall 10y ago
Yes, length is limited to 1 hour unfortunately. Hoping to extend this in the future, but right now for performance reasons we restrict it a bit.

rayalez 10y ago

Looks great! - Can I download the video? - Can I automatically share it on youtube? - Some basic editing functionality would be awesome.

dccollie 10y ago
Those are features that we may offer at some point. ViewedIt runs on Vidyard's platform which supports all those features for paying accounts.

artur_makly 10y ago

nice work. it solves our sales outreach hacks

devongall 10y ago
Cool! We're working on some other sales productivity tools alongside this - would love to hear what you guys have been doing. I'm devon [at] vidyard [dot] com.

aesthetics1 10y ago

Where are the videos stored? What does a user need to view a video?

devongall 10y ago
Videos are stored in S3, and then syndicated to our CDNs around the world. The player is HTML5, with a flash fallback, so users shouldn't need anything special to watch.

dandare 10y ago

hi, this may be exactly what I am looking for if ... I don't want to send the video via email, I want to save it in one of the usual formats to my disc, is this supported? Right now your extension returns "Error 503 Connection timed out", I am sure it will be fine shortly, I just wanted to ask.

devongall 10y ago
Hi - sorry to hear you've hit some difficulties! support[at]viewedit[dot]com should definitely be able to help! At this point, download isn't supported. It's something we may do in the future, but for now the hope is that the built in sharing makes download obsolete. Would love to hear areas where DL is important - feedback[at]viewedit[dot]com Thanks!
- dandare 10y ago
  When you apply to YC they ask for an unlisted YouTube video :)
- khedoros1 10y ago
  > but for now the hope is that the built in sharing makes download obsolete. Would love to hear areas where DL is important Just in general: Murphy's law. At the worst possible time, the ISP will be down, the wifi adapter will drop its connection, you'll exceed your data plan, or you'll be at the customer's place who's weird about outside machines on their network. "Stuff happens". More options are always better, even if you hope you never have to use them.
tiagobraw 10y ago
ffmpeg might be helpful in your use case: ffmpeg.exe ‐f gdigrab ‐i desktop ‐framerate 30 ‐vcodec libx264 ‐preset ultrafast new‐output‐video‐file.mkv

tyleo 10y ago

A tip for Windows users who would like something like this for other applications: If you are on Windows 10 you can press Windows+G to open the game-bar in any application. It supports capturing video content. Edit: This does not bring up a prompt to send the video.

pawanpe 10y ago

Nice tool, thank you! An extension to post on Youtube directly will be great!

michaelrlitt 10y ago
Thx for the feedback - consider it on the roadmap!

fishfilet 10y ago

Will there be a way to list existing recordings & delete them ?

devongall 10y ago
One day soon we hope to add a library - this is where you'd find features like this!

evo_9 10y ago

From their terms: "you retain all of your ownership rights in your content however you hereby grant Vidyard and its affiliates a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable, license to use, reproduce, perform, distribute, and display such content. Furthermore, you grant Vidyard, its affiliates, and sublicensees the right to use your name and/or user name in connection with the content."

rosstex 10y ago
what the shit
will_hughes 10y ago
It sounds like a typical case of contract-lawyer boilerplate stuffing where nobody in charge read it or cared enough to change it. Similar to what Facebook, Twitter, etc have done in the past. Still, they need to fix that if their business model really isn't to resell your screen-shared content.
jd_old_n07 10y ago
Hey there, Jon here from the Vidyard team. I can assure the group that the intention was never for Vidyard to do anything with user content other than to provide the service. Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. An update to the Terms of Use for ViewedIt will be rolled out shortly.

tapmap 10y ago

All I am getting is a "waiting" page.

DenisM 10y ago

No mention of supported platforms?

userbinator 10y ago

I thought the name was ViewEdit, as for me that seems to be the more likely parse of a product name (verb verb vs. past-verb noun.) Intentional pun?