Re: Reminder: still looking for video geek for March 10

All,

We are still looking for a video geek to take video and audio of the
March 10 presentation by Reece Hart. We want to put up a permanent
video of the presentation.

PostgreSQL will buy appropriate (moderately-priced) equipment for this,
but we need you to identify which equipment will best suit or needs.

Ideally, we would like to stream video from the SFPUG presentations. If
you also know how to do that, great. If you don't, please at least
recommend equipment with eventual streaming in mind.

Thanks for help!

--Josh

Hello PG people,

I made a survey yesterday at Fry's and Guitar Center for equipment, here
are my conclusions:

Camera: The only consumer brand that has an external microphone input is
Canon. Without at least the options of using an external microphone for
the speaker voice we can only use the camera mic and will record all
ambient room noise, reverb etc. and we all know this is a suboptimal
solution. With Canon we have currently three options, cheapest is tape
based and standard definition for ~$200, SD card based which records
directly in MPEG-4 $320 and high definition for $700. You should be able
to buy those camera's at all electronic stores.

All camera's have an analog video out. I don't remember which ones also
have firewire and if they have a live picture/audio on the firewire. To
get the live video/audio from analog into a computer we would need an
A/V converter (USB based, so we can work with laptop). They can be
bought for ~$100.

We also need a tripod, they come in the $30-$120 range. I did not like
the models they had a Fry's and would suggest going to a camera store.

If we want to go with an external microphone we can buy a wireless
head-mounted pack, the cheapest seems to be Shure PG14, which I saw on
Guitar Centers webpage for $299. If we would like to have a little bit
more flexibility with a second mic for a moderator, audience questions
etc. we can get a cable mic for ~$50. A dynamic cable mic also needs a
pre-amplification with a small mixing console (Behringer 802XL ~$60).
Using such a console has the advantage, that we can use two mic's
simultaneously and could also mix in a computer audio, if the speaker
wants to show a video etc.

Along with that go some cables for microphone, connetion from camera to
computer etc. some of which may be included in the retail packages. Also
having a power extension and outlet ready is a good idea (however I'm
certain we can find all of those cables from our own cable collections
as surplus parts).

I also had a look into live-streaming video chat solutions. I liked
http://www.stickam.com/ They have a no-registration, no-configuration,
no-installation flash based chat solution with video/audio, web-cam,
chat etc. It seems to work really well and supporting dozens of people
in one chat-room simultenously. The advantage is, that *their* server
handle the streaming band-width, so we only need a normal
internet-connection to transmit our own audio/video stream out. If our
guests have a webcam/mic setup (recognized and supported by their Adobe
Flash plugin, which should be standard on windows [I can't comment for
OsX]) guest can also talk to us for questions, comments, chat etc.

I'm willing to run the event and help purchasing hardware etc. during
the upcoming week.

--
---> Dirk Jagdmann
----> http://cubic.org/~doj
-----> http://llg.cubic.org

Dirk,

> I'm willing to run the event and help purchasing hardware etc. during
> the upcoming week.
>

Great! Can you coordinate with Christophe, who has camera equipment but
no idea how to stream? And can you show up early for the event (like,
at 5:30?).

--Josh

On Mar 1, 2009, at 12:30 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Great! Can you coordinate with Christophe, who has camera equipment
> but no idea how to stream? And can you show up early for the event
> (like, at 5:30?).

Basically, I can provide either an analog video or DV-over-FireWire
feed off of the camera to whatever streaming software we can come up
with. If someone has a spare QuickTime (or Darwin) Streaming Server
lying around, I can also provide a feed from QuickTime Broadcaster on
my laptop. :)

Christophe, Dirk,

> Basically, I can provide either an analog video or DV-over-FireWire
> feed off of the camera to whatever streaming software we can come up
> with. If someone has a spare QuickTime (or Darwin) Streaming Server
> lying around, I can also provide a feed from QuickTime Broadcaster on
> my laptop. :)

I guess one of the questions is, can we both stream *and* save a copy?

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL
San Francisco

> Basically, I can provide either an analog video or DV-over-FireWire feed
> off of the camera to whatever streaming software we can come up with.
> If someone has a spare QuickTime (or Darwin) Streaming Server lying
> around, I can also provide a feed from QuickTime Broadcaster on my
> laptop. :)

I guess you have an Apple laptop including firewire port? As explained
in my previous post it saves us lots of work and bandwidth if we simply
use an existing video chat provider, I found http://stickam.com/ to be
working well.

You could try to hook up your camera to your computer and see if
stickam's flash stuff already can interface to your firewire audio/video
stream. If it works, we would basically be set if we want to use them to
stream the event. We can run a test-chat some-time this week if you have
time for it.

--
---> Dirk Jagdmann
----> http://cubic.org/~doj
-----> http://llg.cubic.org

> I guess one of the questions is, can we both stream *and* save a copy?

A camera will be able to save locally to tape/flash and output the
signal for external handling.

--
---> Dirk Jagdmann
----> http://cubic.org/~doj
-----> http://llg.cubic.org

On Mar 2, 2009, at 12:58 PM, Dirk Jagdmann wrote:
> A camera will be able to save locally to tape/flash and output the
> signal for external handling.

Yes. I'll be happy to add titles, etc. to the talk and make it
available from my server once we're done.

Do we know how long the talk will be?

Christophe wrote:
>
> On Mar 2, 2009, at 12:58 PM, Dirk Jagdmann wrote:
>> A camera will be able to save locally to tape/flash and output the
>> signal for external handling.
>
> Yes. I'll be happy to add titles, etc. to the talk and make it
> available from my server once we're done.
>
> Do we know how long the talk will be?

About 1 hour.

--Josh

On Mon, 2009-03-02 at 13:03 -0800, Christophe wrote:

> Do we know how long the talk will be?

I'll talk until the last person leaves. It's unclear whether that'll be
12 or 13 minutes.

I expect ~45 minutes + question period.

-Reece

--
Reece Hart, http://harts.net/reece/, GPG:0x25EC91A0