[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] Reactiona from home to today's meeting
Mitchell I. Wolfe
mwolfe at vinebrook.com
Thu Dec 12 07:29:47 PST 2024
I used to enjoy post meeting lunch discussions with Charlie Holbrow, Eli
Brookner, and my dad who were all Columbia alumni. Sadly they are not
around anymore.
I still go to the Wednesday Lexington senior lunches post our meeting. A
few of our colleagues attend on an irregular basis.
Menus and other details are here: http://lexingtonma.gov/seniors
You need to sign up in advance for the $2 noontime meals served in the
large room near the main Lexington Community Center entrance. You don't
need to be a Lexington resident. I usually book early Monday morning by
leaving a message on their voicemail.
"Half of life is showing up..."
-- Mitch
On 2024-12-12 09:32, Peter Albin via LCTG wrote:
> Amen
> Peter
>
>> On Dec 12, 2024, at 9:02 AM, Harry Forsdick via LCTG
>> <lctg at lists.toku.us> wrote:
>
> Bob,
>
> Good point about what you see in the meeting room regarding what sounds
> you hear from local speakers and what you see on the screen of their
> videos. That is a fundamental problem that cannot be solved. But the
> solution is for the people intge meeting room to look atctge actual
> person speaking. People in remote locations will not experience this
> problem.
>
> I'd like to encourage members of the group to attend as many meetings
> as possible in the meeting room because there are a lot of good
> conversations that happen before and after the meetings. One of the
> tragedies of COVID has been the destruction of social groups, and I
> believe that has happened to our group. Being present in the room when
> possible helps re-establish these bonds.
>
> I also think the lunches also help.
>
> I wonder if we should start up a new activity of visiting interesting
> STEM places. We live in a special place (Boston) and I think we should
> take advantage of it.
>
> More later.
>
> -- Harry
>
> On Thu, Dec 12, 2024 at 7:52 AM Robert Primak <bobprimak at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> From the live room at the LCC I did notice that when we saw on the
> screen our speaker, her voice and video were very much out of sync.
> That is a Zoom artifact.
>
> I have started attending in person when there is a live speaker, but
> will probably not attend live for all-video meetings.
>
> We need to boost our in person audience numbers. This influences which
> speakers we can get, and makes for a much better presentation and
> question and answer dynamic.
>
> But if you are sick, by all means STAY HOME.
>
> -- Bob Primak
>
> On Wednesday, December 11, 2024 at 06:16:28 PM EST, Harry Forsdick via
> LCTG <lctg at lists.toku.us> wrote:
>
> Steve,
>
> I have some thoughts about the ability of non-technical people to start
> up Hybrid Meetings. Another way of saying that is we can make starting
> a Hybrid Meeting just like turning on the lights. (Of course, note
> that it is not so easy to turn on the lights in LexCC Room 237 because
> of the fancy dimming panel at the front of the room :-)
>
> Now that the equipment is permanently installed in the meeting room,
> the set of things that must be done to get a meeting started has been
> reduced significantly.
>
> I think we can work towards a system which does not need to have a
> trained Meeting Room Director (e.g., Peter or me) or a Zoom Conference
> Director (such as you and Barry have served LCTG so admirably over the
> past many years). We are getting very close so that anybody (i.e., not
> just Peter or me) in the meeting room can start the conference by
> reading a 2 or 3 set cheat sheet posted on the wall next to the touch
> panels at the front of the room.
>
> Similarly I think we need to move so that we do not need a Zoom
> Conference director, the function you and Barry have been performing
> knowing a lot of very technical knowledge about Zoom. This will
> require a second cheat sheet with both instructions for the Presenter
> on how to:
>
> * Turn off any audio input or output on their laptop
> * Connect to the LexCC wifi
> * Login to our meeting on Zoom
> * Use the share screen Zoom command to show their presentation
>
> I realize because we are all humans with different talents, this may
> seem like a difficult task. But, I think with a suitable set of
> defaults based on our experience, we can come up with a Hybrid Meeting
> Room schema for the Zoom Conferencing software. We don't have to do
> this. It's just that if we want to release you and Barry from being in
> the position of always having to be available for our meetings to run
> successfully, we may need to limit ourselves to a set of default
> configurations for the Zoom Conferencing software.
> Tim Goncalves and Vince LeRow, the two guys from the Town's IT
> Department who have done all of the work so far, have initially focused
> on getting the standard schema for configuring the installed hardware
> in LexCC Room 237 to work for three different meeting types for which
> there are buttons on the top touch panel. Pushing one of those buttons
> installs scheme of software and hardware settings for each of three
> type of room usage:
>
> * Hybrid Meeting
> * The second type that I don't remember
> * The third type that I don't remember
>
> Your and my comments about tweeks to the Hybrid Meeting configuration
> are quite consistent on:
>
> * Locating the Presenter is currently distracting and every other time
> is incorrect. Currently it seems to get in a mode where it properly
> locates the speaker and then shortly thereafter locates the speaker
> again, this time below the speaker's head. Rinse and Repeat.
>
> * It would be better if we had two streams coming out of LexCC Room
> 237:
>
> * Fixed zoom to the area in the front of the room where the speaker may
> move
>
> * Zooming from the front of the room (either left or right side camera)
> to anyone in the audience who asks a question (i.e., speaks).
>
> * In addition the Presenter would use their laptop to join the
> conference as a normal participant -- but with their sound input and
> output turned off. The only purpose of the Presenter's laptop is to
> show the presentation. Note that I am also saying that the video of
> the Presenter must be picked up by the equipment permanently installed
> in the room. The consequence of using the video of the Presenter's
> laptop is that the voice and video will not be in sync -- which will
> drive people crazy.
>
> That's enough for now -- it's dinner time...
>
> Regards,
>
> -- Harry
>
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 5:11 PM Steve Isenberg <smisenberg at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> Some of my thoughts.
>
> Given that we were using the microphone in the room, that means that
> the room camera composite will be chosen by zoom. This is usually not
> what we want because we'd much rather have the speaker appear. So today
> we asked our speaker to turn on her laptop camera, and I spotlighted
> it. As a result, we were seeing her face as she was giving the
> presentation.
> So anyone who is in the role of host and controlling what is recorded,
> needs to know that they need to spotlight the person or persons who are
> speaking and of course, remove someone from the spotlight after they
> are done talking or asking their questions.
> This is similar to the way a technical Director handles recording a TV
> show, as he or she is busy selecting the active camera or cameras
> during a commercial video production.
>
> The composite camera coming from the room. It shows a composite of:
> audience left, audience right, and speaker. This has limited use and is
> not producing a result that is of the quality that at least I would
> like.
> This is in part because the images are very small, as there are three
> images that make up the video.
> It is also because the image that is supposedly of the person speaking,
> shifts, moves, zooms in and out, at apparently random times. It
> sometimes shows the speaker, sometimes shows the speaker and half the
> audience, and other times shows the feet of the speaker and the
> audience without showing the speaker's face. This seems to change at
> random times during the presentation. It is frustrating if all you want
> to do is watch the face of the speaker presenting.
>
> I'm currently producing the video from today's presentation and the
> speaker is not always spotlighted so you can see several times during
> the video what the cameras look like coming from the room and I suspect
> you'll see what I mean.
>
> WIBNIF. It would be nice if the camera aimed at the speaker stayed
> aimed at the speaker, all the speaker, and only the speaker, during the
> course of her presentation.
> WIBNIF It would be nice if there were two feeds coming from the LCC
> room. One being the speaker and only the speaker; and the other being a
> composite of the two cameras facing the audience in the room.
>
> Maybe; the feed coming from the LCC room be only a composite of the two
> cameras facing the audience. And have the speaker use her camera on her
> laptop.
> Then, during the program the host could Spotlight the speaker; and when
> others speak, including those in the audience, the host could add a
> spotlight (on the other person speaking) or (the feed of the audience
> when someone from the audience was asking a question or making a
> comment) in addition to the spotlight on the speaker's computer's
> camera video. The two would show up side by side in the recording, and
> life would be good.
>
> Please pardon my rambling and I hope that this will end up helping.
> -steve
>
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 11:55 AM Harry Forsdick via LCTG
> <lctg at lists.toku.us> wrote:
>
> I am writing down my impressions about today's meeting from the
> perspective of a remote user being involved in a meeting.
>
> I encourage others who were remote today to respond to these
> suggestions with your own impressions: feel free to add to or negate
> what I am saying below.
>
> -- Harry
>
> Here are some reactions to the meeting today. I am writing these in
> order of observation. Some of the early comments are corrected or
> improved by the later comments.
>
> * Initial setup in room 237 is good: there are only a couple of schemes
> of use (x?, y? and Hybrid -- which is what we want to use), and that is
> good. The improvements recommended here are intended to be to the
> small number of setups -- and in fact only got the Hybrid scheme
> because that is the only one I have any experience with
>
> * Sound from Presenter and Audience is muffled. More for the Audience.
> Possible improvement for Presenter is a microphone at front to be
> closer -- or a lavalier mic to be fed through a mixer to make it part
> of the one audio stream coming out of the room and thus able to take
> advantage of the Zoom echo cancellation.
>
> * Zooming on the Presenter is ineffective because it zooms too much,
> missing the head of the presenter. Her own webcam is much better.
> Following the presenter around the room is not needed.
>
> * There might be better use of the cameras to not have them zoom, but
> rather focus on particular parts of the room:
>
> * Aimed at the front where the presenter will be (performed by the
> camera at the rear of the room)
> * Aimed at the front half of the audience (performed by, say, the
> front left camera)
>
> * Aimed at the back half of the audience (performed by, say, the front
> right camera)
>
> * There is no need for the meeting room Zoom display to have one
> participant shown in the upper right corner because that has nothing to
> do with who is speaking. It looks like the first participant in the
> conference is chosen arbitrarily to be in this spot. It doesn't serve
> any purpose in the meeting room.
>
> * Cross talking in the meeting room is really annoying because the
> audio of coming out of the room is already very difficult to listen to.
>
> * 12 people in the meeting room audience, 10 in the remote audience.
>
> * This new system, which cost a LOT of money, is better in some ways
> than our ($800) homebrew system (ease of setup so that anybody can run
> this system and it is permanently installed. This is huge. It means
> that anybody in the group can control the meeting, not just a couple of
> people.
>
> * When the meeting room audience asked a question, the zoomable camera
> tried to find the person, but the camera only localized the back of the
> head of the speaker. This is pretty disappointing. That is why I
> suggest a reallocation of the roles of the cameras.
>
> * Even with all of my complaints about audio and zooming video, the
> combination of all the features, warts and all, is better than we've
> had before -- largely because it could be so easy to start the hybrid
> meeting,
>
> * Remote attendees' voices are still excellent -- illustrating how bad
> the sound is from the meeting room.
>
> * I think it would be better to make the rear camera fixed non zooming
> so that there is one camera that can see all of the audience, even if
> it isn't their face. Let the presenter's image come from their laptop.
> Devote one of the left and right cameras to the noise source, and leave
> out the third camera because it takes up too much space in the
> Hollywood squares grid. It would be really good to have two or three
> streams coming out of the meeting room so that each of the room cameras
> could occupy the full area of a video stream.
>
> Harry Forsdick [1]
> Town Meeting Member Precinct 7 [2]
> harry at forsdick.com [3]
> www.forsdick.com [4]
>
> 46 Burlington St.
> Lexington, MA 02420
> (781) 799-6002 (mobile) [5]
>
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[1] http://www.forsdick.com/resume/
[2] http://lexingtontmma.org/
[3]
https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=harry@forsdick.com
[4] http://www.forsdick.com/
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