Month: October 2010

PodCampAZ 2010

Just a quick plug about PodCampAZ 2010 coming up here on November 20 & 21, a event I will be attending.

I attended PodCampAZ 2009 last year, really by chance.  I had a weekend free and we were already visiting family in the Phoenix area for the Thanksgiving holidays.

Based on reading the website before the event, I figured I’d get a chance to see what the world of new media and social networking looked like since most of my career was spent in data-center technologies.

The event was free, so there was very little to loose other than time, energy, and being away from my kids for a couple days.

The 2 day un-confernece (this is explained on the website) was really amazing, the power of like-minded people coming together to share information and experiences was eye-opening.  I attended presentations on WordPress, Videocasting, Podcasting, and Social Media software.  I also met so many people who were experts in their respective areas.

There is value in the overall socialness of this event and its ability to bring people who want to share, PodCampAZ is a great place to experience & learn from the talent in the Phoenix area first hand.

– Dom

What is the Epiphan VGA2USB LR?

I recently purchased a Epiphan VGA2USB LR to record presentation video from workshops where multiple people present during the day.

This device is a frame grabber, it takes the VGA input from the computer and makes images, in fact it makes so many images that one can record video at 30 frames per second depending on the resolution.

I have found this device very nice to use with Camtasia.

The particular things I like are:

  • No software needs to be installed on the presentation laptop (this is huge!)
  • The ability to record what is being presented including software demos and videos (most local sw can’t record wmv video)
  • The ability to record a computer without impacting the computer itself, from a performance point of view (local screen recording can be compute intensive)
  • Can record wireless audio on a separate laptop

Here is how the video part is connected, speaker audio can be input to the recording laptop (Computer in this picture) via USB or Mic input.

Here is a youtube video of recording using the VGA2USB LR and Camtasia:

Direct youtube link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_qDaeeteRw

If you want a in depth review of this little device, check out this blog post by Victor, it even contains a device teardown to see whats inside.

Enjoy!

– Dom