[PLUG-AV] First steps

[James Bromberger]

Hi all,

There's about four or five of us now on the mailing list, so lets start
chatting.

PLUG Committee have agreed to purchase a Canopus Twinpact 100[1] for us
for capturing the presentation video (and audio) to DV. I'm also going
to grab a wireless radio lapel mic[2] at the same time. I'm going to
order from Amazon US as its around half the price of local retailers,
but that does mean having it delivered to someone in the US and then
resent to us here. I'm trying to get confirmation from a friend before I
place the order ASAP.

If you've watched the video[3], you'll see that woring with raw DV (DIF)
video makes the most sense as each frame is individually compressed,
unlink in an MPEG stream where each frame may be compressed based upon
the contents of the previous frame. So this means DV cameras and
Firewire/1394/iLink as a primary video, but I'd like to be able to use
USB web cams as well (if the picture is clear enough) as a secondary
image source. Reason for that is that I can see us mounting a USB camera
on a stick and holding that high, low, and possibly even mounted on the
ceiling, plus means that it opens up a bunch of laptops with webcams
(though built in web cams are often poor quality).

I have a DV camera we can play with to start with; it's an old JVC
GR-DVX4 camcorder (10+ years old), and I think Nick - did you say you
had a camera we can play with as well? If we get enough kit together to
play, we can replace parts with "off the shelf" as we find suitable
units, and have experience at what we're looking at.

Beyond that, here's what I think we should organise:

  * Large crate/box, preferably on wheels, and preferably lockable for
    holding our kit.
  * Bunch of firewire 1394a cables.  6pin to 6 pin, 6 pin to 4 pin, and
    4 pin to 4 pin.
  * An audio mixer, and various audio cables.
  * Some tripods. Anyone got a source for good, cheap tripods?
  * Some old PCs or laptops with enough grunt to grab frames from
    firewire and punt it out the network (next to each camera & the
    Twinpact)
  * Some gaming headphones-with-mic headsets (3 - 4)? There are some
    from Officeworks for between $10 and $50?
  * A gigabit ethernet switch.  Perhaps I should get a cheap 4/5 port
    one from Amazon at the same time?
  * I have a reel of CAT 5, perhaps make up some 5, 10 and 20 metre cables?
  * Some power strips



I don't think we have enough kit to play with a set up yet, but we do
need to start to gather parts, and research. So, outside of borrowing
the above list of kit, what sources do we have to purchase. Audio is the
most important aspect; it must be clear and interference free. But not
only the audio of the speaker, but of any audience questions, and
outside of the presentation, some audio of the room.

I suggest that, when we have two cameras available, and three PCs, we
get together to start plugging bits together and seeing what happens.

In the mean time, finding a supply of cameras with firewire ports would
be good. No fancy features are needed on cameras, so long as video
frames come out of the DV port, and cheap computers with DV port(s).
Also, some PCs, preferable also having an mic input and headphone output
so we can run a "mumble" server (teamspeak, Voip) at the same time. I
was trying to find a nettop and work out how to get Firewire on it. Thre
are Firewire USB cards, but they may not capture video in real time (USB
2.0 being 400 Mbit/s, and Firewire 1394a being 480 Mbit/s -- but I can't
confirm if it does or doesn't work yet).

Anyway, any ideas for anything else at this stage? I'll talk about
mumble in a separate email...

  James


[1] Twinpact 100
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000K3HT1K/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=A2LXBKOLL3J3K6
[2] Lapel mic
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006JPD8/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=A2LXBKOLL3J3K6
[3] Making conference videos http://linuxconfau.blip.tv/file/4721989/

-- 
Mobile: +61 422 166 708, Email: james_AT_rcpt.to

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