[Video] importance of conference recording

[Carl Karsten]

On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 11:10 AM, Paul Wayper <paulway at mabula.net> wrote:
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> On 06/18/2013 01:22 AM, Tim Ansell wrote:
>> * Very difficult to get accurate information about what is actually
>> being recorded.  You can hear this in the variable audio levels in this
>> year's LCA videos.  This is also partly operator training, but a system
>> that gives you no idea of how the recording sounds or looks cannot be
>> fixed no matter how good the operator is.
>>
>>
>> This is one of the things I've been banging on about with live streaming,
>> it gives you a crowd of angry people who'll complain at the first sign
>> of problems - things like the audio being incorrect.
>
> Agreed - but then OTOH you need someone watching the stream who can get in
> touch with the relevant room to tell them about the problem.
>
> That requires either a dedicated person monitoring all the room streams
> (which isn't going to catch everything) or some kind of public feedback
> (e.g. via IRC) to let the public talk to the media people.
>
> And this is where you and I may have to differ.  Streaming within the
> conference is a drain on sometimes limited resources.  But then you have to
> have your media people watching an IRC channel as well as their equipment,
> and you have to have the general public aware that they can use the IRC
> channel to complain if there are problems with the stream, and hope that
> they don't tie up the media people's time with stupid comments or "helpful"
> suggestions.
>
> OTOH, what I'm suggesting is a kind of 'post-mix' feed in the room that the
> media people monitor.  Most mixing desks give you the headphones output
> after the main mix output, so the headphones will hear exactly what the room
> and the tape will hear.  The video is less of an issue, since of the things
> that can be fixed by media people in the room, only a few will show up on a
> video feed.
>
> So maybe this point really is "use a mixing

This is drifting from recording technologies and into resource
allocation.  Note: when I speak of resources I am talking about a mix
of volunteer labor and money.

To me the problem I keep seeing is not so much "limited resources"
but "poor use of resources."

Example:  If there are 8 rooms, we want 16 people.  But instead of
getting 16 people, we get 32 people that are only going to be around
about 1/2 the time, and there is some overlap, so there are some
holes, and managing this schedule is additional work.

The obvious argument is "you can't expect volunteers to do exactly
what you want, so deal with it."

I have successfully dealt with it.  For PyCon US (now NA) I discourage
anyone from volunteering to help me if they are not going to do it
full time.  This means I have to work harder to find people, but that
work is done before the event so it is a better use of my time.  In
the end, same amount of work, but better results.

Another angle on this problem is trying to figure out much of the over
all conference resources should be allocated to Video Recording.   And
really it goes beyond the conference budget - There is a large
resources pool that multiple events draw from.  It is not a well
defined or documented pool, but it exists.  If an event draws from the
pool, it reduces what is left for other events.  If 5 events all do
their own Recording project, it drains more than if the same team does
all 5 events.

I also think it is worth discussing what the goals of the effort is
anyway.  5 years ago I felt it was a good idea to spend my time trying
to build a community of people who would mange recording events.  I am
happy to talk to people about it and help them, but I no longer
encourage anyone "go do video for your show, I will be on line to help
you remotely."    Now I encourage them to get one of us that has done
it before to be in charge of video at that show, and the person in
question can consider doing it themselves next year.   Most of the
time they ask me back next year.


-- 
Carl K