[Scott Mitchell]

And, for anyone reading this post in the future, I would highly recommend the camera. Our “commodity hardware” test went really well. Here is the result.

Note that we captured the speaker w/ the Canon ($400) and the screen with an Epiphan device ($800). The camera was on maximum 20x zoom to get the speaker. We shot from the top of an auditorium. The “camera person” was someone who I grabbed at the beginning of the event to see whether the average person would be able to operate the camera.

https://azgroups.nextslide.com/state-of-the-union-scott-guthrie

What is cool is that we now can have many members of our technology community capture these events without the expense of professional gear … which is better than not capturing the event at all.

== slm ==

[Scott Mitchell]

I like the singular software solutions … however they sort of do *too* much (they turn several streams into a single stream). I just want the face tracking, zoom/pan and crop functionality on a single stream.

Maybe I will just email them to see if they can split out that feature since they clearly have figured out 99% of the solution.

== slm ==

[Scott Mitchell]

@ John Rofrano, you were correct. We used the “fake” progressive mode of PF30 as it produced better video.

== slm ==

[Scott Mitchell]

In fact, check this out. Using Sony AVC. Selected Main Profile and Constant 4,000,000 bps. Here is my MediaInfo.

It notes High Profile (High@L4.0) and the bitrate is Variable.

Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=2, N=15
Muxing mode : Container profile=Main@3.1
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 26s 26ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 3 406 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 16.0 Mbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.123
Stream size : 10.6 MiB (93%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2011-04-21 23:33:52
Tagged date : UTC 2011-04-21 23:33:52

[Scott Mitchell]

Since we have to re-encode anyway, I’m wondering if the 60i will be the best source. We are still running some subjective tests … I will report back.

[Scott Mitchell]

When I use MediaInfo on a Sony AVC file, it shows it as “Variable” instead of “Constant.”

To make things worse, while the “bit rate” is close to what I set for the render (I set 4,000 Kbps and Media info shows 3,367 Kbps), the “Maximum bit rate” is large (16Mbps).

Anyone else getting this result?

[Scott Mitchell]

I miss it a great deal — to the point of using Vegas 9 for a recent project.

My workflow entailed some basic head/tail trimming of source mxf files and encoding them for the web. Being able to do that, save the project and submit for network encoding (even on my same machine) was a better workflow for me vs. having 50 sessions of Vegas 10 up and running and competing for CPU to encode.

This feature is in all of the competing tools; and I really hope it comes back to Vegas.

[Scott Mitchell]

Oh…and by the way, I typically use View -> HTML as it provides the best view of the info.

[Scott Mitchell]

Indeed, MediaInfo is easiest and has shell integration.

https://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download

Go to Options -> Preferences

This page (on the latest version) allows for explorer integration and even a tooltip when you just hover over a file it recognizes.

[Scott Mitchell]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. This is a great community.