Zoom:
Intuitive interface
(Reportedly) good audio and video. I still have to verify that myself, as I haven’t organised or attended a Zoom meeting yet. Caps or you’ll pay:
100 participants, 40 minutes max.
Google Meet
A wee bit more confusing to use than Zoom, but no biggie
Google has a reputation when it comes to discontinuing services they end up not liking. Caps or you’ll pay:
100 users, 60 minutes max.
Microsoft Skype
Has been around since dust was invented. Excellent audio and video; good standards support if you use the right version (Skype for Desktop). For instance: recording or streaming Skype windows in OBS Studio works like a charm.
I cannot reliably comment on the intuitivity of the UI, since I’ve been using Skype since forever ago, so it’s pretty much second nature to me. Caps or you’ll pay:
50 users, 4 hours.
While all platforms will install on one machine, it is probably best to use only one. Given our requirements, Zoom is probably the best option. You can join a Zoom meeting with one click; I have yet to see that work with Meet or Skype.
Although the cap of 40 minutes is a bit ‘clunky’, it’s not insurmountable or a huge setback. Meet is a bit cranky in that it requires a Google account.
For those of us that distrust Zoom’s security: you can sandbox it (use it in a VM environment) as long as the VM gets control of the audio and video services the host OS offers.
While the 11am hang that Pam organised was in fact almost perfectly timed for working Europeans (11am PST, or Pam’s Standard Time, is 19:00 GMT or 20:00 CET), I can see how, for an Americas-based audience, 11am may suck.
On top of that, we’ve got a handful of members in AsiaPAC as well, for whom 11AM PST sucks even worse.
With that in mind, I can see the need to have separate hangs per time zone region.
For the European hangs, I would suggest 20:00 GMT / 21:00 CET-- this is somewhat friendlier on our UK friends.
I don’t think there will be a time that would work for everyone. 11am is going to inconvenience US and Canadian citizens who have a day job, and while it would be nice for us Continental Europeans, and probably doable for our Scottish and English friends, it’s gonna be sleep depriving for @howard and the other AsiaPAC folks.
Done! FYI, like @peterhuppertz said, you can do that yourself on threads you started by scrolling up top to the title and clicking the pencil icon - but it’s possible that the edit option disappears after a certain number of days, I’d have to check on that.
Numbers are relative to GMT (of course) and do not keep DST into account. Introduce DST into the equation and this suddenly becomes the stuff that migraines are made of.
Good heavens, my head is in too high a gear considering it’s past midnight.
I can see how we would have regular “regular” hangouts on a per-timezone-basis… but how, on top of that, we could have “themed” hangouts, in which a specific topic is discussed, or presented. Say, for instance, @joshfossgreen wants to do a session on diminished and augmented chords in the major diatonic chord progression… or @gio wants to talk about power duos.
Or maybe @howard wants to show us how to hook up our gear for optimal recording results, or some freeloader from the Netherlands, who has no job and no money, would be willing to share how he created a working recording setup for 8 euros.
I can see how these “themed hangouts” could benefit BassBuzz as well. If we can stream them to YouTube (and we can… vee haf ze technology), they could also be archived and shown on Josh’s YouTube channel and/or his Facebook profile.
These “themed” hangouts should of course be held in a time slot that makes it accessible to most of us, but since they will be archived (as streams are), if you miss one, you can always watch it later.
Hi @peterhuppertz@PamPurrs ,
I joined in on Pam’s hang, it was 4.00am local time Melbourne.
I didn’t mind getting up to join the fun, we enjoyed the opportunity to share our bass journey’s etc.
If others we’re organised in other time zones I’d make the effort to get involved, hell what’s an hour hear or there, when you can engage with like minded people who share the same passion and have the opportunity to learn from each other.
I do like your idea around tutorials on different training stuff : set up, chord structures etc, and it would be great if Josh gets involved on some as well.
Cheers Brian
It’s always like that … one guy feels a certain software is easier to work with, another one prefers a competitor’s product.
Fortunately these are all simple chat/video apps, which are easy to figure out … should not be a problem for people who can make an electric bass emit all sorts of awesome sounds by using their hands in weird, independently-moving ways.
@peterhuppertz the idea of the themed hangs is capital, but I think we need to mix them in with the ongoing free hangs that we’ve been doing. So far, I have been involved in two of them, with no particular topic, and in both we all have talked non-stop for 90 minutes.
I think @T_dub has introduced a brilliant concept (which I was opposed to at the beginning), and I hope the idea flourishes.
As far as the platform, I think it should be left up to the organizer to decide. In time, if there are bugs or problems with any of them, we can either work them out or ultimately settle on one platform that seems to work for the mass.
Thank you @peterhuppertz for your involvement and enthusiasm.
Finding a time for both the EU and APAC is easy. Finding a time for both the West Coast US and APAC is easy. Once you try and mix all three it gets hard. East Coast US and APAC is borderline. And if you need to throw in South Asia or the Middle East then someone is going to have a bad time with the schedule. I have to deal with this all the time, it’s just a fact of life.
This is one area in my life where having a sleep disorder actually helps.
That was exactly what I was going for when I created the first thread trying to form this. I have been on Zoom meetings daily since the Covid lockdown, that it was the natural host to suggest.
I have also been part of other forums of people with general interests like this. We used to have monthly meetings (in person) and do all sorts of other things. Of course it was a somewhat local club. One was when I was living in Phoenix, and the other was when I got back here.
I know it is always super cool to meet up live and in person, the people who you talk to daily, multiple times per day.
Since we are all spread out, and that is not really going to happen, us all getting together in one place at the same time, I just thought it would be cool to have Meet ups ONLINE, as it is the next best thing.
And who knows, one day we may be able to have little live action jam sessions, or we can have some more experienced players on the site do lessons, or workshops of something like that.
One thing I could think of that would be great, would be a workshop on GB, and / or DAW’s in general. Covering ground from just starting up, the very basics, to move complex editing, and video editing tips and tricks.
But that’s getting a little ahead of where we are at, It will be great to get groups going first, on a somewhat regular (weekly or bi weekly or monthly) intervals.
Possibly we need 2 groups if we go eastern / Western Hemisphere, or 4 groups if we break it into quodrants, or 3???
Of course, any member could go to any group, it might just make it easier to have a core group if the hours are more general to one’s timezone.
So once again, I post two long posts, after reading only where my side menus dropped me in the conversation.
@peterhuppertz, yes, exactly. There is so much that can be done. We can have topics, we can have lessons, we can have “share what you are working on’ meetings (think post your covers, LIVE ON ZOOM)
Hell, we can have contests between Zone Groups, there is a myriad to what we can do.
I do think that it may be best however, to get the groups up and going at regular intervals, and (Hopefully) are able to maintain a decent couple of groups to where these things are possible.
Efforts and announcements. How can we (active participants in this thread) come up with 2 or 3 groups (I think 2 will be best so we can maintain larger groups), and organize the time, and move forward.
Have we picked the other host?
I think the other host would work best if almost exactly 12 hours away from @PamPurrs and I.
This way, it will be more likely that some, devoted members will actually be able to get in both groups.
How do we come up with the best times? Ideally we can get two groups 12 hours apart, or close to. Should we do a poll? I tried that in the other thread, so we can use that as a starting point.
How do we get more people to attend?
‘
Spread the word. Be polite, don’t hijack threads, but mentioning the groups in other threads would be a good way to get more people involved. There is probably a good amount of people that have not taken the time to read this thread yet.
Be sure to link people to this thread when talking about it, and possibly add it to your profile signature line as well.
All suggestions, I will do what I can to help out. I have successfully created a monthly meet up for a forum in the past, and we had meetings at members house, we held auctions, we had local pet stores, online pet stores and some manufacturers that donated items to our auctions, as well as member donations. It was awesome, we had so much fun. I did not do it myself, I do not take full credit, but I had a model from the club / Forum that I was a big part of in Phoenix, and when I moved back to So California, the club here was struggling, and I invested a lot of time helping some of the leading members to organize the California club to be just like the Arizona club. And talking time zones, I got the two clubs together, and we had members traveling to and from to attend each other groups members, and all sorts of stuff, it was great.
A little challenging here, were are not talking a 5 hour drive between the two clubs, but I am sure we can achieve something like this (participation wise, I doubt we will have auctions, or need for them) but we can do all sorts of stuff, just like Peter was talking about.
Absolutely, I am fortunate to have the times on my hands to be able to do that comfortably.
Yes, sure helps me too. I get some of my best practice and playing time in overnight.
Everybody is sleeping, I get all the space to myself. Lol
My favourite would have been Skype – I’ve been using that for ages. When it was acquired by Microsoft, Skype went through a very rough patch, quality-wise, but that’s been sorted out since a couple years.
But Skype and Zoom both have a disadvantage: for Skype, you need a Microsoft account (I think) and for Zoom, you need a Google account. This is why I was thinking Zoom might be a better option.
Streaming
I did a little research for this. I was under the assumption that Zoom supported NDI, but it looks like I’m wrong…
The advantage of Skype for Desktop is that it has very good NDI support in the free Skype for Desktop client. For Zoom, the answer is that (after ignoring the feature requests for two years) they currently support a beta implementation for paying customers on the Corporate Plan only, which is a $200/month plan, so streaming a Zoom session would be a no-go as far as I am concerned.
Also, the implementation is slightly different. The Zoom video feed is a composite of the (scaled-down for best bandwidth) webcam output of all attendants, whereas Skype sends full-on picture/audio to each client, which makes the NDI implementation a lot more straightforward – you get an NDI session per attendant, not one for the entire Skype session, so you can include only the video/audio of the attendants that are useful in the live stream. Since, for a webcast, the “presenter” is the most important person, and you’d need his webcam’s full output, and POSSIBLY a smaller image of the webcam of one interviewer/moderator, I reckon that Skype would make this a lot easier.
There seems to be a workaround, but I am told that it lacks the flexibility you have with Skype. Add to that that Zoom caps the meeting duration at 40 minutes, so that you’d have to create a new stream and get your audience to join the new stream (you lose your audience when the stream ends), and the case for Skype becomes a pretty solid one.
I have done live streams with Skype and OBS Studio, and found it to work very satisfactory.
Zoom would still be an excellent option for the regular hangs, though!
This is true, as long as you include office hours in your time window. But many of us may not be capable to be in a hang during office hours. And if we in Europe start at 20:00 GMT, that’s gonna be… what? 03:00 for you?
That’s why I was thinking of three ‘regions’ – one for the Americas, one for Europe, and one for APAC.
The Americas and Europe should be no problem. I see we have about 15 members who voted Asia or Pacific in the Demographics poll, but I’m not sure how many of these are still active… so we may end up with two regions anyway.
Yeah, “easy” was meant relative to the more insurmountable task of trying to fit all of APAC, EU, and US in a call at a reasonable time. It’s still always tough to line things up, especially when considering that both the EU and the US span several time zones themselves.
