Search Results: "paddatrapper"

16 July 2020

Louis-Philippe V ronneau: DebConf Videoteam Sprint Report -- DebConf20@Home

DebConf20 starts in about 5 weeks, and as always, the DebConf Videoteam is working hard to make sure it'll be a success. As such, we held a sprint from July 9th to 13th to work on our new infrastructure. A remote sprint certainly ain't as fun as an in-person one, but we nonetheless managed to enjoy ourselves. Many thanks to those who participated, namely: We also wish to extend our thanks to Thomas Goirand and Infomaniak for providing us with virtual machines to experiment on and host the video infrastructure for DebConf20. Advice for presenters For DebConf20, we strongly encourage presenters to record their talks in advance and send us the resulting video. We understand this is more work, but we think it'll make for a more agreeable conference for everyone. Video conferencing is still pretty wonky and there is nothing worse than a talk ruined by a flaky internet connection or hardware failures. As such, if you are giving a talk at DebConf this year, we are asking you to read and follow our guide on how to record your presentation. Fear not: we are not getting rid of the Q&A period at the end of talks. Attendees will ask their questions either on IRC or on a collaborative pad and the Talkmeister will relay them to the speaker once the pre-recorded video has finished playing. New infrastructure, who dis? Organising a virtual DebConf implies migrating from our battle-tested on-premise workflow to a completely new remote one. One of the major changes this means for us is the addition of Jitsi Meet to our infrastructure. We normally have 3 different video sources in a room: two cameras and a slides grabber. With the new online workflow, directors will be able to play pre-recorded videos as a source, will get a feed from a Jitsi room and will see the audience questions as a third source. This might seem simple at first, but is in fact a very major change to our workflow and required a lot of work to implement.
               == On-premise ==                                          == Online ==
                                                      
              Camera 1                                                 Jitsi
                                                                          
                 v                 ---> Frontend                         v                 ---> Frontend
                                                                                            
    Slides -> Voctomix -> Backend -+--> Frontend         Questions -> Voctomix -> Backend -+--> Frontend
                                                                                            
                 ^                 ---> Frontend                         ^                 ---> Frontend
                                                                          
              Camera 2                                           Pre-recorded video
In our tests, playing back pre-recorded videos to voctomix worked well, but was sometimes unreliable due to inconsistent encoding settings. Presenters will thus upload their pre-recorded talks to SReview so we can make sure there aren't any obvious errors. Videos will then be re-encoded to ensure a consistent encoding and to normalise audio levels. This process will also let us stitch the Q&As at the end of the pre-recorded videos more easily prior to publication. Reducing the stream latency One of the pitfalls of the streaming infrastructure we have been using since 2016 is high video latency. In a worst case scenario, remote attendees could get up to 45 seconds of latency, making participation in events like BoFs arduous. In preparation for DebConf20, we added a new way to stream our talks: RTMP. Attendees will thus have the option of using either an HLS stream with higher latency or an RTMP stream with lower latency. Here is a comparative table that can help you decide between the two protocols:
HLS RTMP
Pros
  • Can be watched from a browser
  • Auto-selects a stream encoding
  • Single URL to remember
  • Lower latency (~5s)
Cons
  • Higher latency (up to 45s)
  • Requires a dedicated video player (VLC, mpv)
  • Specific URLs for each encoding setting
Live mixing from home with VoctoWeb Since DebConf16, we have been using voctomix, a live video mixer developed by the CCC VOC. voctomix is conveniently divided in two: voctocore is the backend server while voctogui is a GTK+ UI frontend directors can use to live-mix. Although voctogui can connect to a remote server, it was primarily designed to run either on the same machine as voctocore or on the same LAN. Trying to use voctogui from a machine at home to connect to a voctocore running in a datacenter proved unreliable, especially for high-latency and low bandwidth connections. Inspired by the setup FOSDEM uses, we instead decided to go with a web frontend for voctocore. We initially used FOSDEM's code as a proof of concept, but quickly reimplemented it in Python, a language we are more familiar with as a team. Compared to the FOSDEM PHP implementation, voctoweb implements A / B source selection (akin to voctogui) as well as audio control, two very useful features. In the following screen captures, you can see the old PHP UI on the left and the new shiny Python one on the right. The old PHP voctowebThe new Python3 voctoweb Voctoweb is still under development and is likely to change quite a bit until DebConf20. Still, the current version seems to works well enough to be used in production if you ever need to. Python GeoIP redirector We run multiple geographically-distributed streaming frontend servers to minimize the load on our streaming backend and to reduce overall latency. Although users can connect to the frontends directly, we typically point them to live.debconf.org and redirect connections to the nearest server. Sadly, 6 months ago MaxMind decided to change the licence on their GeoLite2 database and left us scrambling. To fix this annoying issue, Stefano Rivera wrote a Python program that uses the new database and reworked our ansible frontend server role. Since the new database cannot be redistributed freely, you'll have to get a (free) license key from MaxMind if you to use this role. Ansible & CI improvements Infrastructure as code is a living process and needs constant care to fix bugs, follow changes in DSL and to implement new features. All that to say a large part of the sprint was spent making our ansible roles and continuous integration setup more reliable, less buggy and more featureful. All in all, we merged 26 separate ansible-related merge request during the sprint! As always, if you are good with ansible and wish to help, we accept merge requests on our ansible repository :)

2 March 2020

Jonathan Carter: Free Software activities for 2020-02

Belgians This month started off in Belgium for FOSDEM on 1-2 February. I attended FOSDEM in Brussels and wrote a separate blog entry for that. The month ended with Belgians at Tammy and Wouter s wedding. On Thursday we had Wouter s bachelors and then over the weekend I stayed over at their wedding venue. I thought that other Debianites might be interested so I m sharing some photos here with permission from Wouter. It was the only wedding I ve been at where nearly everyone had questions about Debian! I first met Wouter on the bus during the daytrip on DebConf12 in Nicaragua, back then I ve eagerly followed the Debianites on Planet Debian for a while so it was like meeting someone famous. Little did I know that 8 years later, I d be at his wedding back in my part of the world. If you went to DebConf16 in South Africa, you might remember Tammy, who have done a lot of work for DC16 including most of the artwork, bunch of website work, design on the badges, bags, etc and also did a lot of organisation for the day trips. Tammy and Wouter met while Tammy was reviewing the artwork in the video loops for the DebConf videos, and then things developed from there. Wouter s Bachelors Wouter was blindfolded and kidnapped and taken to the city center where we prepared to go on a bike tour of Cape Town, stopping for beer at a few places along the way. Wouter was given a list of tasks that he had to complete, or the wedding wouldn t be allowed to continue

Wouter s tasks
Wouter s props, needed to complete his tasks
Bike tour leg at Cape Town Stadium.
Seeking out 29 year olds.
Wouter finishing his lemon and actually seemingly enjoying it.
Reciting South African national anthem notes and lyrics.
The national anthem, as performed by Wouter (I was actually impressed by how good his pitch was).
The Wedding Friday afternoon we arrived at the lodge for the weekend. I had some work to finish but at least this was nicer than where I was going to work if it wasn t for the wedding.
Accommodation at the lodge
When the wedding co-ordinators started setting up, I noticed that there were all these swirls that almost looked like Debian logos. I asked Wouter if that was on purpose or just a happy accident. He said Hmm! I haven t even noticed that yet! , didn t get a chance to ask Tammy yet, so it could still be her touch.
Debian swirls everywhere
I took a canoe ride on the river and look what I found, a paddatrapper!
Kyle and I weren t the only ones out on the river that day. When the wedding ceremony started, Tammy made a dramatic entrance coming in on a boat, standing at the front with the breeze blowing her dress like a valkyrie.
A bit of digital zoomage of previous image.
Time to say the vows.
Just married. Thanks to Sue Fuller-Good for the photo.
Except for one character being out of place, this was a perfect fairy tale wedding, but I pointed Wouter to https://jonathancarter.org/how-to-spell-jonathan/ for future reference so it s all good.
Congratulations again to both Tammy and Wouter. It was a great experience meeting both their families and friends and all the love that was swirling around all weekend.

Debian Package Uploads 2020-02-07: Upload package calamares (3.2.18-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-07: Upload package python-flask-restful (0.3.8-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-10: Upload package kpmcore (4.1.0-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-16: Upload package fracplanet (0.5.1-5.1) to Debian unstable (Closes: #946028). 2020-02-20: Upload package kpmcore (4.1.0-2) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-20: Upload package bluefish (2.2.11) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-20: Upload package gdisk (1.0.5-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-20: Accept MR#6 for gamemode. 2020-02-23: Upload package tanglet (1.5.5-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-23: Upload package gamemode (1.5-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-24: Upload package calamares (3.2.19-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-24: Upload package partitionmanager (4.1.0-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-24: Accept MR#7 for gamemode. 2020-02-24: Merge MR#1 for calcoo. 2020-02-24: Upload package calcoo (1.3.18-8) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-24: Merge MR#1 for flask-api. 2020-02-25: Upload package calamares (3.2.19.1-1) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-25: Upload package gnome-shell-extension-impatience (0.4.5-4) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-25: Upload package gnome-shell-extension-harddisk-led (19-2) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-25: Upload package gnome-shell-extension-no-annoyance (0+20170928-f21d09a-2) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-25: Upload package gnome-shell-extension-system-monitor (38-2) to Debian unstable. 2020-02-25: Upload package tuxpaint (0.9.24~git20190922-f7d30d-1~exp3) to Debian experimental.

Debian Mentoring 2020-02-10: Sponsor package python-marshmallow-polyfield (5.8-1) for Debian unstable (Python team request). 2020-02-10: Sponsor package geoalchemy2 (0.6.3-2) for Debian unstable (Python team request). 2020-02-13: Sponsor package python-tempura (2.2.1-1) for Debian unstable (Python team request). 2020-02-13: Sponsor package python-babel (2.8.0+dfsg.1-1) for Debian unstable (Python team request). 2020-02-13: Sponsor package python-pynvim (0.4.1-1) for Debian unstable (Python team request). 2020-02-13: Review package ledmon (0.94-1) (Needs some more work) (mentors.debian.net request). 2020-02-14: Sponsor package citeproc-py (0.3.0-6) for Debian unstable (Python team request). 2020-02-24: Review package python-suntime (1.2.5-1) (Needs some more work) (Python team request). 2020-02-24: Sponsor package python-babel (2.8.0+dfsg.1-2) for Debian unstable (Python team request). 2020-02-24: Sponsor package 2048 (0.0.0-1~exp1) for Debian experimental (mentors.debian.net request). 2020-02-24: Review package notcurses (1.1.8-1) (Needs some more work) (mentors.debian.net request). 2020-02-25: Sponsor package cloudpickle (1.3.0-1) for Debian unstable (Python team request).

Debian Misc 2020-02-12: Apply Planet Debian request and close MR#21. 2020-02-23: Accept MR#6 for ToeTally (DebConf Video team upstream). 2020-02-23: Accept MR#7 for ToeTally (DebConf Video team upstream).

24 July 2017

Jonathan Carter: Plans for DebCamp17

In a few days, I ll be attending DebCamp17 in Montr al, Canada. Here are a few things I plan to pay attention to: