On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 5:36 AM Brian Exelbierd <
bex@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?catalogId=4&item_id=52544131&langId=-1¤tSKUNbr=325808&storeId=10101&itemType=1&addWE1ToCart=true&documentID=9414ef5595443425e76f523ee687a6aafec44b2b
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.
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.