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HOWTO: Stream Your User Group Meetings

This should help anyone who wants to get a simple public live stream setup for a meeting of any type and record segments for future use. These instructions are Mac specific.

I’ve used this setup for several user group meetings and it’s worked out really well. Here’s an example video from @commondream last year:

Setup

• Download and install CamTwist (direct link)
• Create an account with a streaming service. I use Ustream.tv in this example.

Configuration

CamTwist Settings

Open CamTwist. We’re going with a picture-in-picture setup that uses an entire second display as the main image displaying the presentation slides, with a smaller overlay of the webcam feed of the presenter in the bottom right corner.

In the ‘Select a video source:’ box on the left, double-click the Desktop source. On the far right, you’ll see some settings for this source. In that ‘Settings’ area, choose the proper screen. In our example, that screen is probably your projector or an external monitor of some sore. You’ll want to tick the ‘Full Screen’ option.

Next, single click the ‘Webcam’ source in the far left sources box so it’s selected, then click the PIP button below the source list. You’ll notice a ‘PIP Webcam’ item has shown up in the ‘Step 3 Adjust settings’ list.

Highlight the ‘PIP Webcam’ item and change the settings on the right to:

• Scale: somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5 should work well. Any larger and you’ll cover up too much of the slides. Our settings are saved at 0.29.
• Position: drag the small black box to the area you’d like the webcam video to display.
• Camera: select the proper camera you’re using to capture the presenter.

I leave the other options as default. Feel free to experiment.

Now, open the Preview window by selecting the Tools menu > Preview (or hit CMD+P). Check the position of your PiP overlay and drag it to a place that makes you happy using the small black box in the settings pane of the main window.

Save Settings

You can save your current settings in CamTwist by clicking the ‘Save Setup’ button. It saves quite a bit of time.

Once you’re happy with the output, move along to Ustream.

Ustream

Login and create a show. Be sure to add a schedule entry for the time and date of the meetings, too! Do whatever customization you’d like to get your channel hopping.

Click the big green ‘Broadcast Now!’ button on the top right corner of the Ustream site. A popup window will open (check your popup blocker if it doesn’t). Allow Flash access to your mic and camera.

In the Video Source dropdown, select the CamTwist source.

NOTE: If you don’t see CamTwist, you might need to restart your browser or open another browser.

Streaming

When you’re ready to get started, click the Start Broadcast button. Streaming starts right away, so you’re online.

Recording Talks

One of the nice features of Ustream is the ability to record segments as you stream. We typically record each talk separately so they can be embedded independently of the entire meeting.

To record a talk, get your presenter setup and ready to go. When everyone’s ready, hit the ‘Start Record’ button.

When the talk is finished, hit ‘Stop Record’ and a new preview of the recording shows up. Click the ‘Save’ button.

Fill in the details and hit ‘Save.’ Now, repeat the process for the next talk and your meetings are online for posterity!

Conclusion

This should help you get your meetings online to reach a wider audience. Let me know if I’ve missed anything and I’ll try to update as soon as I can.

Speed up Paperclip in tests

module Paperclip
  def self.run cmd, params = "", expected_outcodes = 0
    case cmd
    when "identify"
      return "100x100"
    when "convert"
      return
    else
      super
    end
  end
end

class Paperclip::Attachment
  def post_process
  end
end

via Pivotal

HTML5 Forms

I wasn’t aware of this, but here’s how the iPhone is able to display different keyboards based on Mobile Safari form fields:

The iPhone does not have a physical keyboard. All “typing” is done by tapping on an on-screen keyboard that pops up at appropriate times, like when you focus a form field in a web page. Apple did something very clever in the iPhone’s web browser. It recognizes several of the new HTML5 input types, and DYNAMICALLY CHANGES THE ON-SCREEN KEYBOARD to optimize for that kind of input.

For example, email addresses are text, right? Sure, but they’re a special kind of type. For example, virtually all email addresses contain the @ sign and at least one period (.), but they’re unlikely to contain any spaces. So when you use an iPhone and focus an <input type="email"> element, you get an on-screen keyboard that contains a smaller-than-usual space bar, plus dedicated keys for the @ and . characters.

From Dive Into HTML5