[EuroPython] recording Europython

[Christian Scholz]

Hi!

Lennart Regebro wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 1:15 AM, Laura Creighton <lac at openend.se> wrote:
>>  For 2008, Now's the earlier when you should be saying something.
> 
> I've been to 2½ conference now (currently at PyCon) and and both the
> two first ones, EuropPython 2007 and PloneConf 2007, some talks (all
> att PloneConf) was recorded and supposed to be put up "later". That
> "later" never happened.

Well, that's not completely true. First of all the recording at 
EuroPython 2007 was my own decision to do and thus completely 
voluntarily and there even appeared most of the talks I recorded at
http://comlounge.tv

With Plone Conference some talks also appeared on http://plone.tv and 
those which I recorded on http://ustream.tv

The problem is clear though: Doing video recordings with good post 
production (adding titles, maybe slides) is great to have but also a lot 
of work. If you record on tape you usually have to do:

- get the footage off the tape (this is realtime, 1 hr talk = 1 hr wait 
for capturing)
- edit the video (depending on what you have to add, simple process with 
intro/outro is maybe 10 mins, adding slides might be 1-2 hours per talk)
- render the video (depends on hardware and settings, might also take 1 
hr or even more)

In the case of capturing and rendering those computers used for it are 
usually taken by this so you cannot really do much in parallel unless 
you have lots of computers.

All of this is probably the reason why video productions rarely work 
good that way unless you throw a lot of money at it.

What I learned from previous conferences was that a somewhat different 
workflow might work better in which you do as much as you can on 
location, including publishing it. This can work as follows:

- put a camera with tripod in every room you want to capture
- attach it to a laptop/computer
- stream it live via http://ustream.tv or similar services.
- record it on the service
- copy the embed code over to some blog or wiki or website.

That's all. Downside: You need a good enough connection to stream to 
that service, quality is not 100% great but usually sufficient. The good 
side: Setup is very easy, no editing is needed and it's directly online. 
Of course the other good thing is that people can watch it live and 
eventually ask questions via the chat which could be relayed be the 
video person to the speaker.

An alternative would be not to stream it live but to directly capture it 
via e.g. Quicktime Pro (but I am not sure if this can encode directly).
You only would need to upload it then and you need enough HD space.

So what's usually needed for one of these setups is some people 
controlling it (it would be good to at least have 2 people per room so 
that 1 person is not bound to one room the whole time), one camera, one 
laptop, one tripod.

Additionally to have better recording quality other things would be good 
such as

- a wireless microphone or some connection to an existing microphone to 
get better sound (that's problem number one usually, getting not the 
typing around you but the speaker's voice on tape)
- good lighting. The speaker should always be in good light and we 
should notice light from windows in front earlier (like it was at 
Simon's keynote last year, was hard to film).

This should be some working setup. I myself can provide 2 cameras and 1 
tripod. I would prefer the streaming solution as this can provide more 
participation from the outside (streaming to Second Life would be nice 
aswell but then you need a Quicktime Streaming Server which are not that 
easy to get and are expensive. Flash streaming on the net is free these 
days and getting better and better).

ustream.tv also allows you to download the recordings, convert/edit them 
and upload them somewhere else. It also hosts your recordings if you 
wish to do so. In general I'd go for http://blip.tv if you want to host 
videos, thus no sponsor should be needed for hosting videos.

> I suspect that after the conference everybody is too tired to actually
> do anything. I think that if somebody wants to do this stuff, they
> should be dedicated to do that, and the setup should be such that
> publishing it is a matter of pushing a button, more or less. Otherwise
> it won't happen, and may be just a waste of energy.

Well, I think if some volunteers even just record a few talks and put 
even fewer of them online, that's still ok as long as people do not 
expect everything to happen. If they do, they should think about helping 
  by e.g. controlling cameras, providing something etc.

cheers,

Christian




-- 
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