Making of a "Babbelbox" where you can speak to for partys

Question

Ive got a project to make for a party, its called in holland a "Babbelbox".

its a computer with a webcam and microphone that can be used to make a kind of video log of everyone who wants to say something about the party.

But the problem is that i dont know where to start. ive made a kind of video show system in c but i cant save any data to a good format so it wont jam my harddisk in one hour full.

Requirements:

• Record video + audio

• Recoding has to start after pressing a button

• Good compression over the recorded videos (would be even better if it can to be read by final cut pro or premiere pro)

• Light wight programm would be nice but i could scale up the computer power

Answer 1

a solution for linux using gstreamer:

in ubuntu install the gstreamer-tools package

then you can record with a command similar to:

gst-launch v4l2src ! 'video/x-raw-yuv,width=640,height=480,framerate=30/1' ! tee name=t_vid ! queue ! videoflip method=horizontal-flip ! xvimagesink sync=false t_vid. ! queue ! ffmpegcolorspace ! theoraenc ! queue ! mux. autoaudiosrc ! queue ! audioconvert ! vorbisenc ! queue ! mux. oggmux name=mux ! filesink location=filename.ogv

you can adjust the resolution, framerate, filename etc as you prefer.

from there it would be fairly straighforward to write it out in python and knock up a simple gtk gui for starting / stopping. you could use a multifilesink to handle the filenames for successive recordings.

references:

http://noraisin.net/~jan/diary/?p=40

http://www.twm-kd.com/computers/software/webcam-and-linux-gstreamer-tutorial/

http://pygstdocs.berlios.de/pygst-tutorial/index.html

Answer 2

We built one from soup to nuts. That includes software, hardware, a full booth, touch-screen, and even themed it as a cultish confessional in honor of our boss. See http://www.cultoftom.com for the gory details.