the Debian Videoteam -- Behind the Scenes
Channel: DebConf Videos
Date: 2017-11-24

by Eric Dantan Rzewnicki
by Holger Levsen

At: DebConf8
http://penta.debconf.org/dc8_schedule/events/288.en.html
https://debconf8.debconf.org/

Debconf-video: Software, hardware and workflow

The talk will cover the hardware, software and manpower required for
a typical dvswitch usecase.  Some caveats and challenges regarding
sound, lighting and rigging will be discussed, and live demonstration
of dvswitch in use will be given.

Since 2005, the talks at Debconf have been recorded on video, to be
published online.  Beginning in 2006, talks have also been streamed
live.  One of the goals is to get recordings in high quality online
immediately, with little or no post-production work.  The video
switcher dvswitch, realized in software, and a disk-based recording 
workflow is bringing us closer to that goal.  Tape is still used as
backup in case of failures, but we expect those to become rarer as 
the system matures. A large part of the post production work is 
restoring failed recordings. 

Dvswitch was developed by Ben Hutchings just in time for the Debconf7
in Edinburgh.  It enabled a multi-camera live production using cheap
cameras and modest laptops.  The laptops relays DV streams over
TCP/IP.  This avoids any degradation due to long cable stretches, and
makes cabling cheap and convenient.  The output is DV straight from
the cameras, producing a very crisp master video.

Dvswitch works with sources and sinks.  The sources send video from a
file or a firewire port to a listening instance of dvswitch, which can 
run on a remote machine. 
dvswitch listens to several sources and displays a scaled down black
and white preview image of each one.  One of the sources is displayed
at full resolution in colour; this is the outgoing stream, which is
sent to the listening sinks.  Each sink may send the stream to disk or
to an encoder for live streaming.  It is common to do both; store the
raw master to disk, and forward the master to an encoder, and
subsequently to a streaming server.

While dvswitch saves us a bundle in hardware, the video team is still
heavy on manpower.  Remotely operated cameras would help, and we are
still looking for affordable solutions that work well on Linux.


 The talk will cover the hardware, software and manpower required for
a typical dvswitch usecase.  Some caveats and challenges regarding
sound, lighting and rigging will be discussed.  A live demonstration
of dvswitch in use will be given.  We would also like to offer
rehearsal sessions with the demo rig for those who are interested.

Room: Salon del mar
Scheduled start: 2008-08-11 18:00:00