I've edited together Herman's mails: As I looked at one of the freshly encoded high-resolution videos (079_Free_software_in_the_commercial_environment.ogg) I noticed two problems: 1) Over-exposure and 2) noise.
1) Over-exposure is best checked with the zebra pattern, which is turned on with a switch on the back of the camera, near the top. When the zebra function is on, areas which are nearly white will appear with a flickering zebra pattern in the viewfinder. If a large part of the speaker's face is covered by the zebra pattern, gain should be switched down/off, and the iris adjusted, as needed. A quick and dirty way to adjust the image is to turn the iris down (metal knob on the front) until the zebra disappears, then turn it gently up until a few areas become "zebraed". Things that are supposed to look bright white should be zebra-patterned. 2) If the final encoded video has visible noise, gain must have been used. The "low" dB setting gives only very subtle noise, which the encoder may suppress completely. If the noise is obvious, 18dB gain ("high") was probably used. Instead of gain, open the iris (lowest number/largest opening is f:1.6) or use 1/25s shutter speed: Shutter speed, f-stop (iris) and gain amount are all shown in the viewfinder. If they are not, they are on auto! (possible exception: the gain) a) Turn gain off. Is the picture too dark? The gain is a flip switch on the left side, next to the white balance switch. It has three positions (from top to bottom): High, low and off. b) Open the iris (shiny metal knob) wide open. Still too dark? c) Increase the shutter speed (default 1/50s) to 1/25s. The shutter is set with the menu wheel at the back, near the bottom. If the shutter speed is 1/25s, you'll see "25" in the viewfinder. d) Set the gain to 9dB, if the above was not enough. e) Last resort(!): Use 18dB. Only required in pretty dark environments. You can also use even longer shutter speeds, with flickering and blurry results. At 1/6s, the camera sees more than your eyes, in full colour! With just one of the three exposure settings (shutter, iris, gain) set to auto, manual adjustments will be countered by the automatic control. This is not what you want. The auto/manual toggle buttons for shutter speed, iris, gain and white balance are near the bottom on the left side. _______________________________________________ Debconf-video mailing list Debconf-video@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-video