Hi, so now it's less than three month til FOSDEM... ;) On Sunday 30 September 2007 05:49, David Noble wrote: > Quite recently, I was watching a few of the videos made at Fosdem 2007 > in the Debian room, and was wondering if we could possibly improve on > the quality of those at the 2008 FOSDEM, both soundwise and picturewise. IME FOSDEM is mostly a challenge because of the ad-hoc setup of the venue and because its filled with interesting events and lots of interesting people, so it's kind a hard to work properly there... > I propose that if there is interest, we could go for a somewhat basic > two camera setup with some sort of VGA grabbing device, alternatively a > three camera setup with one camera pointed at the projector. Alternativly a one camera setup :) Do you/does anyone we know have a vga-grabbing device? > As talkback > is not feasible due to the small size of the room, I propose we stick to > a pre-defined shooting plan, something along these lines: > > Camera 1 (Main camera, will be recording tape backup): > * Predominantly shooting speaker > * Sound from mixing desk is input into this camera > * Connected directly to the switch machine > > Camera 2 (Audience camera): > * Used for audience shots, this avoids messy fast panning, yet gives the > viewer a perspective on the audience reaction > * Feeds via dvsource to the switch machine > > Camera 3 (Slide grabber): > * Some cameras provide an A/V passthrough mode, if we can source a > camera that supports this, it would be useful, as we could run a > composite video feed from a cheaply available VGA to composite > conversion box. > * If it is used in A/V passthrough method, plug into same box as used > for the audience camera to run dvsource /me shakes head and lols :) Besides that we would even need more people to operate the equiqment (and carry it and store it), which was hard enough for one camera last year, we would also need to set it up (very early in the morning) in the small room. And, as the room tends to get crowded, we also need to set it up somewhat securly. Not that it cannot be done, but it aint easy at all. > In terms of computers, this could be handled quite easily by two > computers (I would be able to provide one spare laptop with firewire), > perhaps with a third for on the fly encoding for streaming (more on this > later) I definitly dont want to do streaming for the Debian room. Much rather timely release the videos. FOSDEM, for me, is a european developer meeting and party, more than half the fun is hanging out with friends, chatting over beers, etc. You cannot capture this with streams anyway. And those who cannot make it, miss so much anyway, that providing streams is only a little gain in anyway. Live-streaming is soooo much more stress, than recording. Even with doing a timely release the week after FOSDEM its much less stress than streaming. Plus, we cannot guarantee (i hate the spelling of this word...) proper, usable network anyway... > Sound could be improved on by quite simple and achievable methods, using > a portable four channel mixer; with a cardioid condenser pointed in the > general direction of the speaker, and two gated omnidirectional > microphones pointed at the audience for question / response pickup. I > am able to provide all the audio equipment necessary for this. I'm all for improving the audio quality! At FOSDEM and at other events we capture. IMO its much more valuable then streaming. Are you able to also carry all the equiqment to Brussels and back? > All in all, the whole setup could be operated by a minimum of one operator, One person operating 3 cameras, the dvswitch, various microphones, changing the tapes, checking the recordings (or streams)... ??????? > and could be operated optimally with three operators. Organising people > for this should perhaps also be done a bit better; the optimal number of > volunteers would be nine; allowing a schedule whereby each operator > works one talk, and has the next two slots free. Making a schedule is one thing, keeping it another. As said, FOSDEM provides many interesting opportunities and suddenly people dont show up. So I believe it's best to plan with as little ressource as possible to get a good result. So I'd rather invest in proper audio, then a second or third camera. > Streaming is another issue I would like to briefly touch on: as FOSDEM > is not a particularly long event, a lot of people may not be able to > justify travelling to Brussels, hence live streaming may be a valuable > resource for some people. From what I understand, another computer may > be necessary to handle encoding. We would also have to talk to the > network organisers at Debconf to see if we would be allowed to connect > to an off-site Icecast server. Thats the least of the problems. > I know this is somewhat premature, but I believe that if there is > interest in a multiple camera and possibly streaming setup, we should > act sooner rather than later. If there is interest in such a setup, I am > more than happy to set up a wiki documenting this a bit better, and > closer to the production date organising the people. After I turned this (mostly) down, I'm curious what other people think. So far, nobody else replied - only because FOSDEM is so far away or because this plan is so far out as I think? > All the best, Please dont get me wrong. I fully applaud your enthusiasm! I've just experienced more than FOSDEM that people are enthusiastic in the day or evening, and then have a hangover the next morning you count on them.... regards, Holger
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