[techtalk] Multimedia, video, all simple stuff really...
- From: <greg.webb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <techtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 23:17:47 +0000
Hi all
I was wondering if anyone could help me :-)
This summer I'll be helping to run a kids' holiday club. I've been picked on as
the most AV literate person there (not saying much) to try and run this side of
things as much as possible.
Well, last year, we did all our presentations through PowerPoint and, whenever
we wanted to run a video on the screen, we just switched the input on the
projector to pick up the output from the camera (at the back of the hall and
transmitting through one of the longest S-Video cables known to man). This has
two problems:
1: Whoever's up the front with the kids has been known before to skip slides,
or to sing songs over and over again in such a way as to require us to go back,
forwards, sideways etc through PowerPoint. Which really isn't up to it, being
designed to do straightforward linear presentations. The laptop has
multi-monitor support to let me have a switching screen on one and a video
output on the other, I just want presentation software that picks that up.
(Currently playing with OpenLP.org 0.994 but it doesn't seem ideal - better
than PPT though I think)
2: The sharper reader may have spotted that I mentioned we have a huge long
lead for the camera but not the laptop - we don't have any choice. While
they're coming in on different inputs, we need someone sitting by the projector
to switch them because it has to be back projected due to the room so we can't
use a remote control to switch inputs. That then leaves us one person down to
do a pretty simple job that could easily be tied in with the AV tech job at the
back (which is nothing more than cueing MP3s into the amp otherwise, easy
enough). What I _really_ want, therefore, is some software to take a DV
camcorder (which we have, not a problem), plug it straight into the 1394 port
on the laptop (available) and take a _live_ video feed and push that onto the
(ideally full) screen. I really want to just be able to hit a button in the
presentation software and have it switch to the camera feed but I'm aware that
may just be pushing it too far. If I have to switch to another prog
ram, so be it and it's something else for the kids to smile about on the
screen :-) Either way, if at all possible I want to be able to hit a button
that's nowhere near the rear projector and have it switch display from camera
to laptop.
It occurrs to me that the switcher need not be software on the computer... if
it's a switch box in front of me that takes 2 S-video inputs and lets me flick
between them, that's quite good enough.
If that wasn't enough... ;-) A friend has just picked up a DVB card with the
Presto! DVR software - it's picking up some channels but then crashing,
reliably. Anyone used it and have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Greg
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