Re: KFest 2006 report

Eric Shepherd wrote:
On 2006-07-21 16:18:38 -0400, "Kirk Mitchell" <kirkmitchell@xxxxxxxxx> said:

Still, Sheppy may make them available for downloading, but most likely
quite a while after KFest is over. No one wants to do all that much
work while here, when so much fun stuff is going on. B-{)


I don't know yet what I'm going to do with the tapes I have. They're not very good -- the lighting in the room we did the presentations in wasn't conducive to decent video of the projected screen, and with all the echo in the room, you can only marginally make any sense of what the speaker is saying.

Pretty lousy, in general. I hope we get a better room next year.

WRT this year's tapes:

Although it's a lot more work than just copying to a DVD recorder, most
video editing programs (like Pinnacle, Adobe, etc.) offer tools to
correct brightness, contrast, and color balance, which can do wonders
to improve bad "exposure". The audio DSP options can also remove some
of the artifacts of "cathedral reverb" etc., but only within limits.

WRT future years:

Lighting is always an issue. Reducing the room lighting is generally
required when videotaping a projection screen.

But the audio can be remarkably improved by using a wireless clip-on
microphone and connecting the receiver to the camera's "mic in". Of
course, the standard "please repeat the question" protocol must be used.

I realize that all this makes it slightly more of a "production", but
I assume that "editing in the camera" is the norm, and that copying
DV tapes to DVD has been made quite easy with most DVD recorders.

Once a "master" DVD has been made, computers make copying for
distribution pretty fast and easy.

Still, at 2 or 2.5 hours of presentation per (single-layer) DVD, the
presentations could easily add up to 3 DVDs per day... But it seems
like a good way to make the 'Fest accessible to more people.

And with the cost of recordable DVDs now regularly at or below 20 cents
per disk, the costs are quite reasonable (not counting disk-swapping
time during duplication ;-).

The sessions could even be put up on a web server for viewing, as long
as the resolution was good enough to read the projection screen.

My own experience with making such videos suggests that with a single
camera, zooming between a frame-filling screen shot and a wider "2-shot"
with the presenter can be very helpful in making the screen readable
while adding interest. Of course, if there's a physical object being
demoed, then getting "up close and personal" is usually required to
make it worthwhile on the video.

This kind of thing is best done by someone who is fascinated with both
the topic of the presentation and the making of videos, since there is
value in the "director" being able to make relevance decisions.

As with most things in the Apple II world, the making of 'Fest videos
would be a labor of love, so the joy would be in the journey.

-michael

New, faster SUDOKU v2.0 solver for Apple II's!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."
.

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