Posted by RockSoup on May 23, 2008 at 5:02am
This year's Seattle Drupal camp is shaping up and the presentation line-up is looking great!
I am heading up an effort to record and share the valuable sessions at Drupal Camp. The goal is to get recordings of the sessions and push to get the video online at or shortly following camp.
This is my call for help with publishing video of sessions.
Here is a list of needs:
- Video Equipment - Cameras, Tripods, Tapes, Microphones
- Volunteers to help transcode video and publish to our online host
- Someone to be in charge of video recording on Saturday, I will not be there
I feel like this is a way for me to help contribute back to the community at large by sharing the knowledge from our camp...
Do you feel the same? If so, get in touch and help make sharing the Drupal Video goodness a reality.
Thanks
Comments
fancy mic
I have a fancy mic that can be set to omni for discussions, etc.
http://www.behringer.com/B-2PRO/index.cfm
Can bring a stand, cord and that fun little mount that cradles the mic.
I'll have a 1/8" mini out from XLR as I imagine is necessary.
-josh
stuff
I have an HD video camera, Rode omni directional mic, macbook pro, final cut express 4 and 2 tripods. So if I can be of assistance, please sign me up.
Thanks,
Kirk
stuff
I can bring a sony vx2000, tripod, and external mic.
Usually I encode using matrox, but have been wanting to play with real time encoding in linux.
If I can get that working, then I could encode real time, otherwise I could hand over the tapes (mini dv) or encode when I got back to Olympia - far from real time.
DV Test
I have done some testing and can do realtime capture in linux. I would also have minidv for backup. So far I have just tested capturing in rawDV, but should be able to do realtime encoding via dvgrab. I could also play around with myth to see if it can do dv capture. The advantage there would be simple editing and multiple transcoding to various formats.
For further testing, what are you thinking for final web formats?
I have a tripod or two I can
I have a tripod or two I can bring. I also have a reasonably up to date Macbook Pro so I could probably do some transcoding if someone lets me know what software is involved so I can have everything setup before the show. Unfortunately with possibly two presentations to give Saturday I probably can't run things.
dvgrab + ffmpeg = sweet
After a little playing around in linux, I can encode on the fly from to pretty much any format.
This is pretty sweet, as raw dv capture = approx 11 gig an hour
Normally I capture to tape, log the footage via premier or matrox capture utils, and produce the video in premier.
I have a Matrox 100Xtreme capture card which allows realtime editing of 2 video layers plus multiple graphics layers with realtime alpha / color correction 3d effects etc. It also does realtime conversion. This is all great for production, but you are still talking 1 hour to record + 1 hour to capture + 1 hour to encode.
So 3 hours for a one hour clip with no editing. Looking at the event schedule, we are talking 10 hours which would be 30 hours without any editing.
Using linux and ffmpeg, I can have an encoded video ready for the website as soon as I press stop on the camera.
ntsc mpeg vcd works out to roughly 600 megs an hour.
All I need to know is the preferred target format and I will be ready to go.
I can burn the encoded files to dvd and hand over the tapes to anyone who might have the time to edit them.
Any one have any recommendations? or should I just use my best judgment.
video format
sound awesome!
we will be using blip.tv (a drupal site) to host the videos and embed them on seadug.org. I have created an account for us: http://seadug.blip.tv/
from their FAQ:
You're welcome to upload your video to us in just about any format you like. That said, we prefer compressed Quicktime and Windows Media videos. Please do not upload uncompressed DV or MPEG-2 video.
So, encoding in quicktime is probably the way to go.
-jared
-jared
Thanks for the info
Can we use this account to post some test?
I can get pretty small mpeg1 files. I should be able to get good windows or quicktime too.
I would like to play to see what works the best.
So far I am really impressed. We should be able to upload a talk as soon as it is over.
bliptv creds
send me an email and I will give you the creds to do some testing.
-jared
-jared
Email Sent
I sent you an email, but never received a reply.
I am not running any of the Drupal media plugins currently, but posted a file test here.
http://regx.dgswa.com/html/?q=node/60
It streams fine for me in windows and Linux, so it should post / encode fine to the site.
This format = approx 500 megs an hour.
I sent you an email..
it auto replied something about acknowledging my email and adding me to your whitelist???
could you check your junk folder?
I downloaded the test file... AWESOME!
-jared
wow
That was quick.
All you have to do is reply to the message and it will whitelist you.
Just click reply and send as is. I guess I need to make that more obvious in the message it sends.
Glad you liked the test. If that file size is small enough than I am all set. I will just write a quick perl app to start a recording and auto-name the file with the current date/time.mpg. That way I can start stop after each talk.
I tested the file in Windows, Linux and Mac and all seem to be happy with it.
Thanks
I have posted a bunch of test.
If I encode real time to flv, then blip.tv does not re-encode it, so that gives us complete control of the quality, however we would need to create a flash player / browser if we wanted to distribute the video files on cd or dvd. So far I have not been able to get the xvid encodings to look as good, but will keep playing. Once I have format I am happy with, I will post some specs and the encode string so others can easily duplicate.
UPDATE
Thanks for all the responses!
So, I just want to confirm that you all can/will be bringing the equipment above:
I am assuming you can bring tapes with the cameras, if not please met me know and I will bring extras.
Also, I will not be there on saturday, anyone interested in coordinating the recording of sessions Saturday?
thanks,
-jared
-jared
-jared
-jared
-jared
Confirming - I will bring camera / mic / tripod
Not sure if I need the mic though - the built in zoom mic on the camera should be fine!
I can bring an omni directional mic Sure Beta 57A if it is needed.
About the video, I have been doing lots of testing. I have even been playing around with realtime firewire switching and graphics overlays via ffmpeg and some custom scripts.
For rock solid real time compression I have found the best solution to be piping output from dvgrab to ffmpeg produces the best quality.
ie. dvgrab -format dv1 - | ffmpeg -f dv -i - -target ntsc-svcd -qscale 5 test.mpg
The above is just an example. It is possible to grab from the firewire directly in ffmpeg, but it lacks the buffering found in dvgrab and glitches a bit.
I have been playing a lot with different compression as well. Xvid, Divx etc.
For the event, how long will the talks tend to be and what is a good target file size?
Basically I am just looking for some guidelines as far as finding the best compression to use.
And when posting to the site are there any max-upload or dimension restrictions?
Not trying to be a pain, I just want to be as prepared as possible!
guess'
my guess is that each session might have 45-55 minutes of footage...
I think the file size is not a big deal, but I would try to stay under 750MB for an hour ???
I am not sure about the restrictions on blip.tv
I agree about being prepared- early arrival will be a big part of that too.
thanks for all the effort-
-jared
btw- we have talked about possibly adding a short tutorial to our DUG mtgs and this would be a great way to try out different methods and find the most painless way to get good stuff to share...
-jared
Vid Formats
I wrote a little perl script to do batch encoding / stats.
Staying under 750MB an hour is not a problem at all!
So far I think Xvid produces the best results. If the video server has ffmpeg compled with xvid support then it shouldn't have a problem transcoding it.
I assume the end result on the server will be FLV? Doing realtimeFLV encoding is also possible, but it is harder to test.
With Xvid, I am getting the following results.
qscale is the quality scale 30 = horrible, 1 = prestine
I chose to use qscale for testing because it is not relative to size/bitrate.
320x240 qscale=15 = 1.02 meg a minute
I don't have many test at this res currently
352x288 qscale=15 = 1.2 meg a minute
qscale=10 = 1.6 meg a minute
qscale=5 = 2.73 meg a minute
640x480 qscale=15 = 2.59 meg a minute
qscale=10 = 3.39 meg a minute
qscale=5 = 8.64 meg a minute
640x480 with qscale of 10 looks pretty good and is only 203 megs an hour.
352x288 with qscale of 5 looks really sharp and is only 163 megs an hour.
These are all at 29.97 fps with 24k audio. I assume we can compress the audio pretty good since it will be mostly talking.
I have test for several frame rates and audio settings as well. I would be happy to post video examples of the above or post the scripts.
For live encoding I am piping dvgrab to ffmpeg, but the script only requires ffmpeg and a source clip so it should run fine on mac.
At any rate, thanks for the call to action. I would never have played with this on my own, but your post got me interested.
Now I can compress on the fly and fit a ton of video on DVD!
I saw the tests...
looks great.
I would like to try doing that for the sessions I will be recording.
I will need to see if I have the right hardware and will need help setting up my vmware ubuntu install with all the necessary stuff..
Thanks for all the effort you are putting into this.
-jared
-jared
Thanks
The test are a bit if a joke right now and all can be deleted when we are ready to post the conference vid.
My biggest dilema right now is this. Blip.tv converts anything you post to flv, but if you post flv then they do not convert it.
So I can get better quality capturing to flv. If we want to be able to playback the vids locally or have them play from a cd/dvd then I would have to write a little flash video player.
So if the primary goal is getting the vids to the site, then flv seems to work best.
For local playback xvid is better.
I will do some more file size benchmarks to help determine the best option. It isn't that big of a deal since either could be converted after the fact.
So I am leaning toward capturing to flv.
This is really a great way to go, an d I would be very interested in your benchmarks on different hardware.
I can post the full dvgrab / ffmpeg capture string used as comments to each post if that would be helpful.
I can also post the batch script I am using for benchmarking.
All that is required is firewire port, dvgrab and ffmpeg so this should work fine on mac as well.
sounds like flv is the way to go
I think we should focus on just getting the videos to the site, so recording to flv sound like the way to go.
I am going to pick up a firewire 4 to 4 cable today so I should be able to do this too.
a couple questions:
can you help me setup my machine to do this? I run ubuntu in vmware on a windows laptop and do not know my way around linux very well
you mentioned adding an overlay. I have a seadug watermark that would be cool to add in the corner of the video
how about adding a bit of title and credits? can we add those on the fly if I prepare them ahead of time or will I have to drop the output into my video editor and add them there?
Thanks!
-jared
-jared
VLC plays flv
I wish I knew this before. Anyway since I can play flv in vlc I have no beef recording to flv.
Sweetness!
No Problem
You can skype me, my skype username is gvarnell
I am more than happy to help you set up the realtime vid stuff, I haven't tried it under vmware but shouldn't be a problem.
For the realtime text stuff you will need to compile ffmpeg yourself
my current config flags under ubuntu are
--prefix=/usr/local --disable-debug --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-pthreads --enable-x11grab --enable-liba52 --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid
Realtime text and graphics are not a problem, however when running through dvgrab I do get a visible cut.
If I do everything via ffmpeg the cuts are seemless, but I get some glitches every now and then.
I still have to play with this some more. If you just want to display a graphic for x seconds then some text and then start the show it shouldn't be to difficult.
If you want to do realtime text then I need to get the cut thing figured out. I should be able to do it using offsets, but haven't worked on it that much yet.
Confirm Equipment...
If you are planning on being a part of the video team and bringing equipment will you please reply with what you are planning on bringing/doing? thanks
-jared
I am bringing my Canon HG10,
I am bringing my Canon HG10, Bogen tripod, Rode mic, Macbook Pro and Final Cut Express 4. I would like to video the sessions I was hoping to attend. I can only be there on Friday though, I have a wedding to attend on Saturday unfortunately.
Kirk
ffmpeg encode string
This is the dvgrab / ffmpeg command I used to record Drupal Camp Seattle 2008
dvgrab -format dv1 - | ffmpeg -deinterlace -f dv -i - -f flv -vcodec flv -s 480x270 -aspect 16:9 -qscale 3.5 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 32k -ar 22050 outfile.flv
Actually, I used a script which can be found along with a blog article about the process at http://regx.dgswa.com/html/?q=node/65
This content is great -
Could you let me know if the originals are available for upload to archive.org? (Good for downloads / mobile devices etc.
Superstars!
blip.tv
we used blip.tv
http://seadug.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc
I think there is a way to download from there.
I am not sure how much of the original footage may still be around...
glad you have found it useful
-jared
-jared