How to prepare for your presentation at rC3

Thank you for agreeing to present at remote Chaos Experience! We've put together these pages to help you prepare for your presentation and make sure everything will go smoothly!

Presenting in person in one of the studios

If you have opted to present in person in one of our studios, little preparation is needed. We will communicate with you about the exact date and time for your presentation, and get you in touch with the team at the studio so they can give you all the local details and answer any question you might have. Then you only need to make sure you get to the studio in time for your presentation.

The studio usually will take care of live streaming your talk. To show slides or demos, they will be able to hook up your laptop through HDMI. If you have special requirements for your presentation, for example, you are bringing a piece of hardware that you want to demo on camera, please get in touch with the studio to make sure they are prepared and can accomodate that.

We encourage you to have a Q&A session right after your talk. This also will be handled by the studio.

Pre-recording your talk

To pre-record your talk, there are two different options: you can do it by yourself at a place of your choice, or use one of the studios that offer support for pre-recording (see rc3 Studios/Standorte). If you decide to have your talk pre-recorded at one of the studios near you, please get in touch with them directly. Together, you can pick a suitable date and agree on the specifics of the recording.

See below for specific recommendations on how to set up at home.

Your talk should be recorded in a single video file that starts with you starting your presentation, and ends a couple of seconds after you have finished.

The technical parameters should be:

Format: 1080p25 (1920×1080 with a frame rate of 25 fps, progressive)

Encoding: VP9 or MP4 (h.264) with at least 5 Mbps. Mono or stereo audio in 44.1 or 48kHz with AAC and at least 128 kbps rate.

This should result in a file of approx 2 GB per hour of recording

We will give you a web page where you can upload your finished recording

Please finish and upload your video no later than December 18th!

We encourage you to have a live Q&A session right after your talk. We will invite you to a web video conference through a link about an hour before your talk. Please join this conference no less that 10 minutes before your talk, and stay with it while your recording is being played. After your recording has finished, the herald (moderator) will start the live Q&A.

Presenting live from home

There are two main ways to bring your computer screen, video image and voice to the live programme: with OBS, a sophisticated broadcasting program, or with a web video conference program, as BigBlueButton or Jitsi. To choose between them:

OBS Studio: if you already have experience with live streaming with OBS Studio, and you are the only speaker for this presentation.

OBS Ninja: If your presentation is given by one or two speakers, this might be good fit.

Web video conference: if you don't feel comfortable with setting up and controlling OBS Studio while giving your talk, or there are more than two speakers, we will set up a web video conference (BigBlueButton or Jitsi) for all speakers to join, which will then be broadcasted.

If decide to use OBS Studio or OBS Ninja, you will also need to use a Mumble client for communicating with your fellow speakers, the herald (moderator) and the video director and line producer.

We will make an appointment for a one hour prep session where we will discuss the technical options and rehearse your specific setup and process.

We encourage you to have a live Q&A session right after your talk. The Q&A takes place directly after you have finished your presentation. At this point, the herald (moderator) will take over.

Please only stop your streaming after the video director or line producer have announced that you are off air.

Live Q&A

Whether you have prerecorded your talk, are giving the presentation live in person in a studio or from your home, we encourage you to have a live Q&A after the presentation. It is scheduled to take between 5 and 10 minutes.

The Q&A will work like this:

After the presentation is finished, the Herald (moderator) will take over.

The herald will read out questions from the audience. The questions have been collected and edited by a signal angel, taken from social media channels.

You will be able to answer the questions.

The Herald will check the time and close out the program once the time has been used up, or no more questions are available.

Please only exit from the conference/stop streaming/leave the stage after the line producer or the video director have confirmed that you are off the air.

If you would like to offer the opportunity for the audience to engange with you further, you can schedule a self-organised session after your talk, you and the herald can invite people to that session (BBB or Jitsi, typically).

Home Recording/Live Setup

Recording with your computer

You can use your computer to record your audio, your webcam and your screen at the same time. One solution we have had good experience with is OBS Studio. The software can be a bit intimidating, but there are many good tutorials available. There is also plenty of proprietary software packages out there.

While it is possible to record with a camcorder and edit both the video and the screen capture in a video editing program, we think that OBS Studio is easier to handle, unless you are already familiar with a video editing suite.

Sound

For your audience to enjoy the talk, audio quality is of the utmost importance. Please consider wearing a head-mounted microphone: headset microphone or a earphone headset with a microphone on a boom that positions the microphone next to your mouth. If you have a podcasting setup where you can bring the microphone close to your mouth, or you have a sound deadened room, that works, too. Make some test recordings to ensure that there is little to no reverb or echo, and that the level is high enough. If you don't have a headset, consider getting a wired gaming headset (from approx. €/$30). If at all possible, use a headset that is wired to your laptop or your camera. The sound quality of most Bluetooth headsets is not very good.

The microphone built into your laptop will give poor audio quality and pick up all kinds of noise from the laptop and your environment. This should only be the last resort.

Video

You should use a 720p webcam or better. If you have or can get a 1080p camera, that would be best. If you are into cameras and photography or video, you can check out this detailed list of recommendations for hardware.

The camera should be mounted about the height of your head, for example on the top edge of your monitor. You should be able to look at the main screen and into the camera at the same time, if possible.

Lighting

The video quality will be greatly improved if you can light your room and yourself evenly. Even cheap cameras, or cameras built into a laptop, give good results if there is enough light. If possible, choose a room without natural light, and make sure the lights in the room are not directly visible in the camera frame (which would lead to bad exposure of the image). Make sure that your face is lit from multiple angles, and that the background is lit approximately the same. You will need to experiment a bit to get a good setup.