[EuroPython] [pyconuk] Europython Videos on their way...

[Matt Hamilton]

On 8 Aug 2010, at 00:52, Richard Jones wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 6:36 AM, Ben Hutchings <ben at decadent.org.uk> wrote:
>> On Sat, 2010-08-07 at 20:55 +0100, Michael Sparks wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Regarding next time, I'm already also beginning to think and look at
>>> better ways of doing this. (Which will probably be something along the
>>> lines of direct recording to disk via HD webcams etc. But that's a
>>> different conversation!)
>> 
>> I recommend talking to Carl Karsten <carl at personnelware.com> who heads
>> the A/V team for PyCon US.  They've been using my DVswitch program
>> together with additional software to manage the workflow.  This covers
>> recording from multiple sources, transcoding and publishing videos, and
>> can also support live streaming.
> 
> I also strongly recommend this approach - Ryan Verner ran PyCon AU's
> recording using this approach. We had a lot of trouble finding
> volunteers to run the equipment though. We had one person per room and
> just scraped by.


I've just checked out DVSwitch... looks pretty good. I was looking at the PyCon AU videos recently and they certainly seemed to be very good quality.

Historically the Plone Conference has relied on using community members and volunteers to do the video and audio recording, and every year it has had its issues. Normally to do with manpower. Often the videos have taken a long time to be finally published after the event. This usually just boils down to whichever volunteer responsible for it just having higher priority things to get done afterwards. We have a similar amount of video to deal with (3 days * 4 rooms * ~8 hours) and things like transcoding, titling and just sorting through the videos always end up taking longer than envisaged.

This year for the conference in Bristol, we've hired a professional company to come and do the audio/video recording and the post-production for us. In the end it didn't turn out quite as prohibitive as I'd first thought due to the fact that they will be supplying the mics, cameras, staging, projectors, PA, etc that we would need to have hired anyway.

They will be recording straight to disk, and have a single camera, plus split from the projector feed for each room. The main room will have a full time technician there, and the other 3 rooms will have an audio tech and a video tech shared between them. Hopefully this should be a good balance.

-Matt

-- 
Matt Hamilton                                         matth at netsight.co.uk
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