Group 42

Getting the latest greatest piece of personal electronics is mostly a happy occasion, but there can be "moments". I recently replaced my circa 2003 MacBook Pro with the current MacBook hotness, which included a switch-up from FireWire 400 to FireWire 800. But wait, my mini-DV camera is FireWire 400; will my old camera talk to my new MacBook? The joy of playing with iMovie 2009 was tempered by the thought I might not have any footage to edit.

Information on connecting FireWire 400 devices to Apple MacBook Pros with FireWire 800 is promising but not definitive (this may change for the better by the time you read this post). A number of forum posts indicated that all that was required is the appropriate adaptor or cable. Having been burned by assumptions I proceeded with the expectation it would probably, but not necessarily, work. Fortunately, it worked!

For those of you in a similar situation I can vouch from personal experience that a Canon ZR800 mini-DV video camera with FireWire works fine with a MacBook Pro FireWire 800 connection. I found two possible solutions: a $14 connector that allowed my existing cable to connect to my MacBook, and a $35 cable that would connect my camera directly to my MacBook. Since I already had a FireWire 400 cable I opted for the connector. At the time of writing I've taken around 15 hours of taped video off my camera without any problems. I've also successfully live streamed via UStream.

An interesting post at Open Academic on doing video in a variety of CMSs, including Drupal:

DIY: Private Video Sharing for a school, a district, or an organization

I’ve been involved in a couple conversations recently about setting up tools within institutions to maintain video archives. Andy Rush wrote up a post describing some great work integrating Wordpress and Mediawiki; and on a listserv discussion about tools for sharing video, I mentioned that this could be done using Drupal. My remark prompted Miguel Guhlin to ask The Question: How would you do it?

So, here are a few ways to get this done. As with any technical solution, the best approach will be determined by the combination of an organization’s mission and their technological resources. At the risk of stating the obvious, all the tools discussed in this post are Open Source tools, and available under a GPL or LGPL license.

Seen at todbits.com, the Feds are streaming live video feeds from the House of Commons and other meetings: parlvu.parl.gc.ca. Choices of various streaming rates, audio only, and language (English/French).

As highlighted by Dries and flagged in the Drupal forums, a Tour of Drupal 5 videocast by Awakened Voice.

Using a real world example the videocast gives a nice tour of the new administrator interface and some of the core modules and in doing so gives an overview of Drupal, itself. Definitely worth a look if you're wanting to figure out this Drupal 'thang'.

I've added it my Drupal Compendium.