[PLUG-AV] Workshop summary

[James Bromberger]

Hi all,

We had our get together tonight - Tim B, Jason N and me. We found the
oldest two PC we had were dead - so we salvaged parts and have disposed
of them. We are still lacking a PCI or PCI-E video card for the donated
AMD motherboard, but we now have an HDD in it (from one of the dead
machines). We also have two spare firewire cards too (and a few 100 MBit
network cards).

AV1, the black box, seemed to not work with headphones/mic. Needs some
more work. AV3 (small white box) worked well after Jason fixed the
audio. We also tried streaming TWO feeds from the same host - one with
the video camera, and one with the Twinpact - but this was still causing
lock ups like we experienced a month ago at Artifactory. Indeed, just
having two devices plugged in, starting the grab - which hangs trying to
start capture - and then unplug one DV device - and magically the
capture commences for the remaining device.

We discussed the pending doom of firewire, and we're thinking more along
the lines of HDMI capture from more recent HDMI cameras; so the Black
magic device (Intesnity Pro) that Nick pointed out on Apr 21 may be the
trick (http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/models/). But
we don't know if that works, and which cameras support live video over
HDMI versus only transferring already recorded stuff, nor what load
downscaling from HDMI to DV will put on the camera capture boxes - or if
we start to capture at Full HD, mix at Full HD, and then downsample
during encoding.

So stuff we're still missing in the short term is a second camera to
borrow, a second tripod to borrow, and a fast quite desktop to encode with.

Longer term, we started thinking of what we should put on the grant for
doing the one-room solution:

  * 3 x video cameras, potentially HDMI based if we can't get DV
  * 3 x HDMI capture devices/cards
  * 3 x tripods (no discussion on what ones)
  * 4 x wireless lapel mics (so we can do panel sessions)
  * 4 x wired, balanced mics
  * 4 x USB XLR inputs
  * 2 x wireless mics


So now we need to put models and prices against this. Anyone got
recommendations? For USB XLR - there's Blue Icicle at around $35 each,
and MXL USB Mic Mate (Classic/Pro) around $40 each. As to radio mics -
we have one now, but that model can only have two channels. What about a
four person panel - wired or wireless mics? The sooner we can decide on
this, the sooner we get a grant request in.


  JEB


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

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