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Information for Speakers

Video Recording Guidelines

Congratulations again on having your talk accepted for PyOhio! We’re truly thankful to have you as part of this unusual year of our conference.

This year, we are asking all speakers to deliver a prerecorded video of their talks. This doc will walk you through the essentials.

How long should my video be?

For PyOhio 2023, we are doing a collection of short talks. To help keep the event on track and running smoothly for all of our remote attendees, we have tighter time requirements than in live events:

  • Talks should be between 5 - 15 minutes in length.

Please, please, please do not go over the maximum time for your talk! If your video is over 15 minutes, we cannot guarantee that the entire talk will be presented on the stream.

What format should my video be?

  • Format: H264 MP4 (.mp4 or .m4v please)
  • Resolution: 1920x1080
  • Frame rate: 30fps
  • Audio: AAC (preferred) or MP3

Please DO NOT submit your video in .mkv format, it just makes extra work for us to prepare it for streaming.

When does my video have to be delivered by?

We would like to receive all videos by December 4, 2023. This will give us enough time to pre-screen and process them.

If it looks like you will not be able to make that date, please contact us at program@pyohio.org as soon as possible to let us know! This will help keep the program chair’s panic level under control. :-)

How should I deliver my video?

You have two choices for delivering your video:

  1. Upload your video to the private folder that will be created for you (we’ll contact everyone separately by email with the link to this folder)
  2. Upload your video to your own cloud sharing service and send a link to or share it with program@pyohio.org; we’ll handle downloading it from there.

How should I record my presentation?

There are lots of ways you might choose to record your presentation. Here are some suggestions that we hope will be useful. Ultimately, whatever path you choose will be fine as long as you can deliver a video in the right format.

Recording with OBS Studio

OBS Studio is a free, open-source tool used for capturing audio and video; it runs on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux: https://obsproject.com

Here’s a guide to capturing both your screen and webcam using OBS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL8BwstqiqE

Recording with Screenshot.app

Mac OS 10.15+ can record videos of the screen with the Screenshot app. Here’s a guide to recording your screen with a voiceover in Mac OS 10.15 / Catalina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nn86t9955Y

Recording with Keynote

Apple’s Keynote can create videos with voiceover narration. Here’s a guide to creating a video with voiceover narration using just Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6e2ZtHnimA

Here’s a guide to creating a video with Keynote and combining it with a webcam recording in iMovie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRnANp2kS3c

Recording with PowerPoint

PowerPoint can also create videos of presentations, optionally including video from a webcam. Here’s a guide to creating a video with PowerPoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHXRuJEsN7M

Recording with Loom

Loom lets you record your camera, microphone, and desktop simultaneously. Videos are limited to a maximum of 5 minutes in the free tier, but the paid tier allows for recordings of unlimited length. If you use Loom or a service like it, we request that you not share the video prior to the conference. Instead, please download it and deliver it to us using the instructions above.

Here’s how to get started: https://support.loom.com/hc/en-us/categories/360000251678-Getting-Started

Other Tools

Other tools you might choose include Elgato and Camtasia. If you have recommendations to share with other presenters, let us know and we’ll update this list.

Advice

This is going to be a new and different experience for many speakers. Thank you for your courage! Here are some thoughts we’ve had that might be helpful as you prepare your video.

Practice First

We strongly recommend that whatever path you take for recording, you should practice recording before doing your presentation “for real”. This way you can get comfortable with your choice of tools.

Have a Script

Have solid notes or a script that you can read from as you record your presentation. It can be a lot harder to be impromptu or to ad lib for a recording than it is to do so in a live room. Having a script of some kind will help prevent you from stumbling or freezing up (things your program chair is prone to do whenever doing voiceover work).

Maybe Record in Segments

Delivering your presentation to a computer can feel quite different from speaking to a roomful of live attendees. You may find it valuable to record your presentation in shorter segments and assemble them using your favorite video editor.

Live Coding? Beware Keyboard Sounds!

If you are live coding, using your computer’s built-in microphone may pick up the sound of typing, which can be distracting for your audience. We recommend using an external microphone or headset, or using an external keyboard. Please review the audio of your recording before submitting it!

Audio Quality

Please be careful with your audio, as it can be a make-or-break aspect of a remote presentation. If your audio levels are too high, it can cause clipping, a distortion effect that is highly uncomfortable for listeners and which is very difficult for us to repair. It’s better for your video to be a little quiet than for it to be too loud — we can always bump the levels up when we normalize all the audio to prepare it for streaming!

Speakers

PyOhio is dedicated to featuring a diverse and inclusive speaker lineup.

All speakers will be expected to have read and adhere to the conference Code of Conduct. In particular for speakers: slide contents and spoken material should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate, and neither are language or imagery that denigrate or demean people based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, physical appearance, disability, or body size.

PyOhio does not tolerate plagiarism. Speakers’ presentations must be their own, original material, with appropriate citations when incorporating the work of others.

We will make every effort to provide accommodations for speakers and attendees of all abilities — all we ask is that you let us know so we can prepare accordingly.

PyOhio is a conference in support of the local programmer community. We aim to feature a mix of local and non-local speakers to offer a program with broad appeal.

Resources

This public speaking repository, maintained by VM Brasseur, has many useful resources to help you polish your proposals and talks.

You may review prior years’ talks for examples:

Questions?

Email us at program@pyohio.org