Good news! There are several people that have volunteered to help out with coverage of DrupalCon, and Norbert Fuerst has offered his services to do post production on all footage through his video production company.
This comes from Norbert:
There should be a "lead cam" as well as at least one backing cam per
session. The leadcam should also record audio in good quality. That
leadcam should be set on a tripod to cover the whole stage, possibly from
the center. The backing cam(s) should be put to the left (and right if
possible) of the stage. The leadcam should be switched on at the beginning
of the event and not turned off until the session ends (or the tape has to
be changed). I'd suggest to use only DV cams to cover that event.Given a session lasts for about an hour, the above set up will lead to
three hours of footage. If there are presentations available in electronic
form (Powerpoint, video, PDF, whatever), it should be put to these tapes.
All of the media of that session should be put into a sealed plastic bag
(for freezing food) and labeled.
What would be best is if we could use this group to organize, for example:
* who has what equipment? e.g. DV cameras, tripods, etc.
* who will cover what sessions?
That's all I can think of at the moment...I'm not a video expert! Norbert and others...please post more comments as needed.
Comments
tap - tap - is it on?
Servus, folks.
Thanks Boris for making me blush twice :) It came a bit unexpected for me to step into the lime light, as I'm used to be the one who sends folks there. And thanks for pointing people to my ashaming website -- there's little excuse except I've been busy for a couple of years and I didn't know about Drupal until three weeks ago... However, I think this projects deserves all the contribution possible and that's why I jumped in to get the video stuff coordinated and post-produced.
If there are helping hands we could put togehter a nice video based tutorial -- although I can't promise to get to Brussels because of some tough Drupal conversions from another CMS with that release due on October, 1st, I can promise to help people to get the best shots possible using this forum and to put the footage into good to great looking shape to add to the existing video library.
I did only a rough calculation, but it seems DrupalCON Europe 2006 will offer some 48 hours of content and there's no way to attend more than one third of the sessions. Hence covering as much as possible of this event on video should not only help the ones staying at home but also those who attend different sessions. It should also make a good library for those who'll join Drupal in future -- 48 hours of video isn't exactly nothing, but with some proper compression this should fit in 15 GB of server space or on 24 DVDs...
Technically I'd like to avoid the babelizing induced by using the various video formats around but rather have a common ground to start from -- which is plain 4:3 PAL DV. I may be able to grab NTSC DV or analogue tape as well, but it doesn't compare well with PAL DV, and because this is Europe, I expect enough PAL DV camcorders to be around to avoid the less popular or analogue video formats.
So it's 4:3 PAL DV -- if you got such a camcorder, or you may get one from you aunt, grandfather or sister-in-law, I'd ask you to show up here soon to allow for some planning. As Boris quoted, I suggest to have at least two cams per session, which totals six cams to cover all of the event. If there are more cams, great. This will make the session look better as it allows me to add additional views in post. However, six cams would be great and as three out of the six should sit on a triopod without any panning and zooming and stuff like that throughout the show, there's almost no knowlege necessary to get the shots we would like to get.
I think we can help the Drupal project a lot by putting togehter a proper documentation of this event and I'm willing to spend some 120 hours of editing your footage. Now it's your turn, please show up if you happen to find a orphaned DV camcorder somewhere, and I'll try my best to get you going in Brussels.
Norbert
on video
Hi Nofue,
I see what you want to do, but i have some objections. To have 48 hours of footage, from various cameras handled by volunteers and have to edit it, as I see it, can be a big problem. And you loose the immediate value of material delivered in real time. It would be much better to have the conference streamed and archived immediately, toghether with eventual slides. Moreover it would be necessary to edit some material for other uses than documentation, and for that we must foresee shots that are harder to get.
The streaming might be done in ogg/theora using for example freej in dynebolic that is effective to deploy and easy to install. This, at least, so far as the conference can be covered in his presentation aspect and documented.
To make a better service you can foresee a videomixer with 2 or 3 cameras on the main hall and mix live the streaming while you are also recording it in dv for later. Still is becoming a very big job to follow, with cameras that might even not be usable the whole time because are to be borrowed, not to mention the rental of a decent videomixer for 2 days.
hops
sorry i have not noticed i was still anonymous.. the previous comment is by me :)
streaming
Servus, fredd.
Right, it would be a nice thing to stream along... But as you already said, this involves some cost for only little gains -- there is no real need for streaming live, and I doubt we could raise the resources for servers, etc. anyway. Even Apple's (offline stream) wasn't available during WWDC 2006 for hours because of to big demand.
Doing it "right" would involve a lot of staff and stuff. Running a control panel, communications panel and three mixers for the event would be a non-trivial thing -- it would take at least two people at each mixer, plus hardware, plus wiring a host of consumer grade cams.
I'd be satisfied to get good lighting, good audio, good coverage of the speakers, some audience shots, and hopefully the original sources of the presentations. If a website is been demoed, we can redo here easily. If it gets into the admin section, the author might grant us access so we could redo the presentation here as well.
Rather than doing a somewhat geeky streaming to show what could be done I'd prefer building a library to help all the current and future Drupallers to get faster to the system. And as I said, I hardly make it to Brussels for two days, but setting up a live streaming environment would take at least two more days, let alone training of all shooters, and setting up intercomms and all that stuff.
Well. That said I'd rather concentrate on Drupal, get the best shots possible, slap them togehter in post as good as it gets, brushing up audio and video quality, adding screenshots and that stuff, and put them back to tape, to DVD and various video formats. This can be done with zero cost for the organization given we'll find at least six cams to record that event. Even Apple doesn't stream live, and calculating the necessary bandwidth I think I get a clue, why.
Norbert
Any takers?
Servus.
DrupalCon 2006 @ Brussels is getting close and so far there have been no volunteers for this video project. I'd be happy to get to know all of you who are willing to support the upcoming Drupal video library and to provide the project with hints and tips to get the best shots possible. There's also a lot of organization to do to collect the footage properly for editing, and to cover as many sessions as possible. To make this process as smooth as possible, I'd ask you to sign in on this project as soon as you know you'll get to Brussels with a DV camcorder.
Thanks in advance,
Norbert
Posted announcement
Posted an announcement at http://drupalcon.org/node/79 ... keep an eye on it for additional questions.
I'll bring my DV cam (Sony
I'll bring my DV cam (Sony DCR-PC350) with me on Saterday. I'll cover the sessions I am following (check my profile).
Norbert, at the end of the day, I can hand over my DV's. See you then.
Two cams, and counting
Servus, folks.
Now we have two DV-cams signed in and I'm hoping for some more. So please check your mate's closet if s/he hides a cute little DV cam from you and bring it to Brussels :)
One more: grabbing audio seems to be the most important thing anyway, and discussing the issue on phone it occurred to me that we should be able to crank up some laptop with a not-so-bad microfone (preferrably wireless lavalier type) to record all of the sessions on harddisc.
This plus the presentator's slides/files should make for a good start...
Some number crunching: Recording one channel (stereo ain't needed for one speaker) at 44.1 kHz/16bit w/o compression takes some 5 MB per minute. Covering 8 hours / 480 minutes will yield 2.5 GB of audio per room... Hence setting up a decent laptop capable to grab 2.5 GB without a hickup should be a perfect thing and the cam op's would be freed from audio issues.
Any takers?
Thanks
Norbert
HOI NORBERT,
where we can backup all the ready content data of videos, sounds, a.s.o. from the DrupalCon sessions ????
We really need to be shure to have everything backuped before shipping the content to you !
Any suggestion?
Ciao CIT
Shipping procedure
Servus.
I suggest to have somebody responsible to collect media around at the end of each event. All
from any one session should be put into a plastic bag (I found the stuff for freezing feed quite convenient in the past) and that bag should be labeled with
The bag should be carefully sealed using adhesive tape to prevent bags from opening and mixing media in the shipping container.
All the bags (at the end, there should be as many bags as sessions) should be shipped in several batches. Depending on shipping cost I'd suggest to send batches of half a day / one room. If one batch should get lost it wouldn't affect all the recordings. Shipping should be done with a reliable company, like FedEx, UPS or the like. Marking shipping boxes as "magnetically sensitive" stuff should help, but it takes a rather strong magnetic field to erase DV tapes...
To get credits right and to provide some means for returning tape, I'd ask every participant to label his/her media with the name and the returning address.
Collecting media and shipping is quite an important task and screwing that would severely affect post-production. Putting all media from every single session into a dedicated container will help me a lot to get into editing fast. Reviewing tapes to figure what fits where seems a bit painful for that amount of footage...
If audio gets recorded on hard disk, this part of presentation would be backuped on the recording computer. It would be best to stop recording in between of the sessions to get as many audio files as there were sessions. The various recordings should be given a proper filename to allow easy identification. It would also make sense if somebody announces the session on the recording, at best before the session starts. This will become even more important when sessions are swapped or even cancelled (as it happens).
At the end of the day a DVD should be burnt and shipped to me with the bags collected during that day / room. Labeling the DVD should also help :)
Well, so much for the administrative issues.
If one thinks backups of the footage are a important necessity, there are several issues to consider:
a.) backup of a tape is a real-time task. If we get six cams rolling that's six times the duration of the event in tape -- i.e. six hours per one our of lecture. There used to be a Sony tape drive which did the copying to hard disk four times faster, but I doubt we'll find such a thing these days.
b.) video data is huge. 9 minutes of DV are worth 2 GB of hard disk. That's some 14 GB per hour/tape, and with three cams covering one session it's 42 GB for every session. I think I read there will be some 33 sessions -- that'll total some 1.4 terabytes...
After all, the issue with backups of video tapes is mostly a non-issue -- I never made any backup of recording tapes nor either of the teams I worked with. Tape gets rolled, labeled, sealed, and send. This may sound awful, but so far every tape arrived at its destination in time, undestroyed and undestorted from anywhere on the world. Of course there's the problem with lost mail, but it's pretty small -- I haven't lost anything in more than 10 years and I got tapes not only from Europe.
I'd suggest to chose a reliable shipping company and to forget about backup issues for rolled tape. Backing up audio recordings and presentational video should be done, of course, as that's painless and cheap. If we may loose a batch of tapes I can still "fake" a presentation from audio recordings and presentational media here, but I'm quite sure this won't be needed.
All the fun in Brussels,
Norbert
Collecting recorded media content and shipping
Hoi ,
Drupal Group and Norbert,
just printed aound 200 sticky labels with the content:
DrupalCON 2006
(shipping adress for original recordings)
These labels can be sticked on some transparent sealbag.
( Don't forget a ballpen to be able writing on the labels....)
The sealbag's as well as the sticky labels i will hand out to the persons recording the sessions. We could do this maybe already on Thursday evening during the social meeting at the "Wild Geese"... and brainstorm maybe a little roadmap for all the recordings....
On Friday and Saturday we could collect all the media recordings before lunch, and at the end of the day. Than i can seal them with a strong tape....
If there is nobody else, i could offer to collect all these seal bag's and shipp it to Norbert with UPS or with DPD all together...
I would take over these shipping costs to Austria....
Also I would make than some backup from all the non video data before shipping too...
Hey and.... don't forget to check your power supplies before recording ;-)
Ciao
CIT
Wooo hooo.
You're a gem, CIT.
That's really a self-driven community, thanks a ton.
Norbert
WANTED: 4 SONY MINI-DISC RECORDERS
Hello Drupal Group,
we do have 4 rooms to record.
I absolutely do agree with Norbert words "grabbing audio seems to be the most important thing"
Video is important too, but let't try first to get all sessions sound recorded in these 4 rooms completely.
If we could install in each room a Sony MiniDisc recorder we could cover all sessions before lunch and after lunch....
My Sony Minidisc could be installed in the InitSoft Room, so we need 3 more...
The Sony Minidisc is not the latest gadget, but the quality of the records are best of best....
If you or some friend of yours have a Sony Minidisc recorder, bring it to DrupalCON.
Also don't forget the power supply, micro a.s.o
Please post some comment here at the node or use the poll, so we can see if we can count on you and are able to cover all 4 rooms...
To get some overview i made some polls:
http://groups.drupal.org/drupalcon-brussels-2006
Thanks in advance
CIT
PS:Generally it would be also much easear to record the content on the same media equipment, so Norbert has later less work too.
Caution with Mini-Disc
Servus.
Regarding MiniDisc recording: please make sure in advance your gadget is capable to record microphone levels. The majority of (cheaper) MiniDisc gear could only record line level...
If there's a room amplifier system it would be great to know if there's a line out to plug a recording device (whether computer or MiniDisc or DV camera) -- this would be the most perfect solution anyway.
Norbert
Who is responcible for the the room amplifiers?
Hoi :-)
Yes, we need 3 more better MiniDisc recorders to be able to do these recordings.
Maybe we could check already now, what are the possibilities to connect the Mini Disc recorders to amplifier systems, if available ....
Boris Mann, could you be so kindly, to help manage this?
Ciao CIT
Nope
I have no idea what's available, and we won't, until we're there. Come early on Friday and we'll connect with whoever at SAP lounge is running things.
Cheers
We will see it...
Maybe we do have more equipment as we exspect...
grabbing audio
I'll bring a Sony WCS-999 with me which I recently bought on Ebay. I hope to record some good audio this way.
ONE MORE DV CAM... ( a Sony DCR-PC330E)
Hello Drupal Group,
just want to confirm some more Digital Video Camera. It is a Sony DCR-PC330E.
Further i am able to take images with two Nicon Coolpix 995 and there is for digital sound recording also a Sony Minidisc MD-RZ-R35 plus external Micro available.
Please note, my user name at the DrupalCON site is "loop", here at Drupal groups I do have the username "CIT"...
If you check my profile "loop" at DrupalCON, you can see that my subscriptions for the first day and for Saturday are all for the sessions in the "InitSoft Room" after the lunch.
So i could take over one part of the documentation for this room (after lunch until the end...)
On Friday morning i would like to join the "NINA project" and "Creating an Article publication site...."
Saturday morning the "Theme workshop"
Is there some interest to take videos on the meeting on Thursday or later?
I have booked my room at the Hotel Ibis Ste Catherine and will be there around 15 pm Thursday and will stay until Sunday...
Maybe it is possible to make some notes or (maybe with visual icons) in the sessions nodes, to see what sessions are covered by DV-Cams, Digital Cameras or Sound Recordings....
Contact me for any instructions, questions or if you need a ride from Holland to Belgium.
Ciao,
CIT
One digital 8 and 2 webcams with microphone
Check my signups at http://drupalcon.org/user/7
For those who can't wait:
End of first day:
Drupal Foundation:
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=7038940559530825104
Second day:
Administration usability improvements:
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=102508856357989299
Google Summer of Code ( SoC ) 2006 results:
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=2155713642819979526
Drupal and usability:
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=1605953158097179126
A community-driven software development platform:
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-1335824882062188632
jQuery and Drupal:
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-5875519434960327102
Drupal questions answered:
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=6298232677628195583
Ripped in Low/Medium quality.
(Currently copying the tapes to DVD-media, which will take a while)
Footage gathered
Servus, folks.
As I got most of the footage by now, I think it's time for an update:
There were 30 lectures. Not all got covered, and right now I'm trying to evaluate the most promising working path -- I think it would make most sense to edit fully covered sessions of high interest first, more specialialized sessions later, hoping to receive some more presentation slides (or getting an idea what the code on screen might have looked like :)
To keep typing to a minimum I don't cite the full title of each session. I add what I got -- DV means one or more DV tape(s) or equal media, P means presentation slides. I used a ? (question mark) for sessions I was promised to get but haven't seen footage yet. I use my "internal" IDs in front of each session -- if you contact me about anything, please refer to that number. If there where more than one cams running, I marked it as well. Sessions which haven't been covered get marked in italics, Sessions which seem to be complete as far as I can tell are in bold face.
9/22:
001 | Welcome | DV, ?
002 | Core Modules | DV, ?
003 | New system... | P
004 | NINA-A | DV
005 | Article site |
006 | Forms API | DV, P
007 | KNOSOS |
008 | Form API WS | ?
009 | Validation... | DV
010 | Video recipe | DV
011 | MTV UK | ?
012 | Pants Module | DV, P
013 | Checklist | DV
014 | Foundation | ?
015 | Views API | DV
016 | Port. DB CiviCRM |
9/23
017 | Google SOC | ?, P
018 | Files & MM | DV, P
019 | Usability | ?, P
020 | Univ. Site | DV
021 | Theming | DV
022 | Dev. platform | ?, P
023 | Multilingual | 2x DV, P
024 | Security Audits | DV
025 | JQuery | DV, ?, P
026 | Events 2.0 | DV
027 | Security/Modules |
028 | Drupal QA | DV, ?, P
029 | Wiki | DV, P
030 | Caching Cache |
Well, this leaves me with the following sessions for a first run -- as more footage arrives, I will update the editing queue:
001 | Welcome | DV, ?
002 | Core Modules | DV, ?
006 | Forms API | DV, P
012 | Pants Module | DV, P
018 | Files & MM | DV, P
023 | Multilingual | 2x DV, P
025 | JQuery | DV, ?, P
028 | Drupal QA | DV, ?, P
029 | Wiki | DV, P
As I have little idea what might be the most interesting stuff anyway, I made up the following order of release:
023 | Multilingual | 2x DV, P
018 | Files & MM | DV, P
029 | Wiki | DV, P
012 | Pants Module | DV, P
006 | Forms API | DV, P
002 | Core Modules | DV, ?
025 | JQuery | DV, ?, P
The remaining two "sessions" are of little value information-wise or have already been published by Lullabot (podcast) and audio is highest concern anyway. Hence I put these to the end of my list:
001 | Welcome | DV, ?
028 | Drupal QA | DV, ?, P
This totals seven fully covered sessions for starters. There is more footage on the way, but I can't tell if it fits well. Maybe I may use that audio and add screens myself, but it would of course be of great value to get the presentation slides from all the sessions not listed in italics... If you know somebody who held a lecture which slides are missing, don't hesitate to bug them to hand in their presentation :)
OK, that's the current state -- I'll keep you informed,
Norbert
Final notice
Servus, folks.
It's almost a year since this project was started and it's time to announce it failed badly. This because of several reasons I'd like to layout here to prevent the same mistakes this year in Barcelona:
1.) audio
Sessions like the ones given depend 100% on audio. Sadly, the dedicated recording unit recorded mostly the fan of the video projector, and the problem went unheard because there was no means to monitor the recording. Pity... The other source of audio was the tape recorded the length of a room away from the speaker. All the little noises got emphasized while the speakers faded into the noise. No good either.
I spent some weeks of dealing with audio but it would take even more time to clean up only a single session, even with a lot of automation...
2.) video
I asked for two cams per session at least, but we hardly got one. Sometimes it appeared as if there were two cams, but one cam turned out to be NTSC of a different dialect. I simply couldn't get the tracks into the Final Cut video project. Another cam which was promised three times never made it here. So I settled for the cam I got -- but there was another odd problem with the projected screen: the speaker tended to step into the picture and the weak lighting didn't allow for keying in the original presentation slides.
So I finally abandoned that project, wiped my project hard disk, and sent back the media.
There's Barcelona on the horizon already and I think we can (and should) do better this time. Most of my proposals for Brussels 2006 still apply, and I hope to be in Barcelona this year -- but this is an entirely different story which should be discussed in the appropriate thread.
My thanks go to Cyrill, who did a more than perfect job organizing everything for a perfect gathering of the sessions in Brussels.
Well, it's little fun to abandon a project, and I sure hope it's just one more good reason to get everything right this year in Barcelona. Who ever might be interested in building that proposed Drupal library is welcome to work with us to gather this year's event perfectly well.
My apologies to those who were hoping for a great video coverage of Brussels 2006,
Norbert
servus! some simple suggestions for Barcelona
Here's my cheap cheerful and hopefully simple suggestion for Barcelona (i won't be going but it's based on my experience of going to DrupalCamps and other unconferences and trying to video them)
1. Have a video signup page for each session and get each person who signs up to commit to uploading the raw (lightly updated to make it a manageable size) video unedited to Blip.tv (or any other service that gives you access to the original file) within a week of the session. All you need is a DV camera and a tape (or a decent cameraphone).
2. if somebody has time, they can download the originals from blip.tv and edit them and make them a more cohesive whole
Servus, Roland! Thanks for
Servus, Roland!
Thanks for your input -- but we're headed towards high quality videos where at least DV quality should be obtained. Which gives some 13 GB per cam & hour... or some 39 GB per one hour of session shot with 3 cams... My monthly bandwidth is 5 GB -- would me take some 8 months to get all the files for a single session... And I don't want to consider the time it takes to upload one hour on a regular 384 kBit/s upload wire.
Nope, collecting all the tapes right after the show as Cyrill did in Brussels is still the most efficient way to deal with tremendous amounts of footage. And you can't beat tape as a cheap archiving solution anyway :)
Last year's main problem -- bad audio -- can't be resolved by any technique, whether uploaded or taped.
That's why I still prefer the plastic bag solution we used in Brussels. If we had more cams, and audio recordings would be crisp clear we'd be done...
Hope you'll join us with your cam,
Norbert
i agree about the quality issue
i don't think i will be in Barcelona but if i do i will bring my Canon Elura DV camera which I think can be switched from NTSC to DV 4:3 and I would also bring an audio mixer and some decent mics to get decent audio
I still think having people signup to video sessions and coordinating having enough gear (microphones, DV 4:3 cameras setc) through the Drupal Con website is the way to go