Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 23:03:32 -0500
Reply-To: Howard_Schreier@ITA.DOC.GOV
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Howard_Schreier@ITA.DOC.GOV
Subject: Re: Filming HASUG Meetings - Help
I suggest applying a bit of cost-benefit analysis to the proposition, and
also thinking more broadly about what is the best way to "deliver" a
meeting to people who could not attend or who did attend and wish to review
something.
We (Washington DC SAS Users Group (DCSUG)) occasionally put our speakers'
presentations online. This is only done with permission, of course. An
example is the macro talk which Ian gave a few months ago. Ian was willing
to share his Powerpoint file, and I uploaded both the handout pages (as a
PDF file) and the webified slides.
http://www.dc-sug.org/macdesign.html
I could argue that this is more useful than a movie, particularly an
unedited movie. It's certainly more navigable, and I think this is
important because many people will not be interested in an end-to-end
viewing.
Of course it could be made better. One could make an audio recording and
then attach excerpts to the individual slides.
To reduce the perceived separation, one could take a few still pictures of
speakers and of the audience and insert them into the web report on the
meeting.
Short video segments could also be used, but I don't think they are an
especially important part of the multimedia mix for this type of event.
But utilizing multimedia rather than end-to-end video is probably not win-
win. You would reduce storage and bandwidth requirements, but editing labor
would increase.
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 19:51:40 -0500, Charles_S_Patridge
<Charles_S_Patridge@PRODIGY.NET> wrote:
>Hi Jack,
>
>Sorry, I missed your comments on this topic.
>
>Yes, I have tried a number of formats - AVI, MOV, Flash, MPEG-1, WMV and
finally
>VHS (not really digital).
>
>In addition, I have the ability to reduce frame rates, image sizes, and
lower
>audio quality, and finally, to use a number of Video and Audio CODECs but
none
>of them give me all the best when it comes to reducing the size of an
output
>movie and still keep it under less than 3 megs as well as maintaining
decent
>viewing quality.
>
>If I had plenty of web space, say 200 or more megs, than I might be
tempted to
>try going forward with what equipment and software I have but I also have
to
>worry about bandwidth. Currently I am limited to 7.5 gigs of traffic on
my web
>site per month.
>
>In the month of September of 2002, I made a 2.5 minute video in memory of
9/11
>and this movie took about 20 megs of space. I did not advertise the
existence
>of this movie very much, and in two weeks time, I had about 4.5 gigs of
traffic
>- primarily due to this one file. As a result, I had to take it down or I
would
>have had to pay additional charges (like $30-50 more per month) to handle
the
>traffic. And since I knew I would be taking that movie down within a
month, I
>decided it was not worth the extra expenses to make it available.
>
>And to make HASUG sessions available on the web for people to see - I
estimate I
>would need at least another 150 megs of storage plus 15 gigs of traffic
>bandwidth per month to do all this. And since I would most likely make it
free
>- the extra expense would have to come out of SCONSIG's charitable funds
which I
>did not think was appropriate.
>
>So, I will continue to do more testing and research on compressing digital
>movies as well as reviewing newer cameras/camcorders/software etc to see
what
>the future technology can offer the small guys like me. If I had the
resources
>such as SAS, then it would be a done deal <grin> and no problems! Heck, I
could
>probably create a new SAS product for sale - PROC USERGROUPS On-Line
<grin>.
>And at the normal going rate of $40K, then I could easily afford the extra
>webspace and bandwidth.
>
>Still keep those comments and suggestions coming - it makes for an
interesting
>exercise to see if I can implement them.
>
>REgards,
>Charles Patridge
>Email: Charles_S_Patridge@prodigy.net
>web: http://www.sconsig.com
>
>DKVJ Cons Co UK wrote:
>
>> Aye, there's the rub.
>>
>> There are some presentation issues here. When you reduce an image in
size,
>> some process will vote on which pixels to accept, and which to ignore.
To
>> see what I mean, you could draw the capital letter 'E' on a piece of
graph
>> paper. One cell height for each line, two cells height for each line
>> spacing. You will now have a structure that is seven cells high. Now
>> reduce that to four cells high. No matter how you calculate it, you
either
>> lose one of the bars, or collapse two of them together. This is an
artefact
>> of digitising in a lossy format. By reducing the size of the image, you
>> must lose information, and reducing the size of the image will cause
>> information to be lost.
>>
>> If all you did was lose bits, that may be acceptable. Unfortunately,
>> because objects are moving in relation to the camera, the rendering of a
>> shape will keep changing. You've seen this on television when someone
wears
>> a striped garment in the background, and the garment appears to move and
>> shift as the camera perspective shifts. It's less obvious in film, but
when
>> film is digitised for television the stripes move between the area where
>> they are, and then are not captured. So the garment appears to strobe.
>>
>> When you do this with a presentation, you're likely to lose parts of
words
>> on the display, or make a highly unwatchable picture.
>>
>> By the way, when I capture my DV material, it is first rendered in full
AVI.
>> In this format, 13 minutes of video takes more than 1GB of disk space.
As
>> it is rendered in MPEG-3 losses are introduced, and a piece of software
>> makes a decision about a clump of pixels that may render them all in the
>> same colour. The result is that my pan shot across the lake at last
years
>> SUGI looks fine in native DV and AVI, but gradually becomes more
indistinct
>> as the available space for image information is filled and pieces of my
>> picture are thrown away. MPEG-1 is substantially more lossy, even
though it
>> did render my pan in a file that easily fit in a small part of a CD!
>>
>> It's a frustration Charles seems to have experienced as well.
>>
>> By the way, some of us use another video system called Phase Alternate
Line
>> (PAL). While NTSC is based on 60 fields per second of 525 lines, PAL is
>> based on 625 line images at 50 fields per second ("more, less often" as
my
>> Californian friend might remark). They also have different colour burst
>> frequencies, which led to some wag suggesting NTSC is a mnemonic that
makes
>> a derogatory remark about NTSCs colour rendering ability. One must ask
>> though, how many people are still using 640*480 display sizes? And how
many
>> will be happy watching a picture one quarter of that size? It might work
>> for bouncing babys, for entirely different reasons, but live video is
>> another matter. I come back to the question implicit in my first reply;
>> what are you trying to convey, what are you trying to achieve, and what
is
>> the limitation of the medium?
>>
>> Kind regards
>>
>> David
>>
>> Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 19:17:20 -0700
>> From: Jack Hamilton <JackHamilton@FIRSTHEALTH.COM>
>> Subject: Re: Filming HASUG Meetings - Help
>>
>> Did you try AVI or any other formats besides MPEG?
>>
>> 320*240 is small, but you don't have to get much bigger. A standard
>> NTSC signal is only 525 lines high.
>>
>> --
>> JackHamilton@FirstHealth.com
>> Manager, Technical Development
>> METRICS Department, First Health
>> West Sacramento, California USA
>
>--
>Charles S. Patridge
>PDPC, Ltd.
>172 Monce Road
>Burlington, CT 06013
>Phone: 860-673-9278
>Email: Charles_S_Patridge at prodigy dot net
>Web: http://www.sconsig.com
>Web: http://pages.prodigy.net/charles_s_patridge/
>Web: http://www.munic.state.ct.us/burlington/
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