

Show HN: BugCam: Add Video to Your Bug Reports - yarone
http://www.getbugcam.com
Today I'm launching my project BugCam. It all started four years ago when I sent an email to the folks at Fog Creek Software, asking them to add a video capture tool, just like their screenshot tool, into FogBugz.<p>Their response: that sounds awesome, why don't <i>you</i> build it!<p>Well, here we are.  We've been in private beta for 3 months, have some happy users, and we're ready to release BugCam to the world today!<p>BugCam makes it easy to create bug videos and share them via your favorite bug tracking tool (at this point, Bugzilla, FogBugz, Gemini, JIRA, Redmine, Mantis, and Trac. Additional integrations are on the way).<p>While not a completely new idea, we'd like to help in popularizing the the concept of using "bug videos" to enable testers and developers to save time and communicate more efficiently.<p>We hope you like it!  Would love to hear your feedback and comments here.  Windows only for now.<p>P.S. - I know Windows apps (and desktop apps in general) are quite out-of-style, but we felt it was the only way to deliver the user experience that we wanted.
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pakeha
I used to attach video to bug reports occasionally. All the developers on my
team hated it. They forced me to stop.

They found it slower than scanning through text and didn't like the lack of
copy + paste ability. Also I think they liked the ability to read the tickets
directly from email, on mobile, etc.

That may have been specific to the type of work we were doing. I'm interested
to know if you tested the video-based bug tracking concept with development
teams using existing (more cumbersome) tools, before building a targeted
solution.

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rexreed
I was loving this until I saw the pricing and noticed that it's priced on
number of bug video creators. Boo. I was hoping that this would be used by our
customers (for customer support) so that they can report an error simply in
video without having to write it out.

When the folks from TimZon, then Snap-a-Bug, and now SnapEngage had a browser-
based video for snapping bugs, I was thrilled, but they exited that space and
pivoted. I'm still looking for something that our customers can use to report
bugs more intuitively with video. Any ideas? I don't think BugCam fits the
bill given the need to download and the per-creator pricing.

~~~
yarone
Hi there. Yes, given that it's a Windows app, it's not designed (at this
point) for _end users_ to submit bugs, but instead for professional testers,
developers, and product managers

You may want to check out ScreenR for Business: <http://business.screenr.com/>

I think it's exactly what you're looking for.

The good folks at Balsamiq are using it. See here:
<http://support.balsamiq.com/>

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InclinedPlane
Searchable. Indexable. Easily migrated across technology stacks. Compressable.
Light-weight. Machine readable. All things that video is not.

This is not the future of bug reporting.

~~~
yarone
Hmm... maybe not _the future_ but useful part of the process? Like
screenshots, only at 10fps and with audio!?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Sure, quite useful.

Let's say a tester has some fairly complicated steps to repro a particularly
nasty bug. So complex that writing down the steps correctly would take perhaps
a half an hour. So they use the super useful feature of their bug report
system to make a video of the repro steps. Shortly thereafter the bug is
handed off to a dev. who quickly fixes it.

Meanwhile, the tester spent that extra 30 minutes being productive, finding
bugs they wouldn't have had time to before and increasing the quality of the
product overall.

Then 3 months later a checkin causes the bug to regress. And a different
tester in a different team files a different bug report. Since the repro steps
aren't searchable (being in video form) it's not easy to determine that this
bug is a duplicate of the older bug, or that it's even a regression at all
instead of a newly discovered bug. The bug then gets handed off to a different
dev. who fixes it. Now you've saved 30 minutes of time for one tester but
you've taken away who knows how many hours of tester time, triage (or release
or management) team time, and developer time.

Repeat ad infinitum.

Video repros are useful, and they save effort, but perhaps they come at a cost
that shouldn't be ignored.

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judofyr
What does this add over <http://screenr.com/> (which works 100% in the browser
on all platforms)?

~~~
yarone
The key difference is that BugCam integrates directly with leading bug
tracking tools. So in a couple of clicks, you can record a bug video, and
create a new case/issue that includes the video.

We opted to create a native desktop app (Windows only, for now), because we
had more control over the user experience. For example, our "window picker" UI
lets you mouse over the windows on your desktop to highlight the one that you
want to record. Hard to do with a JAVA-based app that doesn't have access to
the Win32 API.

We hope that folks will install BugCam and let it hang out in the system tray
to be used (for free), every so often. Again, native Windows app best for
this, we think.

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jen_h
I think this is awesome, especially for those "Hey, watch this cool thing I
broke" kind of bugs. And for all of those bugs that live in Mr./Ms. CLOSED-
CANNOT-REPRODUCE's component. :)

I still think clearly-written steps to reproduce win all because it's still so
much faster for most Developers & QA folks to process and understand.

But for that phenomenal bug that you want to show off, BugCam would be killer.

(Disclaimer: In my eight years as a tester, I've added video to a bug exactly
once: for a wickedly reproducible kernel panic that did the craziest colorful
blinking ascii light show full of ☺s, ♦s, and ♣s. Man, that was lovely - wish
I still had it around!)

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caillou
Why do you host your screencast on the landing page on Vimeo?

It feels kind of wrong that a company that integrates video into web bug
trackers needs to host their own video on a 3rd party video hoster.

~~~
yarone
Just because it was easier! Our servers are setup for hosting bug videos, not
Adobe Premiere-edited product videos.

Sure, we could have copied the product video onto our servers, rejiggered our
video player to play it, etc., but it's not worth it, IMO. I (the product
guy), didn't want to waste any dev time whatsoever on our home page video.

(P.S. - what happened to all the web-based video editing tools!? Remember
JayCut? Anyone else like them around and available)

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teyc
Nicely done. I was looking at screencasting software and I saw a competitor of
yours doing this too - recording problems for user support. Theirs used java,
so there's nothing to download. I thought I saw some code floating around for
Flash that did the same thing.

Incidentally, over at StartupGuild, I was lamenting on how much yakshaving it
takes between writing the code and actually having a functioning SAAS. How
much time did you have to spend on generic tasks like payments, membership,
access control?

~~~
yarone
Thanks! Yes, it can be done with JAVA, but we weren't happy with the required
UI compromises of a non-native app.

I was _sure_ we would be able to do this with Flash or Silverlight, but A) of
course I had reservations about both platforms and B) it turned out that it
wasn't so easy to do.

RE: time spent. Payments by Spreedly, which was a snap. Membership / access
control came easily given our experience with previous products.

The real time killer was the installation process and testing the app across
WinXP, Vista, Win 7, 32 bit, 64 bit, etc. Sometimes I wonder if we're the only
folks around doing Windows desktop apps!

We used Microsoft's ClickOnce for the installation. The app silently auto-
updates itself. You can click "About" to see what version you're running.
It'll install the latest version if one exists. Getting this all to work right
was a ton of work, but we wanted a really clean and simple install experience,
and I think we achieved it. We had to deal with registration-free COM, created
a bootstrapper that downloaded .NET Framework 3.5 if you're running Windows XP
and happen not to have it, etc.

~~~
teyc
I'm doing SL work at the moment. I didn't think Silverlight would be capable
of desktop capture, unless you run out of browser(?).

What's on your server stack?

ClickOnce is nice. I use join.me and its clickonce onboarding experience is
impeccable.

Since you are targetting internal users .NET 3.5 isn't going to be an issue
with your customers.

ps. I saw your project list. Wow. You are prolific.

~~~
yarone
Thanks! Prolific!? I dunno... :-)

Actually we're targeting .NET 3.0, but, see, Win XP has no installer for 3.5
(apparently) and so we have to check if users have .NET 3.0 and if they don't,
then prompt them to install 3.5. _sigh_ Next app will be 100% web based, I
think!

Server is Windows and IIS. Pretty standard stuff.

I've never heard of Join.me but I will check it out. "impeccable" is usually
not used to describe onboarding of Windows apps! P.S. I'm a super-happy long-
time LogMeIn user (hundreds of machines at one point using it).

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spking
I love this. But when I click "Pricing" in the footer, I get a (cute) 404
page.

~~~
yarone
Oops! Looking at this now!

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yarone
Ahh, Pricing page loads if you're signed in. Up until today, this page was
only visible to signed-in beta users (and not the public). Testing a fix on
staging NOW.

~~~
yarone
OK, Fixed!

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rmoriz
I would prefer a multi-os, non-intrusive solution like
<http://business.screenr.com/> except for it's price for small startups which
is enterprisey

~~~
yarone
Please see the above comment I made in reply to the same question. Would you
mind elaborating: when you say non-intrusive, what do you mean?

~~~
maratd
I'm sure he means installing a native client on the OS. Using a tool like this
internally is fine, but really, something like this shines in the hands of the
end-user.

A developer can more than adequately explain what the bug is and where it is
in a few sentences. A user, on the other hand, will simply say "this doesn't
work" which is unbelievably unhelpful. Having the user submit a video of the
problem would solve that problem splendidly.

However, I don't want to make my users install a program on their system and
frankly, they're not going to want to either. A non-intrusive solution would
be great.

~~~
yarone
Ahh, yes, I agree, WRT _end users_ submitting bugs. Requiring a download +
install (even though we do it as cleanly and simply as possible, I think) is
probably a non-starter. Our initial focus is professional testers and
developers.

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jonny_eh
Very cool. Small suggestion: Make the cursor turn into a hand
(button:hover{cursor:pointer;}) when hovering over the buttons on the pricing
page.

~~~
yarone
Oops! This is related to the Pricing page issue we had this morning. The
buttons aren't enabled for non-logged-in users. Working on a fix now, thanks!

~~~
yarone
OK, fixed. Thanks again!

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swatthatfly
Why is there a 1 minute limit for the video? I tried it and it just stopped
recording after 1 minute.

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henrytejera
BugCam is the perfect tool for software developers as well as testers. Truly
awesome!

Oscar Henry

~~~
yarone
Thanks Henry!

(P.S. - Henry is an early beta tester, provided lots of great feedback that
was incorporated into the product).

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ctseng
Wow... this is really cool. I like how it integrates with bug trackers.

~~~
yarone
Thanks Charles. Tell Greg to use it over at Zumbox! :-)

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MortenK
www.jingproject.com can also be used for this purpose. You'll capture a
screenshot or video, click on a button and get a url back.

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lsemel
setup.exe? That's not going to run on my Mac!

~~~
yarone
Sorry, Windows only at this point.

~~~
Timothee
You should then put a user-agent test so that you start the download only on
Windows computers. I have no use for a .exe either.

~~~
yarone
Good suggestion, thanks! Added it to the list:
[http://getsatisfaction.com/bugcam/topics/check_that_user_is_...](http://getsatisfaction.com/bugcam/topics/check_that_user_is_running_windows_before_starting_download)

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HarveyKandola
Nicely done!

