Screencast?

[Ryan Smith]

While attempting to listen to the last meeting's podcast and follow
along, I thought, "it sure would be nice to see his screen to
supplement what he is explaining."

Has the idea of screencasting ever come up?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast
http://www.freecharity.org.uk/2007/04/12/the-secret-to-screencasting-with-ubuntu-and-free-software/
http://showmedo.com/addVideoInstructions

I imagine it would take a lot more space, bandwidth, and preparation.
All that would it be worthwhile?

Ryan

[Seth House]

There's been talk in the past of video taping the meetings. I'm pretty
sure the Utah Open Source Foundation would be happy to host video or
screencasts beside the audio they currently host. The problem is
having someone that also has the hardware show up to record every
meeting. I'm not sure we have the hardware, and we don't have a
volunteer for this yet.

Screencasts wouldn't require the hardware, but would require the
presenters to prepare beforehand since they always present from their
own machines. For a group organizer its hard enough just to find
presenters, let alone to make sure their systems are screencast-ready.
Currently the only reason the meetings get recorded is someone from
(or on behalf of) the UTOSF shows up with a microphone.

At this point, I think your best bet is to start bugging the
presenter, once he's announced on the list, to make a screencast while
he presents. :-P

This whole process needs to be easier, imo. I'm thinking an all-in-one
VGA/DVI pass-through dongle (with mic!) that records the video signal
on its way to the projector. :)

[Clint Savage]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Seth House <whit...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There's been talk in the past of video taping the meetings. I'm pretty
> sure the Utah Open Source Foundation would be happy to host video or
> screencasts beside the audio they currently host. The problem is
> having someone that also has the hardware show up to record every
> meeting. I'm not sure we have the hardware, and we don't have a
> volunteer for this yet.

We would be happy to host it, our colo provider TierFour is great this
way and will accommodate us for the time to come!

> Screencasts wouldn't require the hardware, but would require the
> presenters to prepare beforehand since they always present from their
> own machines. For a group organizer its hard enough just to find
> presenters, let alone to make sure their systems are screencast-ready.
> Currently the only reason the meetings get recorded is someone from
> (or on behalf of) the UTOSF shows up with a microphone.

Screencasts can be done with icecast servers which is what we use to
stream. The trick is two fold.

First, we need to have the bandwidth to stream that screencast and
second we need a way to keep it in sync with the presenter speaking.

It seems the first is much easier to solve than the second, but
usually its not always a guarantee we'll have good internet
connections. On the other hand, if we did have that, vnc *might*
solve the issue with screencasting using something like istanbul.
However, that then requires a person have that capability and it
supports our methodology of open source audio.

>
> At this point, I think your best bet is to start bugging the
> presenter, once he's announced on the list, to make a screencast while
> he presents. :-P
>
> This whole process needs to be easier, imo. I'm thinking an all-in-one
> VGA/DVI pass-through dongle (with mic!) that records the video signal
> on its way to the projector. :)

That would be cool! Let me know when you wanna sell this, we'll make
MILLIONS!! MILLIONS I tell ya!

Cheers,

Clint

[Mike Moore]

You may want to chat up the Confreaks guys. They have all the equipment to do this and would probably be a good resource to investigate this further. (But I don't think they've made their millions yet.)

http://confreaks.com/

We've used them for the MountainWest RubyConf the past couple years.

http://mtnwestrubyconf2008.confreaks.com/

[Clint Savage]

I know all about the confreaks guys. And while they are great guys,
they aren't cheap! To have them record our conference was going to be
more than half our budget :(

I'm well aware of the costs involved and what it takes, but we're
doing it for free. There's nothing stopping you guys from finding
someone who'll do it all better and brighter, but I don't think they'd
do it for nothing. There's always strings attached...

The UTOS strings are that we make sure the content is creative commons
and we do very little to the audio except improve the quality. We do
add a bit of underwriting to benefit local companies as well. We're
working on new recording devices, and in the future, we'll do video
and screencasts streams as well.

Cheers,

Clint

[Mike Moore]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 3:30 PM, Clint Savage <her...@gmail.com> wrote:

I know all about the confreaks guys.  And while they are great guys,
they aren't cheap!  To have them record our conference was going to be
more than half our budget :(

I'm well aware of the costs involved and what it takes, but we're
doing it for free.  There's nothing stopping you guys from finding
someone who'll do it all better and brighter, but I don't think they'd
do it for nothing.  There's always strings attached...

I wasn't suggesting hiring them, just asking them for their recommendation on what works. Relax. (And they _are_ cheap compared to other vendors.)

[Jonathan Ellis]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Seth House <whit...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There's been talk in the past of video taping the meetings. I'm pretty
> sure the Utah Open Source Foundation would be happy to host video or
> screencasts beside the audio they currently host. The problem is
> having someone that also has the hardware show up to record every
> meeting. I'm not sure we have the hardware, and we don't have a
> volunteer for this yet.

I recorded Seth's GAE presentation with my laptop webcam. It turned
out pretty good, for the amount of effort it required (almost none).
I am super lazy so even the small amount of effort to import from a
"real" camera would be more than I'm up for.

-Jonathan

[Ryan Smith]

> Screencasts can be done with icecast servers which is what we use to
> stream.  The trick is two fold.
>
> First, we need to have the bandwidth to stream that screencast and
> second we need a way to keep it in sync with the presenter speaking.

Hmm actually I wasn't referring to it being streamed, but recorded the
same way, then hosted later.

Of course the limitation would still be the willingness of the
presenter to prepare their machine in a way that would allow it.