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Brainstorming ds206.video

I’m gonna try and make this post short and sweet because the conversation above says it all. In episode 24 of Reclaim Today Tim and I were once again joined by Andy Rush to  brainstorm the design and structure of an open course we plan on running in the new year called ds206.video (#ds206video). Yeah, we are piggybacking on the venerable ds106 community, and figured it might be a good time to create a special topics course for folks to learn and share working they are doing around producing, creating, and streaming video. If the course is half as fun as the above discussion, it is going to be a blast, and it has been quite a few years since I have had the time and energy to work with folks to build out an ecosystem, and this post comes a few days late because I spent much of the last 3 days playing with Wiki.js, Peertube, and Discord, which will be at least 3 facets of this open course. I have a lot more to write about this, but I am still knee-deep in Peertube, which is a brilliant open source P2P Youtube alternative, that I have been looking for for the last 8 years:) There will be much more to come on the ds206.video experience, but if you are interested join the Discord chat and get ready to co-create a community TV station around ds106.tv! #4life

I think the time is nigh, and if nothing else, Tim’s 20 second intro to the above video is not to be missed, click play and FEEL THE RUSH!

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A Peek Inside Reclaim Studio

020: Reclaim Studio Live!

On Friday Tim and I streamed/recorded episode 20 of Reclaim Today: Reclaim Studio Live! It is a testament to how fast Tim works given little more than a week earlier we sat down with Andy Rush in episode 19 to discuss the studio he is building at UNF. And Andy’s work inspired us so much that we went shopping almost immediately after that chat and started building out Reclaim Studio. The video below is a first look inside the studio and it is already quite tight.

Click image to play video

Click image to play video

I do have some camera and green screen envy presently, but hopefully my upcoming trip back to the States will allow me to grab a few pieces for my home office rig 🙂 What’s more, if you are considering building out a video streaming/recording studio for your own work, Andy Rush posted an amazing compilation of resources to help guide folks getting started, as well as providing links to various people working within the space. I feel like this is the beginning of a whole lot of fun over the next year, and I very much look forward to dialing in my video streaming, recording, and production game. I might even have to get a Youtube account again so you can like and subscribe for more!

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Live from Jacksonville

For the 19th episode of Reclaim Today Tim and I sat down with old colleague and good friend Andy Rush, who in what seems like another lifetime was part of the UMW DTLT “dream team.” Fortunately we’ve been able to keep in touch on and off these last five years, where he has been keeping himself busy at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida working as a Course Media Developer doing what he does best: all things video. As you may have noticed, Tim and I have been playing quite a bit with streaming video for things like KaraOERoke, ds106.tv, and the like. We are interested in doing even more, and given we have a ton of office space given the construction work for Reclaim Arcade was scaled back significantly. So, what do you do? Take the empty conference room and build a ReclaimTV station.  And who do you call? Your friendly neighborhood New Media Speicalist: Andy “feel the” Rush! 

So, this discussion is basically broken up into two parts:

1) us reviewing the limits and possibilities of the high-end TV studio Andy helped design at UMW for the Convergence Center. It is without a doubt an impressive space, but one of the things the discussion comes around to is that video game streaming has highlighted the array of open source tools for streaming and fairly cheap hardware that allows you to build a quite impressive “TV” studio on the cheap.

2) at around the 30 minute mark Andy discusses how he created a flexible, cheaper studio with a few basic features like a good mic, lighting, and the Black Magic ATEM Mini switcher (or Mini Pro or Mini ISO) to name a few you would be well on your way to a pretty impressive setup. Hopefully Andy will blog a more detailed list of all the things he was playing with in this video, but if you go to around 45 minutes Andy begins his tour and takes you through and names each piece of equipment.

You pricing and mileage may vary, but if you already have a decent camera and a fairly robust laptop, you can probably build a solid studio for $1000-$1500, which would be a big jump for someone doing it on their own, but for an edtech group or wanna-bes like ReclaimTV, that is a very manageable range. So, I am sure Tim is already ordering equipment for our nascent studio, and we promised Andy we would have another chat when we were further along and he can update us on the next phase of his work this semester: building a kit that faculty and students can easily use that is not necessarily just one big button 🙂