Re: QSP16, tools, FPGA, and John Rible's classes

[Jeff Fox <fox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear MISC readers:

"Michael A. Losh" wrote:

> I'm currious how you got better sound quality in John's presentation... better
> microphone?  Different camera?  Anyway, it was quite acceptable quality, and

I used two camcorders, the one that won't load or eject tapes as just a
camera the one that makes all the noise as a recorder and monitor with a
cable between them.  The only thing I could complain about was that if
I setup on the left side of the room the speakers seems to use the
whiteboard a lot and being right handed you see their back and can't
read what they are writing.  If they use the overhead project they
place it on the right and the light reflects off the whiteboard right
into the camera.  If I setup on the right they put the overhead right
in front of the camera or as Chuck did leave the projector on and
place themselves between the camera and the bright projection so they
only appear in siloette.  Or they stand on the edge of the bright
projection and move in and out of light making it impossible to
get the white balance on the camera right and to select a good
setting for brightness and contrast on the digitized video.  And
some people are all over the place.  Dr. Ting would walk up to
the first row say half a sentace, turn around walk to the whiteboard
and write one word then walk back to the crowd.  I don't think he
stopped for more than second or two and I had to chase him all
over the room with the camera.  Even zoomed back all the way
I would have to chase his image around the room and zoom in an
and out to read what he would write on the board.  Then the
speakers sometimes use dried out markers that you can only read
in extreeme close ups.  I know, I need lots of camera and
radio mics and then edit all the best shots together and add
background music and titles. ;-)

Last year John would use the project and the marker by projecting
function block diagrams on the board and then walking up to them
and marking them all up with the marker to illustrate how the
circuits were implemented.  That sort of thing makes it nearly
impossible to do a transcript that makes any sense.  It needs
lots of detailed graphics to be understood and it helps to
see the marking being done in sync with the explanation.

I will say that doing the transcription of Chuck's Fireside
chat was much easier by doing it from MPEG files on the PC.
I could start and stop it much more freely and without
stretching the tape and producing damage that shows up
as noise when you use the tape to make video copies.  It
saves wear and tear on the tapes and the video equipment.
It is still a lot of work.  Try transcribing an hour
of speech sometime and see how long it takes to get
every word down and correct even if you to type quickly.
The last step is to turn it into HTML and capture and
add any required graphics.  If some of the editors
recognize any HTML tags they will just totally mangle
the document with thousands of unneeded HTML tags
and proprietary tags also that only work in some
browsers.  I try very hard to avoid that sort of thing.

I hope people don't mind that I sometimes mark one section
or another in bold to emphasis what look to me like 
important comments.  I thought the highlight of Chuck's
presentation were the comments on the similarity between
Ziff compression and Forth factoring.  What a nice
explanation.  I had not heard anyone explain the concept
so clearly before, including Chuck.

Jeff Fox