Hi! 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.
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. 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 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) 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. All in all, the whole setup could be operated by a minimum of one operator, 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. 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. 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. All the best, Dave Noble (daven) _______________________________________________ Debconf-video mailing list [email protected] http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-video
