Hacker Lounge audio processing, was Re: [osbridge] Work Sprint #2 - Thanks for Coming By!

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Jonathan Leto

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Mar 9, 2010, 3:40:06 PM3/9/10
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Howdy,

>>>>    - Using the Hackers Lounge to do audio-processing so we can post session
>>>>    recordings the day after they are made
>>>
>>> YES! Hardware?
>>
>> I think the Hacker Lounge will be a BYOH (Bring Your Own Hardware) event.
>>
>> Duke
>>
>>
> That's fine for audio/video editing, but there needs to be some kind of
> off-line "server" resource for storage, rendering and distribution. It's
> OK if that's somewhere "in the cloud" provided we have upload bandwidth.
> Typically, though, upload bandwidth is a fraction of download bandwidth.

Well, I think bringing some DVD's/thumbdrives for people to download
audio from would be the easiest. We can farm out various parts to
different people and then they can submit the processed audio on
burned DVD's/thumbdrives. Ed, do you want to coordinate that effort?

Duke

--
Jonathan "Duke" Leto
jona...@leto.net
http://leto.net

benh

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Mar 10, 2010, 6:41:40 PM3/10/10
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Ed, you would know better then anyone but does audacity have enough
horse power/options to do the cleanup needed?

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

--
benh~

http://three.sentenc.es/

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

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Mar 10, 2010, 7:19:24 PM3/10/10
to osbr...@googlegroups.com, benh
Audacity is a visual wrapper on "standard open source audio
libraries". If the processing required is visual (trimming empty spots
from the beginning and end, cutting out noise bursts, etc.), Audacity
is as good as it gets. Once you get that part out of the way, though,
if you have a lot of batch processing to do, I think there may be
faster ways.

For the torrent that Igal just posted from last year, I think I posted
the next steps, which are probably best accomplished with Audacity.
For those of you with Macs or non-dual-booted Windows machines,
Audacity does run on both. I think it will be adequate for all the
processing, given that we have to break the whole audio set down into
pieces anyway because of its length.

Planning for this year's conference: once we know how many rooms were
going to have and how much equipment we'll need, the only thing I
would suggest is that we have a brief "operator training" session for
the people manning the recorders, so we get the MP3s tagged as they
are recording, rather than having the extra two-day-or-so manual
re-tagging I had to do.

What's the plan for video? Just the keynotes? None? All?
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
borasky-research.net/m-edward-ed-borasky/

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." ~ Paul Erdos

Jeff Schwaber

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Mar 10, 2010, 7:35:57 PM3/10/10
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On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 4:19 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <zzn...@gmail.com> wrote:
Audacity is a visual wrapper on "standard open source audio libraries". If the processing required is visual (trimming empty spots from the beginning and end, cutting out noise bursts, etc.), Audacity is as good as it gets. Once you get that part out of the way, though, if you have a lot of batch processing to do, I think there may be faster ways.

For the torrent that Igal just posted from last year, I think I posted the next steps, which are probably best accomplished with Audacity. For those of you with Macs or non-dual-booted Windows machines, Audacity does run on both. I think it will be adequate for all the processing, given that we have to break the whole audio set down into pieces anyway because of its length.

Planning for this year's conference: once we know how many rooms were going to have and how much equipment we'll need, the only thing I would suggest is that we have a brief "operator training" session for the people manning the recorders, so we get the MP3s tagged as they are recording, rather than having the extra two-day-or-so manual re-tagging I had to do.

What's the plan for video? Just the keynotes? None? All?

I've been really sick
and trying to catch up, so I let this slide, but since you ask, I should report on a conversation I had with Carl Karsten, who did AV for DjangoCon here in Portland, and PyCon in Atlanta. He basically seems to do this a lot, and he'd be happy to try to work out some way for him to run AV for OSBridge, if we're interested. I'm not sure who all the people are who would want to have a say in that (everyone?), so I haven't done anything about it.

I originally emailed him to ask for more details about his setup so we could duplicate it (and make sure to work with the vendor to get the right equipment), Basically it involves a piece of open source software written by some Debian developers that let you take the video and audio together in a single window, cut at the end and save the filename and be ready to upload. From the work that was being done for last year's stuff, it seems like this method would be a better option since the conferences I've seen him involved with have had talks up the next day.

I've gotten some of the details and can probably finagle some more so that we can use that setup, but...

He, however, offered both to run the AV if we wanted, and ... well, to quote:

>It may be too late, and the powers that be may not be interested, but
>I have a feeling the finances could be done better.  There is just
>enough money moving around to interest CTE - the conference company
>that did Djangocon.  This may sound hard to believe, but they will
>save you way more money than they charge.  one example: for $0 charge,
>they will take care of hotel arrangements, like getting a discounted
>rate. - they do it because they will collect the 10% commission on the
>rooms - for Djangocon that was about $4500.  If you were experts like
>they are, you could do it yourself.  kinda like programming.

I don't know who all wants to be involved in deciding what, but I will vouch for Carl as having been excellent at running AV at those other two conferences.

So:

1) Do you now have, or want to have decidery powers in the AV area?
2) Do you now have, or want to have, broader decidery powers?

If 2: Do you want to talk to CTE?
If 1: What do you think I should do with this information?

Thanks,

Jeff

John Prohodsky

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Mar 11, 2010, 1:48:52 AM3/11/10
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Hi all,

There are several things that we need to consider if we are going to do
post-processing of audio files in the hacker lounge including data
transfer, post processing, uploading and publishing. The least expensive
way of recording is to plug a portable field recorder
<http://www.guitarcenter.com/Portable---Field-Recorders-Recording.gc>
into the sound mixer. Portable field recorders use SD or SDHC cards for
data storage. card contents to a PC or swapping SD/SDHC cards. If the
sound contractor records audio to a PC, they can upload the files.

Post processing involves importing data to Audacity, removing silence at
the beginning and end of the recording, exporting to MP3, and labeling
the MP3 file. A style sheet would be needed to insure consistent
labeling. Post process audio files would then be uploaded. For security
reasons I am assuming that the processed audio files would not be
uploaded to the OSB web site, but would be uploaded to the cloud.

I estimate that audio post processing will take 5 -10 minutes per audio
file depending on the speed of importing and exporting data to/from
Audacity. I would be more than glad to create a demo and documentation
on how to post-process audio files.

Storage requirements for a 128 kbps mp3 of a 50 minute session would be
approximately 47 mbytes. A daily track composed of 8 50 minute sessions
requires 376 mbytes. Five tracks/day requires 1.88 gbytes.

If we want to do audio post processing for presentations during the
conference, we need to talk with the folks who are doing the audio
recordings to determine what media they record to, when audio files can
be retrieved, and how media files can be retrieved.

Ideally, we would want to sync audio with the slides which can be done
using screen recorder software. That's another discussion.

John

Igal Koshevoy

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Mar 11, 2010, 8:08:26 PM3/11/10
to osbr...@googlegroups.com, Jeff Schwaber
On 03/10/2010 04:35 PM, Jeff Schwaber wrote:
> I should report on a conversation I had with Carl Karsten, who did AV
> for DjangoCon here in Portland, and PyCon in Atlanta. He basically
> seems to do this a lot, and he'd be happy to try to work out some way
> for him to run AV for OSBridge, if we're interested.
Thanks for talking to Carl on our behalf. Can you please ask him to join
the mailing list and, if possible, go to the sprint this weekend?

> it involves a piece of open source software written by some Debian
> developers that let you take the video and audio together in a single
> window, cut at the end and save the filename and be ready to upload.
> From the work that was being done for last year's stuff, it seems like
> this method would be a better option since the conferences I've seen
> him involved with have had talks up the next day.

Awesome. Can you post a URL for this project?

One of the other Bridge organizers will address the rest of your email.

-igal

PS: Get well soon, Jeff.

Jennifer Redman

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Mar 11, 2010, 8:24:20 PM3/11/10
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If Carl is interested in helping out as a volunteer we'd love to have him -- but we already have a vendor lined up to handle AV that is very familiar with the Mark building and did a great job providing AV for Open Source Bridge last year.


So:

1) Do you now have, or want to have decidery powers in the AV area?
2) Do you now have, or want to have, broader decidery powers?

If 2: Do you want to talk to CTE?
If 1: What do you think I should do with this information?

We are presently engaged with a travel agent - to help negotiate lodging discounts -  who helped us out last year, and have already engaged an AV vender but we'll be happy to add their contact information to Highrise to consider using their services for next year.

Thanks,
Jen


 

Jeff Schwaber

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Mar 11, 2010, 8:59:11 PM3/11/10
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On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 5:24 PM, Jennifer Redman <jen...@gmail.com> wrote:

If Carl is interested in helping out as a volunteer we'd love to have him -- but we already have a vendor lined up to handle AV that is very familiar with the Mark building and did a great job providing AV for Open Source Bridge last year.

We have a vendor lined up to run the audiovisual equipment? Because what I'm talking about isn't providing the AV equipment, it's running it.

Thanks,

Jeff

Jeff Schwaber

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Mar 11, 2010, 9:03:03 PM3/11/10
to Igal Koshevoy, osbr...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Igal Koshevoy <ig...@pragmaticraft.com> wrote:
On 03/10/2010 04:35 PM, Jeff Schwaber wrote:
> I should report on a conversation I had with Carl Karsten, who did AV
> for DjangoCon here in Portland, and PyCon in Atlanta. He basically
> seems to do this a lot, and he'd be happy to try to work out some way
> for him to run AV for OSBridge, if we're interested.
Thanks for talking to Carl on our behalf. Can you please ask him to join
the mailing list and, if possible, go to the sprint this weekend?

Sadly, I won't make it to the sprint this weekend, but I'll forward the request.
 
> it involves a piece of open source software written by some Debian
> developers that let you take the video and audio together in a single
> window, cut at the end and save the filename and be ready to upload.
> From the work that was being done for last year's stuff, it seems like
> this method would be a better option since the conferences I've seen
> him involved with have had talks up the next day.
Awesome. Can you post a URL for this project?

The piece of software is called DVSwitch:

http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/
 
One of the other Bridge organizers will address the rest of your email.

-igal

PS: Get well soon, Jeff.

Thanks. Just catching up now. =)

Jeff
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