Video recording during DrupalCon
Submitted by ischulz on August 6, 2009 - 18:00
Drupallers, we need your help!
As with every conference we want to record the sessions and make them available to everyone worldwide. Kristof van Tomme has set up a team of 9 people already, but in order to tape also the BoF sessions we still need some additional equipment.
Basically, we need someone with a digital camera (storing on hard disc), either willing to lend it to Kristof's team (they will keep it safe as if it was one of their own) or willing to help film the sessions (conference or BoF sessions). Any mp3 recorders that we can use to do voice recordings on BoF sessions are also very welcome.
Please let us know, by sending an email to me (via this site or else) by August 12th (Wednesday next week).
Thank you!
Video - slide mixing solution (slow)
Hi,
I've found a quite cool video mixing solution, check this out:
http://omnisio.com/home/learn_more
As you can see on the promo videos ... I think this way is not the fastest, but with it we can produce downloadable videos and slides "on the fly", and the community would make the synchronization. So it is not the best but one way to do this.
Best regards,
Peter
Camera + recorder
Hi Isabell,
I can lend our vidcorder (HD + SDHC) and H4 audio recorder (SD) if this can help. Note that for proper sound recording with this type of hardware, a table tripod is usually advised and I don't have one.
Comment / Idea
I'm not sure how your planning to video the sessions, but one thing i've noticed from other Drupalcon's is they tend to video the screen, or the presenter or try to get both - which a lot of the time means you miss critical information.
Sometimes you get great shots of the presenters face when they are pointing to sections of code on the screen / or funny images on screen. Or the reverse, seeing a static screen when the presenter is talking and probably being animated/explaining with their hands. Sometimes the screen is unreadable.
Instead we need 2 captures, one of the screen, via a screen capture program or something that can get between the vga out and the projectors and then the camera person concentrating on just the speaker(s).
Then, merge the two, with a tiny bit of editing to give a picture in picture (with the screen being the main picture). And perhaps even offering both captures for download as well as the edited version.
Just a thought.
The problem with this is that
The problem with this is that you need somebody to by hand edit all the sessions. This takes at least 2 times the recorded session time. Since we will try to put the presentations out still during the conference that is not feasible. However the slides from the presenters should also be available, so you can always follow on the slides in parallel with the video.
from the video team
Here an answer from the video team about this:
"2 streams is not feasible, we want to get this out real time if you want 2 data streams you need at least 2 times the event length for editing"
its a shame, surprised there
its a shame, surprised there isn't an a solution for simple picture in picture mixing / editing in real time. The 2nd feed wouldn't need much / any editing or could be edited in parallel (if it just time based clipping) as it would be the same content. Then offer both streams for download.
But i understand its a bit late to be bringing these things up. Perhaps for the next one.
:edit: just found http://freej.org/?info=features which might be interesting... can stream live !
Real-time video mixing
There are ways to do real-time mixing and encoding, but they're generally not very affordable. Most of the VJ software I've looked at only allows one external input for a camera, so getting your live Powerpoint presentation feed in there as well is tricky. The other option is a hardware video mixer which will accept and convert VGA/DVI signals (they're not cheap) and output the PIP feed into a spare laptop for encoding with Quicktime Broadcaster or Windows Media Producer, but you'd need this setup in each conference room.
Another consideration is that storing presentation slides as a video stream is not the most efficient way to store what is usually 30-40 images spread out over an hour or so. As kvantomme says above, if you have the camera feed and the presentation slides, you can recreate the presentation. It's the kind of thing SMIL was created for, but it doesn't seem to have caught on very well. Does anyone know if there is a player (maybe Flash) that would take a video file, a sequence of slide images and, with the help of say an XML file with timecode cues, replay the presentation? Generating the cue points could be tricky, but if the camera feed of the presenter shows just enough of the screen to see slide changes, it wouldn't be too hard to sync up by eye.
P.S. After a bit of searching, it appears that there are various commercial packages out there that do this, including Adobe Presenter (Windows only and costs $500) so I guess I should rephrase the question - is there a affordable/free, and preferably open-source, solution out there?
not sure if we need to synch
As I said earlier my first priority is getting all videos up, in an as short as possible time. So I would prefer having a solution that doesn't add another bottleneck or technical dependency.
We'll research some side by side slideshow/video solutions and how we could make the synchronizing a collaborative thing...
Hi, I don't have recorders,
Hi,
I don't have recorders, sorry, but a feature request instead : will it be possible to set up a podcast feed instead of downloading each video one after one ?
Looking forward from seeing DrupalCon Paris !
that should be possible
that should be possible