On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 11:04 AM Brian Exelbierd <bex(a)pobox.com> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 8, 2017, at 01:31 PM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 5:36 AM Brian Exelbierd <bex(a)pobox.com> wrote:
On Mon, Aug 7, 2017, at 05:35 PM, Justin W. Flory wrote:
>
> > It might be worthwhile to record some of the talk sessions on an ad-hoc
> > basis with the equipment you're bringing Justin, but I don't think we
> > should work to create high quality studios for each room at all times.
> >
>
> I'm not suggesting we create a professional recording studio in each
> room, but it would be nice to have something better than a 360p webcam
> and a mic that only picks up sound from the people a few feet around the
> recording laptop. Even having an external microphone for whatever
> recording device is used for a session would be incredibly valuable if
> it meant more reliable sound.
This is the proposed webcam:
https://www.staplesadvantage.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StplShowItem?c...
I believe that we are planning a line in from the sound system in all
rooms. I suspect, though Stephen would need to confirm that we could
put a micrphone in the middle of the group and use it for workgroup
recordings too, while possibly turning off the big speakers.
OK, so here's the situation: first, we do plan to have 720p webcams, so it
won't be quite as bad as you think. The video quality on those cameras are
actually pretty good.
As for the sound, it slightly depends on the room. Each room will have
speakers and a four-line mixer, so if we don't want to use the speakers
concurrently, we can simply mute them.
Only the big hall has a wireless headset microphone at this time, each of
the other four rooms will have a fixed microphone on the podium (though it
may be possible to move this around to a work-table; I will check with the
A/V folks. These microphones are hooked into the mixers which in turn have
an adapter for mic-in on the recording laptops. We will probably need to
have a brief training session for the recording volunteers prior to the
start of sessions. Brian: I'd recommend we actually throw a thirty-minute
block into the schedule prior to the formal start of the event. Addendum:
we need to get a volunteer page up as soon as the formal schedule is
available and we need people to *commit* to it. I'd actually go so far as
to say we should post a primary and an alternate for each room we want
recorded, so if someone oversleeps or falls ill, we aren't scrambling.
Regarding the laptops, I want to make sure those and the cameras we buy
are on-site at least the evening beforehand so we can do some preliminary
test setup with them. We should bring some sort of external audio source we
can use to verify that audio input via the mic-in is working as well. So
any audio device with a mini-jack output should suffice for this.
Would you having access to them beforehand help? I can have one or all of
them shipped directly to you.
Yes, but I don't think I'll be able to bring them as I'm coming to
Flock
directly off a family vacation (and I don't want to be lugging Flock
equipment around where my kids might grab them).
I think we'll probably be okay with just the night before; the cameras we
plan to order are on the known-working list. It will hopefully just be a
quick plug-in and confirm that it records successfully.
I played around a little with Cheese today and it *should* work, but we're
going to need a goodly amount of available hard drive space on these
machines. To be absolutely certain we have enough space, we're going to
need about 2GiB of disk per hour of recording. (Realistically, it's
probably a little closer to 1.5GiB per hour, but I'd rather have the
leeway).
So, the laptops need to have about 72GiB of free space available to
accommodate our needs. (9 hours a day, four days at 2GiB per hour).
Yes, I know that some rooms may not be recording all the time, but I'd
rather have too much space than too little, especially if someone forgets
to shut the recording off at any point.
Next important question: what recording software should we use that is
known to work well on Fedora? I'm not an expert on this, so I'm soliciting
recommendations. It must be capable of capturing video and audio
simultaneously, because I don't think we have the human resources to remix
separate recordings after the fact. My assumption is that we will default
to using "Cheese" unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise.
Note: the cameras, microphones, speakers and mixers are available ONLY in
the big hall on the last day, due to budget constraints. If you need to
record a session in one of those rooms on Friday morning, it will by
necessity be with your own equipment.
> I think this is something that could be done from now until Flock, if
> not from any available AV equipment at Red Hat, then by community
> members willing to share hardware for the week. :)
My concern is that getting random hardware assembled into a functioning
system and ensuring that it goes back where it is supposed to could be a
huge jigsaw puzzle.
I make absolutely no promises to be able to support any recording
equipment outside of what we are planning for (which I also make no
promises for, but at least will be able to test out in advance). Justin, if
you and yours want to join me the day before in doing test setup of the
recording laptops, we *might* be able to work something out.
Jen/Jenni: Let's set something up and get it on the calendar for the
evening of Monday the 28th (at least an hour, possibly as much as two if
things go awry). We will need all of the loaner laptops and the purchased
webcams in front of us.
I don't know if we have a room that night or not. I'll have to check.
We need someone to take ownership of wrangling video volunteers.
We don't need a formal room for this; Making sure this works can be done in
a hotel room. We just need the equipment.