On 3/27/07, Dave Donovan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If I understand correctly, there are 3 barriers to making this
happen
consistently for each meeting:
1) Equipment: wireless body mics, maybe a small mixer or
multichannel
recorder. Remember that these presentations are often interactive
and to
make it useful, it helps to record the audience questions and
input. I
video taped one, but the lighting and acoustics in the large
council chamber
made the tape pretty useless. Besides, video of a presenter
pointing out of
frame wasn't very meaningful.
I've been doing this now for the Toronto Perl Mongers for about 3
years now.
(even though I haven't gotten around to publishing some recordings
for almost a year.)
I've tried a few setups, and I'm sure our acoustic environment is
different,
but, here are my experiences....
I started with a cheap < $10 plastic lapel mic from Future Shop
(something
they sold for people who were trying VoIP/gaming style stuff from
their PCs).
I plugged that into my laptop. Oh... with 25 feet of extra wire in
between, and
I use Audacity to record it. I've found that the lapel mic I have is
good enough
to also pick up the audience questions (in our room), and with a
little bit of
post-processing, I can bump the audience up to intellegible levels.
2) Someone to show up consistently with the equipment, set it up,
make the
recording and pack up the equipment at the end of the night. The
trouble is
there there aren't too many people who make it to _every_ meeting
and so
getting the equipment to show up every time can take some planning.
Yup. This is the biggest problem. So I've only missed 1 meeting in
the past 3 years. :-(
Well, OK 2 meetings. And at that time, a friend with a FLASH based
audio
recorder, recorded the meeting for me. (But he lugged in a mixer,
the recorder,
2 mics, balanced cables, etc.)
I tried a cheap FM wireless setup, but in downtown Toronto
(Young/Bloor),
It didn't work well enough. It only had a usable range of < 10 feet
(even though
out in the country I could get 30+ feet. And I wasn't going to go
out
an buy a 'real'
wireless setup, so I stayed with the cheap lapel mic.
I wanted to (and still do) have another mic for audience questions,
but 99%
of all laptops only have a mono-mic level input, and I don't want to
carry around extra gear. I've looked for USB and Firewire input
stages,
but they are either too expensive, or line-level only neccessitating
an external
mixer, and then I'm back to having too much gear. And I haven't had
the
time to design/build my own (2 chanel USB mic level input device).
3) Post production. There is a non-trivial amount of work involved
in
getting the slideshow lined up with the audio track, and producing
the
Podcast so that it's fit for general consumption.
This is the biggest issue.
I decided not to try to produce an audio/video podcast.
The slides if provided are available seperately, and you can't
see what might be done on the white-board, but you can read along.
I've only had one person say, they wanted to see an A/V production.
Most people seem to be happy just to have even the audio!
As for audio post-production, thats what takes up most of my time,
and why I haven't released anything lately....
For every meeting, I have to find the time, to listen to the whole
thing
again, trimming the front and the back. Bumping up the levels on the
audience questions. Sometimes taking out un-acceptable content.
Deleting umms, coughs, etc. where I can.
And then I also have intro/exit music with voice-over.
Then there's also the upload to the server, and updating the
web page and RSS feed files (but thats trivial in the big picture).
So post-production of a 1.5 hour meeting is usually another 3 hours
of work.
The last part is where the out-of-towners could pitch in. I
suppose it
could be as simple as this:
Let's say we came up with a good wireless body mic for the
presenter and
some kind of fairly omni mic for the crowd. They're both mono
sources so
one could be piped in to the left channel and the other could be
piped into
the right channel (basic multi-channel, avoids a mixer).
Yup, If you have the multi-channel (mic level) audio input device.
Let me know if you find one.
Using Audacity,
the post-production team could mute and unmute the audience channel
as
needed to allow for audience input and snip out the irrelevant
parts to make
it flow. Mix it back into one channel to prevent our listeners
from getting
nauseous and that's it for Audio. I don't know what the Podcast
team used,
but there is some software to tie the powerpoint presentation into
the audio
and produce a podcast. Presto.
We just need a group of individuals to commit to a component of the
plan and
it can happen. It's been discussed on a few occasions and
different people
have come forward at various times but it is time consuming and it
doesn't
seem to materialize consistently.
That's my understanding of where it's at. If someone wants to take
the
reigns and muster the hardware and people, it can happen.
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