Re: [Debconf-video] Help: last review for videoteam text which goes to DC10 report
2011/3/14 Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org>:
>
> thank you to for your work on this, IMHO the text is much more readable now!
Great!
> Just some tiny remarks... (and please mind I'm not an English native speaker
> neither ;)
Thank you! I've incorporated your remarks to Nattie's revision.
Tiago is considering the text below for the final report. There is
still some time for suggestions.
Cheers,
Tassia.
---
Title: The DebConf Video Team
Authors: Holger Levsen
Marco Túlio Gontijo e Silva
Natalie Mayer-Hutchings
Tássia Camões Araújo
DebConf is one of the most productive times for Debian development
throughout the year. Even though the majority of code is not necessarily
written during those days, many team meetings take place and it is a great
opportunity for people to share ideas and plan what to do after the end of
the conference. So much is discussed and achieved during Debconf that
those who want to take part in Debian but are unable to attend may feel
like they are missing out.
Thanks to the video team, DebConf is not limited to those who are able to
be away from home and work for one or two weeks. Two talk rooms were
broadcast to the entire world during all of DebConf10, and the footage was
archived for future access. During the talks, those who wanted to take
part in a discussion, ask questions or give feedback could use the IRC
channels for each talk room and someone at the venue would act as a
communication relay.
Countless ideas have been proposed during Debconf talks and BOFs,
discussed by the audience (both at the venue and remotely) and worked on
afterwards. For example, Joey Hess' Constantly Usable Testing proposal
would have had less impact if it had not been properly introduced
to other developers. Furthermore, the talk was archived, enabling
prospective contributors to access it in the future.
Setup
The video setup consists largely of software components rather than expensive
proprietary video hardware. Not surprisingly, all the software used by the
video team is free software, so it is possible to make use of the team's
expertise without great expense.
Typically, there are cameras pointing to the speaker and audience,
microphones to get audio from the speaker, audience and ambiance, as well
as a slide capturing device. The video is grabbed via firewire and
transfered to the central mixer through an ethernet link. Using
the DVswitch mixer, the director in charge mixes the video in real time,
switching between different video and audio inputs, and is even able to do
picture-in-picture displays. From the mixer machine, there is an uplink
to the encoding server which then broadcasts to a worldwide network of
streaming servers. The resulting mixed stream is saved for later archival
encodings, along with redundant DV tape recordings from the main cameras.
Numbers
The DebConf videoteam has existed since DebConf5. Its tools and workflows have
been used at numerous free software conferences, such as FOSDEM, LCA2011, PyCon
and various other events.
The Debconf10 video team consisted of the 42 members (plus 4 honorary
members) listed at http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Videoteam/Help.
This collective work resulted in the production of 76 videos during the
conference, making up 45 GB of processed data (out of roughly a terabyte
unprocessed). All 455 recorded videos from past Debconfs (starting from
Debconf5) are available for download at http://video.debian.net.
All in all, people have been grateful for the video team's efforts, as
shown at http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/Videoteam/Thanks. Thanks
to those who put their appreciation in words there - much appreciated! :)
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