Here is a message from Ciarán, who did the PyCon UK audio recordings. Who would like to join him doing those for EP2009?
John -- ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ciaran Mooney <[email protected]> Date: 2008/12/19 Subject: Re: [Europython-improve] Permission to Record/Publish Recordings of Talks To: John Pinner <[email protected]> Hi, I'm glad this is being discussed so early on! Hopefully get a decent audio team together before the conference, which would be great! I'll inform people of my experiences of recording audio at PyCon UK and UKUGG in the past. Getting audio isn't usually much of a problem, we have the equipment and the capabilities to make digital recordings that are directly ready for editing. Most problems arise when the room is small and the speaker forgets to wear the mic, or refuses to wear the mic because amplification is pointless (Which is true at times). Speakers usually understand once the recording situation is explained, and amplification turned down a bit. Of course there are other issues with batteries wearing out, or equipment just refusing to work, but those just have to be dealt with as and when. Once we have the recordings the next issue is editing, so far all I have ever done is make sure the audio has been good enough to listen too, and compressed to a half-decent size. No intro's or outro's have been done, because this would complicate matters. This still takes me time, and always about 6 months to actually finish. Usually in time for the next conference. I hope again this year to have all that I have sitting on my hard drive available, and maybe an announcement could encourage people to "Catch-Up-on-Demand" by downloading the talks before they attend? Getting the audio recordings is relatively simple, but as people have been discussing addition information makes it much more useful. Making the audio more useful by adding slides or by doing video recordings is a fine idea, but difficult or time consuming to implement. So far Slide Share (http://www.slideshare.net/) has been the best idea that I've seen. Where a plain audio file is combined directly with slides. The only issue here is that you need someone who knows when the slide transitions were, or you have to make a good guess by listening to the talk. (Of course that all depends on having the slides in the first place!). Video recordings do have the benefit of capturing the talk in it's entirety but as it has been pointed out being able to read the slides in a video is difficult. I've seen solutions where the video has been used to record when slide transitions happen (this can be done with a laptop webcam), and this has been used to produce something like Slide Share with a box in the corner with the original video recording of the speaker. Personally I can't be bothered with video because I'm still treading water with the audio. But If someone else wants to do it, I'll give them any help I can. Slide transcripts would be great! If someone sat down and did them, and it isn't going to be me! If we get permission to record and publish a talk under a CC-derivative license I see no problem in encouraging the wider community to make the transcripts for us. Or ask the Ubuntu-UK guys because they set up a community transcription group (https://launchpad.net/~transcribers), that transcribe the Ubuntu-UK podcasts. Last time I listened to the podcast (a while ago), they mentioned they needed more stuff to transcribe! Most issues I find with audio arise from the fact that theres only a few of us doing it (and I'm the only one doing the editing post-conference). If we are talking about it now, are there any volunteers to actually help the "Audio Team". The duties would include: * Showing sessions chairs the equipment, and reminding them to ask the speaker to wear the mic and explaining why. (This is the most likely cause of not getting a recording) * Getting recordings from rooms at appropriate intervals (ie lunch, breaks etc). * Checking things are getting turned off and on at lunch (wireless mics etc, this preserves batteries), and replacing batteries. * Post-conference minimal audio editing that can be done easily with Audacity, and uploading them. Having a basic understanding of audio equipment would be useful, but not required as its fairly simple to get to grips with, plus the PA guys are usually happy to give a bit of instruction. Email the list to make it known you would like to be more hands-on. Ciarán _______________________________________________ Europython-improve mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython-improve
