Add a page covering the the different video streaming systems we've used

so far.

content/projects/video/history.md

@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+---
+title: "Video Streaming Project History"
+date: 2025-03-09T13:18:35+08:00
+draft: true
+---
+
+Over the years, PLUG has gone through multiple generations of its
+video recording/streaming system.
+
+## Version 1: DVswitch
+
+The first recording system was based on [DVswitch][DVswitch]. This was
+a client/server video mixing system:
+
+* Clients read DV video or audio sources, and send it over the network.
+* Server provides a UI allowing an editor to mix audio and video
+  sources in real time to stream online or record to disk.
+
+Our video sources were:
+
+ * [Canon Vixia HV30][Canon] DV camcorders.
+ * [Canopus Twinpact 100][Twinpact] VGA capture device. Connected
+   between presenter's laptop and projector to capture their slides.
+
+Both devices provided a DV video feed over Firewire, which could be
+captured by a laptop and sent over the network using
+`dvsource-firewire`.
+
+Microphone audio was routed via a small mixing board that appeared as
+a USB sound card, which was sent via `dvsource-alsa`.
+
+These would all feed in to DVswitch, which would produce an output
+stream that could be sent to an Icecast server for streaming and
+written to disk for later processing.
+
+[DVswitch]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180326132702/http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/
+[Canon]: https://global.canon/en/c-museum/product/dhc738.html
+[Twinpact]: https://archive.org/details/manualzz-id-908869
+
+
+## Version 2: BigBlueButton
+
+In 2020 during the COVID pandemic lockdowns, we started investigating
+ways of holding meetings remotely. One piece of software we considered
+was [BigBlueButton][BBB]: an Open Source web based video conferencing
+system with a focus on classroom style meetings with a single
+presenter talking to a large audience members.
+
+While we never ended up using BBB for fully remote meetings, it did
+offer a way to improve our ability to record in-person meetings:
+
+* Through the use of an HDMI capture device, we could make our
+  existing cameras appear as USB webcams.
+* As the mixing board acts as a USB sound card, so behave similar to a
+  headset.
+* The presenter could log in to BBB to show slides or screen share.
+
+We could then live stream the meeting to anyone not present in-person,
+and produce a recording.
+
+It also offered a few benefits over the old DVswitch system:
+
+* No dependence on Firewire: these expansion cards could be a bit
+  unreliable and it was getting hard to source replacements.
+* We were no longer limited to standard definition video.
+
+One downside was that recordings live within the BigBlueButton
+instance. Rather than a single video, the slides, screen share, and
+webcam footage are all served separately and stitched together by a
+web app. This would be a problem if we ever wanted to move off of BBB.
+
+To solve this, we wrote [bbb-render][bbb-render]: some scripts to
+download the various files that make up a recording and assemble them
+into a [GStreamer Editing Services][GES] project. This could then
+render out a single video file suitable for archive and publication on
+YouTube.
+
+This also gave an opportunity to add some PLUG branding, in the form
+of opening and closing cards and a backdrop.
+
+[BBB]: https://bigbluebutton.org/
+[bbb-render]: https://github.com/plugorgau/bbb-render
+[GES]: https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/gst-editing-services/
+
+
+## Version 3: OBS Studio?
+