[Music]
hello everyone and welcome back to the
kia ora theater at linuxconf australia
2022. um
first uh this talk we've got is ryan
werner who is a familiar face around
australian community tech conferences uh
and leads data teams by day and
automates video by night with next day
video who's the team that delivers uh
the awesome recordings of our talks and
handles the av at the time um
sometimes they do it on the same day
which doesn't like they've got to rename
the company at some point i guess
um today he's going to share some of the
things next day video australia and a
set of volunteers to facilitate
wonderful experiences at conferences in
22
the last two years 2022 and 2021
including pike online au and linux
configu
awesome thank you um and a big shout out
to chris from the av team who's uh
studio we're currently in producing the
show i almost dropped this talk because
i've just been so busy doing av prep
that i was like look i'm probably not
going to do the talk and chris would not
let me leave last night to help me
actually record this so uh big thank you
to chris um i hope you enjoy the talk um
if you don't we can blame chris uh but
now i'm kidding but hopefully everyone
finds this informative
g'day my name's ryan i'm here to talk to
you about virtual events and peel back
the curtain of events like linux
conveyor
you can see running behind me
and show you what we do backstage to
create an engaging event both for
delegates and presenters
for those who don't know me i run next
day video australia we run the video
teams of technical events like linux
config u and python
we also write lots of video encoding and
workflow automation software
we've been doing the av thing for a
while now i think i've been running the
lca av team for about 16 years and pycon
are you a little under that
we have learned a lot about running
online virtual events over the last two
years so i'm hoping to share some tips
and tricks with you today
so 2020 saw many events forcing the
online sphere um what was the totally
like for many online events turns out it
wasn't very good
so we had a bunch of requirements when
we were looking for uh what we could do
in the online space uh particularly for
python online but some other events as
well um we've done a little bit of stuff
before particularly around hybrid events
um but we had this set of requirements
we wanted to be able to run multiple
video streams and multiple rooms like an
lcl or python in person we wanted to be
able to run multiple streams not just
one we wanted to be able to allow for
both pre-records and live streams
pre-records because we have an
international audience and we want to
not have people presenting at 3am in the
morning
we need to hell out for accessibility so
we want people on linux mac and windows
to be able to share their audio video
and camera with us
lots of solutions out there only allow
for either windows or mac os or a
combination so they were out of the
equations that was important for us
we wanted av control of what was being
displayed lots of av solutions will
marks on the client's end and give us
very little control over things like
audio levels so we wanted to be able to
control that that was very important to
us
we want to allow for community
engagement so q a chat moderation stuff
like that
we
needed uh to make sure that presenters
were well supported so we were doing uh
checks with them we'll make sure their
audio and video was good
because particularly early 2020 lots of
people were brand new to this thing and
had no idea how to do a good online
presentation
and we wanted to make sure the
volunteers were well supported through
that process so we had good systems and
players good training and play school
logistics in place to ensure this would
work well and there wasn't very much out
there um
what many events ended up doing in 2020
which i'm sure you're all very familiar
with as they run a something like a zoom
webinar there's a few tools out there
that do this
they'll email presenters a link that
they would join at the time of their
presentation they couldn't really play
pre-records um if video was uploaded
post conference they would generally end
up with a single
video for a whole day so you didn't
really get a single video of a single
presentation it was you can zoom through
this video and find where that person's
presentation is
most didn't do multi-room it was too
hard so they did single events
and sometimes it had something like a
slack or an irc channel but not always
so
there are a bunch of issues with this
approach
audio video quality often wasn't so good
uh really hard to hear people
particularly if they hadn't done much
online presentations before technical
issues were quite common like dropouts
during the talk
things like run on time lots of
confusion lots of no-shows so that
doesn't really make for a good
experience either for the delegates or
the presenters
so it doesn't really feel like a
confidence there's no community vibe
there's no sense of actually being
online
um
a bunch of virtual event platforms
started appearing in 2020 so venulis
which we use for lca and python hoping
there's a bunch of them out there they
do very very good things so they'll save
us right not really um so let's look at
a physical event so this is basically
what's been developed over many hundreds
of years as best practice we can see
there there's a physical space with
physical areas
there's also different roles so we have
distinct roles uh for people to do
within that space so we've got room
coordinators we've got stage managers
all the mcs we've got cent engineers av
techs presenters
general helpers uh you know people
helping the audience people running
around microphones in the audience you
know for presenters we have a green room
to a system give them uh give them more
support we've got a side stage
av are doing things like holding slides
and they're running backup laptops
you know all that stuff again has been
developed over 100 years as kind of a
best practice
which pretty much every physical event
has now it's kind of a de facto thing
that people kind of expect and do not
even really think much about it
um
what happened in online space as many
people kind of sort of software solution
to solve their problems you know they
get some software they've been people in
they've got presenters
you know uh they've got a chat you'll be
fine right and that didn't really make
for a great experience so virtual event
platforms are amazing but they only only
solve some of her issues they don't
solve all of her issues logistic
planning is often forgotten um again
many events seek to find the perfect
tool to solve their problems they don't
really think about the human process or
the human workflow you know what what's
the experience going to be like for the
presenter what's the experience going to
be like the delegate you know um how do
we optimize that and make sure they're
not neglected or forgotten about
it's really easy of things to get
confusing uh particularly when you're
running multiple streams um you know you
might have a really really good mc or a
really good av person running one room
you go to a second or third room and
things don't work quite the same
and you know consistency with online
event is incredibly important we want to
make sure things run in a consistent
non-fashion particularly if you've got a
presenter presenting in multiple rooms
this is venulous um again all you're
using venulus at the moment so you
should be familiar with it hopefully but
uh again this is fairly common with lots
of online platforms so on the left there
you've got your channels all your
different streams or your breakout
sessions which are really important uh
you've got your video streaming in the
middle which is generally your you're
kind of on stage and on the right there
you've got your chat which is where your
your delegates experience the events and
chat with each other
so i'm going to talk about how we'll
solve things for linuxconf but this is
not the only solution um we've gone this
route because it gives us a lot of
control over av quality and meets our
criteria
most of these tools are open source
unfortunately not all
you might notice there we do a bunch of
things one of those tools are is obs
studio running on gpu accelerated cloud
vms that unfortunately does run on
windows purely because the nv ink
acceleration for windows works a lot
better for obs than linux
some of these parts of the stack we are
looking at replacing so
this works really well for us this is
predominantly what we use with some
changes for previous events
but this is constantly evolving um with
the goal of ensuring that most of it is
open source
um so the important elements there are
stream yard that's our guest streaming
tool that's how we beam our presenters
in from their computers we use rocket
chat for lca for our backstage that's
how we coordinate with all our delegates
uh sorry we
we this is how we coordinate with our
presenters and our event staff
to ensure they know where to go uh we
use obs studio so this is for things
like mixing and holding slides so we
don't just stream uh stream yard
directly to delegates we have obs in the
middle and that allows us to do all
sorts of neat things like play
pre-records play holding slides people
know what's coming up next
um and other bits and pieces as well as
some backup streaming options in case
stream yeah doesn't operate
we use nginx rtmp that's used for
basically beaming around different input
snap ports around the place so that's
how we get stream yard into obs
we use mux so mux is our hls encoder
what that allows us to do is basically
get the video stream from obs into venus
in the format that venulis requires uh
the nice thing about hls is it will
automatically degrade depending on the
viewer's connectivity so
if you've got a great net connection and
great latency you'll get the full 1080p
30 frames a second if you're in a worse
connection it will it should
automatically degrade to a lower
connection so i think all the way down
to three uh 240p i believe um that
should be reasonably seamless for
viewers
so this is kind of how it's all pieced
together uh a little bit like a physical
venue so we've got our dedicated roles
we've got wranglers av techs room av
tech emcees presenters and people
dealing with the audience uh session um
session organizers
um every event calls them something
different um but it's basically roughly
analogous to how a physical event would
operate
so down the bottom there you can see
we've got a stage access a rocket chat
so that's a little bit like our green
room in a physical event so you're kind
of sitting at the presenter before the
event
making sure they're all sorted out
before they go on stage which is our
et cetera et cetera and uh venulis and
our mux is how our presenters sorry how
our delegates are enjoying the event
so we're trying to replicate in-person
processes things like introductions
thanks use q and a's
you know communicating to presenters
coordinating with them making sure the
presenters feel really well supported
through this process and have a system
and a process everyone is clear on from
a to z um again just like you would have
with a physical event you need to do
this stuff in
the virtual space as well
we have a separate backstage uh to make
sure that we can give presenters
confidence that they are well supported
through this process
um and it's where we place our links to
a guest streaming tool so where they
will log into things like streamyard
that is all done through the dedicated
backstage so again bit like your green
or speakers room at a physical event
this is our backstage uh this was done
for python last year we're using rocker
chat for lca which is a little bit
different but there's some important
elements here so on the left there we've
got our dedicated rooms um
we use different rooms for different
parts of the process so both under
presenter joins uh the chat as well as
all the way through checking them all
the way through when they're actually
online on the stream we use different
dedicated rooms there um on middles your
chat and on the right there is basically
all your presenters so we're trying to
make sure that everyone has got their
real name so when we're trying to ping
people on the online platform we know
who they are
this can be any tool um even irc works
but the important thing is to make sure
they can get notifications so we can
ping them at the relevant times and we
know who people are
um
we use uh stream yard for our guest
streaming tool again many tools out
there a lot of them unfortunately
require desktop software installed we
opted for a webrtc one
so it works on any recent chrome or
firefox and allows us to share a
presenter's audio video and a screen
share and the cool thing about streaming
we like particularly is we actually get
the person's camera audio and screen
share separately so it gives us av
control over what displays on screen
which is great because we can make sure
all the presentations are coming out in
a consistent manner which we feel is
important
we also don't stream that directly to
venulis we actually intercept it using
an rtmp relay and bring it into obs that
allows us to do things like overlays
play pre-records it gives us far more
control over what's going on
uh there's a bunch of uh things we need
to do before the events which is really
important to make sure things go
successfully so we
about a month and a half out from the
event set up a speaker's guide
the speaker's guide is a detailed
document which basically runs through
the presenter exactly what they need to
do
tech tips
how the backstage will work who they
need to contact for questions
it's really there to answer any
questions they need about the the
conference because every online event
does things a little bit differently so
ensuring that your speakers are kind of
across this is good
um
probably i would say probably half a
half of presenters read this half of
presenters don't read this but it's
still worth writing one regardless
because you have been
even ensuring that your conference
organizers and staff are across the
processes
even just documenting it is a really
really important step just so everyone's
really clear because everyone can think
of a different slightly different thing
about the same process so
uh we also make sure all presenters get
a tech check before the event that's
done about two to four weeks before
um and that's basically a way we run
through the av setup with the presenter
so we use exactly the same platform we
stream with which is going to be
streamyard
we make sure that they join the
packstage platform so that's designed to
mimic the process on a day so by the
time they've done a tech check they've
kind of done the on the day process
they're kind of familiar with that kind
of routine
um and we'll run through them you know
we've checked the audio we'll check
their video we'll check their screen
share if there's any caveats we've kind
of worked through with them in advance
so what's going on there um some of the
time in fact it happens quite often um
we'll give them some really practical
tips we
probably from i reckon three or four
presenters say to us you know this was
really helpful like i've been presenting
at events over the last two years
and i've learned things here that i
haven't done before so these are really
valuable and they actually help
presenters present better at future
conferences
what i care about most is clear audio a
lot of people buy microphones and i'll
cover this in the next slide but they do
not uh
do not know how to set them up properly
um and even though it's a really nice
microphone there's a lot of echo going
on and the issue with echo you do end up
with quite fatiguing audio in terms of
the tech check or making sure the
presenter is sorted out in advance of
the check check we recommend a few
simple things
we've got simple webcam there so
internal webcams are generally okay an
external webcam like a logitech c930 or
something looks really snazzy
particularly with something like a you
know some good lighting
dslrs are good too but they are
generally far more complicated because
they go through a much more complicated
encode pipeline because you've got
things like hdmi capture box uh you know
hdmi cabling um cameras can do bizarre
and strange things
and a microphone a lot of a lot of
people over the pandemic have actually
got really nice microphones and a really
common issue we see is the microphone is
really far away from people's mouth
and that means you're getting a lot of
room echo and room ambience in because
you're kind of picking up bounced audio
off objects you're not really picking up
the clear audio from someone's mouth in
the microphone so ensuring the
microphone is mounted properly is facing
properly and is actually close to your
mouth even a little bit in frame will
make you sound a million times more
amazing
um and wearing headphones is good too
because if you're using a microphone and
using external speakers it will actually
pick up some of that audio and you'll
get some weird effects going on so
wearing a headphone or earbuds
ensures that the audio comes in
optimally and again you don't have to go
out and buy expensive lighting
natural lighting if you're presenting
during the day if you can get your
laptop or whatever near a window and get
some lighting onto you naturally that
works amazingly
cabled internet is a good thing to do um
wi-fi is good but it can drop out so if
you can actually get cabled it means you
have a far more solid stream
and we recommend a second monitor so um
if possible uh you have two monitors the
monitor in front of you is where you're
presenting from generally a full screen
presentation and then next year you'll
be displaying your stream out session
and that allows us to actually chat to
you during your presentation and say hey
you know things are coming through great
there's a technical issue you've got
five minutes left it just allows things
to go a lot smoother
during the event we have a workflow so
we have effectively three gates for
every presenter
at t-minus 90 being 90 minutes before
their talk we check that they're online
are you online are you good to go great
in 30 minutes we'll ping you again for
your tech check so they feel well
supported they ask any questions during
that period of time
uh team under 60 we have a separate team
at separated team
who will invite the presenter into a
another online stream but that's not
going live and we'll basically run
through the tech check procedure again
so again the same av checks we did
before the event
is on 60 minutes out from the
presentation
that is done to ensure that there isn't
going to be any
issues we've got sufficient time to sort
it out
and that t minus 10 when the curtain
comes down which i'll show in a minute
uh the presenter then joins their actual
stream yard session so they don't go
directly on live um there's a 10 minute
gap where things are not live where
they've got time to kind of settle in
talk to the emcee get introductions
right and they know exactly when they're
going to go live so by the time they're
going on there they feel confident you
know they're ready um and they should
present to uh you know we're giving them
all the chance to present as well as
they can so with our conference schedule
we generally request at least 10 minutes
between each session some virtual
coverages do talk and talk and talk and
talk that's both fatiguing for both
staff and presenters and also doesn't
give us the ability to line the next
person up so that 10-minute break is
intentional we're trying to get the next
presenter ready and that's when the
curtain comes down and we show the
showing next slide
which is like this so we generally have
a loop like this uh which basically
shows a all the sponsors and any
messaging for the conference and at the
top there it says when the next uh next
talk is coming up and that's fed diamond
that's fed dynamically by schedule data
which runs the rest of our systems
because it's online we want clear
explicit documented roles
every role has a particular role and
particular focus the ability to hot swap
in
volunteers if required
we want to make sure that all
communications with a delegate and a
presenter is done out in the open lots
of events use dms and emails and it gets
particularly confusing you need to think
about the experience from a delegate or
a presenter
you know think about the communication
how will the person see what's going on
if they need to disappear or go away how
can someone else pick up that role so if
you do all your communications in a
backstage platform out in the open
the process becomes very explicit and
everyone understands how to follow that
role so it just makes things like
swapping in other people much much
easier to do it also makes the
experience of that of that
volunteer much more enjoyable too so not
working in isolation they're able to see
what's happening out in the open and it
feels like a real event
um that one already got uh what are the
key stuff roles so we have four key
roles we want to assign we've got av
technicians they operate stream yard obs
etc etc they take care of all the iv
bits and pieces
the speaker wrangler so they have got
particular focuses so we have both the
speaker angler and the mc the speaker
wrangler is looking after the presenter
on the backstage they're just looking at
the backstage the mc is focusing on the
stream out session
and they're thinking about introductions
q a
two minutes left keeping the presenter
on time um
we do that because i early in the
pandemic i tried doing all these roles
myself
and my brain broke because there's a lot
to keep track of lots of windows it's
absolutely insane so by having explicit
roles on defined applications and to
find things i need to do
it's much easier for volunteer to help
out and it makes for a much more
enjoyable process so again speaker
wrangler focuses on the backstage mc
focuses on the stream yard um speaker
angle is really around making sure
presenters are in the right spot at the
right time and they're delivering the
presenter into stream yard for the mc
and the show producer ultimately is the
person who looks after the speaker
anglers in the mc so they're the ones
ultimately responsible for the content
that displays the event and what happens
if there's a speaker angler or an mc
needs help
this is the multi-view slide it's a
system that patrick wrote that allows us
to basically monitor each room centrally
this is akin to a system that we
actually use at physical events so what
this is this is beaming in the hls
stream for all for all four rooms and
displaying a view meter on the right so
it effectively gives us the way
basically monitoring at a quick glance
what's going on in each room are we
getting video is things on time are we
getting the right audio levels etc etc
it's really handy
we also use lots of telemetry as well so
we use a lot of javascript based
telemetry to understand if the hls
stream is dropping out etc for users uh
max data provides a lot of that sort of
infrastructure for us so when people are
reporting dropouts we're not just
running blind we can actually see where
it's happening
is it an isp is it a particular browser
we're able to dig down to an issue very
very rapidly which is really important
which is often not forgotten about
so let's now go over to the computer and
look at some of the tooling that we use
let's start with the portal
this is the next day video backstage
portal this is a system designed to help
the event staff run the event with all
information at their fingertips
it was done because we previously had
lots and lots of google spreadsheets
google docs
it was a very confusing mess and i'm
sure lots of other virtual events who
have tried similar backstage bits and
pieces have found similar
this is all run by official schedule
data so that's probably really really
important so every event we work with we
always sync from the upstream schedule
um the reason for that is talks change
presenters change you know things change
and having a single source of truth is
really really important to ensure all
these processes work really really well
so i'll run through some bits and pieces
this is something still under very heavy
development so this is certainly not the
final version but this is what we're
using for lca this year
um so this is the view you get um
depending on your level of access it can
look a little bit different so this is a
av of you who see most things but not
all
um this initial dashboard is designed
for organizers so we've got two primary
points here we've got pre-records so our
system allows for both live streaming
and pre-recording this is basically a
bit of an update where things are right
so we've got nine who have passed we've
got one video that needs some attention
that basically means that the video is
okay but would like some uh some
improvement made based of q a that we're
done
none of failed yay we've got a few
pending q a so they're probably late
some late uploads and we have one
missing talk
um and we've got some tech checks so we
run through a texture with every
presenter before the event uh we can see
93 of them have passed hooray
we have two that have failed so they're
likely uh a presenter did a check with
us and maybe their mic or their video
wasn't up to scratch they've asked them
to go away and uh come back again please
um and we have a few without a booking
so one of our biggest challenges is to
work through this sequentially and this
starts off with lots of no bookings and
we're trying to work everyone over into
the past stage and that typically starts
about a month before the event
um i'll run through the tech check
process so there are two different views
because we are currently within the
event dates uh this is currently
defaulting to the team on a 60 take
check view i'll go to this one here so
this view here is basically what we see
before the event
the system works for moving presenters
from left to right so everyone starts on
the left and we're trying to move
everyone over to the right so it's an
easy system to understand where a
presenter is at and what they need to do
um let's select someone who's actually
protect checked before so i will grab
myself so this gives me a view where
things are at um it gives the av person
a checklist to work through and tells
them what they need to do but
effectively it's really a kind of a
curated process where we jump someone
into a stream yard session
uh or whatever streaming tool we're
using and we're working through things
sequentially with them so we're checking
whether they've radar speakers guide
which is incredibly important uh if
they're a pre-recording what software
what operating system uh this is
obviously a very real tech check
uh what's a webcam they're using all
that sort of gear um and it gives some
hints and bits and pieces as well um so
you know you can see dslr via usb if the
memory card if they're pre-recording
um
if they've got uh microphones we advise
against built-in laptop webcam mics we
also advise against bluetooth headsets
purely because the first one because
they generally sound very echoey
and
echoey audio for a long presentation
tends to be very very fatiguing people
struggle to focus on the talk
and a bluetooth headset have all sorts
of fun issues either with the audio
quality because they join using a low
bitrate uh profile or they just plain
drop out they're fantastic so we
generally advise against those
um but really um if anyone watches the
tech tips video it's really more or less
the same process but we're also
practically
testing that person's
setup as well by the end of the tech
check it's about a 50 minute check we're
usually pretty confident we know how
things are gonna operate
and they either get a nice
pass or they get a fail which basically
tells the system to go and remind them
to rebook another tech check
and we write notes for them and that's
given to the presenter now this view
here which i'll click on is called the
presenter portal
this view here and i might make this
slightly smaller
this is what every presenter gets
emailed so they get emailed a unique
link um they don't need a login for this
and that lets them know where their tech
check is at they can click there to book
a new tech check uh they can't do that
because we're currently in the event but
that normally will take you to a booking
system
and it tells them what they need to do
we've got a tech tips video there with
practical examples um
or tips
uh they can also change their recording
to pre-record as well so uh either tells
them the time and date of the
presentation in the local time zone uh
which is always fun with international
events
they can also choose
to move that to a pre-recording so if
they click that uh it says are you sure
i'm gonna change the pre-recording they
click change
this talk is now pre-recorded and it
gives the ability to upload a video so
they click upload this presentation they
can upload a video and that's uh that
will upload the data automatically with
uh with our system
so we're trying to basically a move
everyone from not having a prevent tech
check to actually having one and by that
point in time you know we checked them
or verified they're in stream yard fine
they can share their screen if there's
any weird stuff we need to do it's all
documented for the team
uh by the time you get to the event this
changes to the td 160 tech check view um
again it's moving left to the right so
this is listed sequentially by
um the order they'll appear on screen
now they get a t minor 60 which is their
tech check before they go live so this
is listed by the order so we've got all
the january 15th people here so i can
see i need to do jono first key second
yvonne third etc etc we're trying to
move that presenter from left to the
right so it's the same process as before
uh we're looking at the pre-event tech
check running through things with them
we're selecting the t-minus 60 tech
check that changes the checklist on the
right tells them to do slightly
different things
we're generally validating things
redoing the screen share validating the
audio sounds fine if it's fine
they they can save it now if they if the
tech checker they're a separate team
then the people doing the in room av
if they need to um
if they need to say anything to the av
team they can stick it inside here and
they can click flag attention advised
and what that does i won't do it off of
jono's because he's on tomorrow but that
will basically mean that their tech
check shows up as an orange
so red means that failed for whatever
reason um and the tension basically
means that that person's very likely
passed but there's just something
notable out there that set up so when
they get to their t-minus ten
the av crew for team understand just
need to make sure they pay attention to
this it's just a basic way of passing
communication on down the chain if i go
there's other views here as well room
operator is probably the other important
one to go through this is designed for
the av crew and the mc operating each
room so this is organized by room so
let's grab for example this morning's
opening
so this view works sequentially through
time so you basically went backwards and
forwards if i go next talk that is the
next talk in the same room um so the
mcdavi for that room who was assigned an
inside stream yet are looking at this at
the same time
this gives them a bunch of stuff here so
that gives them their tech check so
there you can see that they've had a c
minor 60 they've passed and that's all
their information um it gives a little
bit of a summary based on the tech check
so i can see operating system they're
using
what microphone they've got so if they
suddenly rock up with a different
microphone which does happen we can pick
up on that any special notes there and
they can click on that for more
information again a checklist because
they're super important this dynamically
changes based on some of the metadata
about the presenter and gives them some
shortcuts about their t minus 90 t minus
60 t minus 10 time
we have stage nodes which is a bit like
your running sheet so a lot of events
will have a running sheet that the
backstage crew will use to kind of note
about anything notable about that
particular talk this is the same kind of
idea so this is so all crew know
anything special about this so this is a
keynote we have illustrators we have a
captioner and we have some uh we have
some steps that we need to do to uh hand
over to uh between presenters so that's
all put there so the mc and the av crew
are crystal clear what they need to
coordinate with the presenter on empty
information is designed for idmc so
they've got their own checklist here
things they need to do but effectively
they're really making sure that the
presenters in streamy are they're
comfortable after they've had their av
check
quite often people basically nominate
their own buyer in their own description
usually it's quite long and you don't
read all that for an introduction so the
mc is meant to basically validate that
with the presenter and come up with a
very shortened version of it so i can
see that's happened here
so um they've obviously i assume the mc
if this one has obviously read that back
to the presenter and said hey what's a
shorter version we can work on and
they've just workshopped that during
their t minus 10. so that's a nice scent
uh introduction that the mc will say
directly before they go on
pronouns which is important and
accepting questions so it depends on the
event
but typically there are three ways you
can do questions either they're not
answering questions
they're asking questions on the stream
after the talk so that basically means a
talk finishes five minutes earlier or
you can do text base which works quite
well even for pre-records so it
basically means that either if it's a
pre-record they can answer questions
during the presentation um or they can
jump onto a separate chat channel on the
venulist platform afterwards to
interactively talk to the audience
afterwards which is akin a bit like um i
guess with a physical event you know
after the event after the talk you will
have people come up to the presenter at
the podium and ask questions and you
should go out of the you know out to a
hallway or something like that
we have other tools here for example
countdown timers so these are some handy
tools we can give to the presenter um to
make sure they remember when they need
to finish their talk so these are
automatically again generated from
conference data to make it nice and easy
this is when the talk ends this is when
the tokens minus five minutes so they've
opted to do live q a that just gives
them the right time to finish their talk
so we give that link to the presenter uh
there's a countdown timer here they
click start
and it will count down to the end of
their talk uh this talks 36 hours away
but regardless it will send a reminder
at five minutes two minutes and one
minute so it sounds a little bit like a
uh like an alarm clock on the side of
your bed
same kind of noise um
we also have a view for wranglers so the
speaker wranglers specifically uh tasked
with making sure the presenters know
exactly what they need to do
and they're online for their t-minus 90
which is a hello are you online and the
t-minus 60 which is a you need to take
check
so this view shows all our presenters
we can see all these presenters have
passed which is amazing and then uh
presenters here are missing a tech check
but i can see that's because jono's not
onto weight in the morning so and it's
you know you can see right there that's
the time and local conference time zone
which is handy because uh for example
cascades which is another event which is
in a completely different time zone is a
different time and time zones are really
confusing when you're doing online
events
so this displays the time zone in the
local conference time zone which helps
when you're looking at things like uh
you know
the room operator view
you know that's 9am local time for
example we should match with that local
time now
this is the pre-record view this is
designed for av staff and organizers to
understand where all the events
pre-records are at
this traditionally is quite an area of
uh complexity because
you need to keep track of who is
actually pre-recording and if they've
uploaded a video or not
additionally uh some videos may not be
approved for example we might receive a
video where the audio is much too low we
can't really do much in post prod and
quite often presenters really love
getting feedback early
post produce every video because we get
videos and all sorts of different codecs
and formats and you name it and we need
to make sure things are mastered to a
standardized format so this is one of
the key reasons we do this to ensure
that things are done in a consistent
format and when they're played on stream
they come through in a consistent volume
but i can see a video he's been uploaded
so typically the things we go through we
check the game we check the length we
check uh basic av things we can't fix
and prod
and there's a separate screen which i
can access here but it basically allows
us to give feedback to the presenter
which is email back to them
something to note too even with
pre-records we want to make it feel like
a natural event um so we always
encourage the presenters to come on with
us so they always come on for a well we
try to get them to come on for a
introduction and i thank you at the end
it doesn't give you that stale feel of a
lot of uh pre-recorded videos where you
simply hit play play the video and then
you go to your next presentation it
still feels very human by having them
join for an introduction and a thank you
and the nice thing about our setup is uh
the presenter can join using given a
mobile phone which we've done before
we've had a keynote presenter join us
from a remote mouse on their mobile
phone and it works super well
i'll show over on your system as well so
this is a via power post production
system so this is actually running in
the same system that the uh porter runs
on which uses the same um schedule
metadata to drive it um this is probably
being next to a video secret as to why
we get videos out so rapidly so we uh we
have this system we built probably
built in 2009 initially so it's been
around a while
um but it effectively takes a lot of
schedule metadata and automates a lot of
the qa process we do so every video we
produce that goes to youtube or the la
mirror gets uh post produced and it gets
properly queued but under a heavily
automated process
so for example if i was going to go and
post produce for example brian's
kindness from this morning um i go in
here
i click that talk now this is a video
editor but it's a very weird video
editing text based um so what i'm seeing
on the left here is basically this shows
me the metadata about the talk
which is all the same information that
powers the portal
each of these uh separate cuts here is
basically when an obscene is changed or
another notable event so in another in
another screen grab i think we're
showing everyone the bottom of obs it
will have a bunch of lua
a little script on it showing a bunch of
stuff there
this data is automatically pulled from
that so we can automatically pick up
basically potential edit points now
this here is a preview of the video
i can grab that
to know where that video starts
i can work forwards and backwards
through the video
and basically click grab or click grab
to start a start or an end cut based on
where the video was at so effectively i
work through every raw file and i'm
associating the right start and end
point for that video that can be across
multiple videos here so for example this
video here
there are two applied so i can see that
video file there and that video file
there
i'm starting at 127 seconds this one
cuts at
this time here which is obviously the
end of the video so if i go to this
and i click that
that is the end of the video
that was the portal i'll now pass it
over to chris to show you what happens
behind the scenes for an av tech
g'day everybody my name is chris i'm a
av tech here today we're just running
the keynote at the start here we've got
brian talking about the history of unix
so let's have a bit of a look uh well
it's the early bell news so you can see
he is there coming through live on my
system
down the bottom you can see we've got
all of the different inputs so
i've got miles is on standby he's coming
back afterwards we've got the
illustrator who's doing their drawing
there which is hidden but i'll be able
to share that later and then i've got
the screen share from brian and also
brian talking as well unless there is a
video on standby
there's my room wrangler who's also just
there on standby as well
then there is of course the chat for the
room there's the green room here there's
the av team general chat then i've got
all my notes which are in the portal so
uh ryan's probably showed you a lot more
of this but i'm just showing you uh a
little this basically is my stage note
so this is the order of what's happening
here things what's playing what order
some messages to the av team
the mc also has their information um and
there's also some more technical
information about the av in this so this
is this is basically the main thing we
have on the screen at all time and we
can flip through and see every day like
if i go to um this window here we can
flip through the day and we can see what
else is happening so these are all the
different parts of today i can flip next
last and just see what's coming up what
has been that's very useful and each of
them has
uh stage notes which is uh down the
bottom here then of course i have stream
yard which is this is the live show is
feeding into here
this is obs so this is the curtain when
the curtain's down i have a hotkey that
switches between this and this and this
side here is what's active and you can
see there brian's talking at the moment
this is pretty important in my opinion
this is something that is a little bit
one of the differentiators you can see
this little red thing coming
occasionally that's called a compressor
limiter this is tickling the audio when
when someone gets excited and they
suddenly burst out and say something
loud you can see that it's ducking down
the volume so this little red line when
it ducks down is when brian's saying
something with a lot of
vocal power and it keeps it so that
everything's nice and even and the
quality is nice and clean so
that's there you can see down the bottom
here's my log file that's coming up this
is basically saying
uh when every time i switch or do
something we can see what time it
happens so you can see at 8 56 i
switched across we were slightly
slightly late but that allows us to see
for post-production when we actually uh
went live with our presentations so oh
and there's just a volume knob at all
times
i can just listen what's happening this
is
this is a pr photograph from probably
the early eighties or something like
that late seven times um and hiding the
background it's hard to see although i i
know of it
is a t-roff document
all right thank you for that chris if
you have any questions you can reach me
at ryan
nextdayvideo.com or i'm available on
twitter at xfxf
and finally a massive thank you to the
core iv team you can see here pictured
as patrick chris daniel jordan and
michael
all these folk have been very
instrumental in developing a lot of the
systems you're currently using and
enjoying um and we've found even using
things like obs and stream yard there's
been lots of pieces of the puzzle that
are missing
so this focus spent a lot of time
putting in
work to ensure that we have open source
tooling that meets our needs
so again big thank you for this team
they have been absolutely amazing and
i'm honored to work with you
all thank you so much ryan
that was a really cool look behind the
screens uh i noticed you've got another
shirt on uh so thanks for that
indeed um yeah thank you for um thank
you for all the staff running lca as
well um there's probably i think about
20 to 25 volunteers so there's quite a
crew to put this show together um but
you're all doing an incredibly awesome
job
and av is obviously only one part of it
so thank you all
it's been a really fun conference to
help with
uh
we have two questions which i don't
think were answered in chat oh no you
didn't answer the us one uh what's full
commercial rate for running a three-day
event like lca and that might be
commercial so you don't have to
answer that if you don't want that's
fine shoot me an email it depends on the
event um but we generally try to be
fairly affordable so
the way next video works is we generally
try to make the tooling available for
anyone um but we're able to help events
as well i'm more than happy to do so
yeah i think
that's
everything that we have uh can i get
another round of applause emojis for
ryan and uh
background smaller ryan
[Laughter]
um
all good and thank you very much
yeah
um now i've got some information to
share as well uh remember if you're a
professional or a contributor ticket
holder remember to join us from 6 30 adt
in the kaya theatre
for the professional delegates networks
networking session pdns and a really
interesting presentation from anthony
green on election analysis
uh so hopefully see a bunch of people
there thank you again ryan have a great
rest of your conference thank you very
much
i think the bunny is too late uh i think
it was a little bit too late for the
bunny ears should have done that earlier
that was that was it for the day right
yeah yeah yep
cool
thank you all
yeah all right clap no no no no no
you're looking like yeah
i can't wait let's cheer me out on so i
was gonna come in you should have done
that too late too late
oh that'd been awesome