Spoken @ CodeRage III, December 1-5, 2008 on Delphi, database and XML related topics
Posted by jpluimers on 2009/04/24
At the CodeRage III on-line virtual conference, I have done 4 sessions. 
For me, it was the first time speaking at conference done this way.
A few things were different:
- Sessions were 45 minutes presenting in stead of the normal 60 minutes
- The main body of the session was pre-recorded, the 15 minute Q&A was live
- I had to learn Camtasia
- The broadcasts were done through LiveMeeting
Camtasia oddities
Since I do all my work inside virtual machines, I had a hard time getting Camtasia to get working.
I experienced the recorded audio and video streams getting out of sync by somewhere around 2%.
The odd thing was that the original recordings seemed fine, but when postprocessing the stuff got wrong.
Searching the internet, I found out that Camtasia + virtual machines can go bad, and that there is no consistent way of getting it right.
Fiddling around, I finally found out that if you run Camtasia in the guest, and you use your keyboard to start recording or you use the powerpoint starter to start recording, it goes bad.
If you use your mouse to start recording, it goes OK.
But: as soon as you start editing your materials, it can go bad again.
For one session, I had to correct this, because re-recording was very cumbersome.
So I did this to correct the sync:
- Makde sure the sync problem was linear
- Calculated the audio video out of sync ratio
- Extract the audio portion
- Used my favourite Audio tool: Audacity to correct the sync
- Killed the old audio part
- Merged in de corrected audio part
Final solution: use your mouse to do the Camtasia recording, make sure you don’t need post editing, and you are set.
Go figure.
LiveMeeting oddities
LiveMeeting was also a surprise. A lot of people had a hard time listening to the audio.
Not sure if it was related, but Microsoft put an update or LiveMeeting on-line very shortly before CodeRage; before that update, everything worked fine.
Attendees listening to the confernce had to rejoin the audio channels many times. Eventually, CodeGear had to setup the session rooms, and blast new room URL’s to all attendees.
Also, LiveMeeting seems only good for vocal audio: streaming music through LiveMeeting gives you horrible audio.
In the past, InterWise (now AT&T Connect) used to work much much better, so I hope this was a one time glitch.
The sessions (this is what you came for, right?)
Anyway, below are the sessions I did (in chronological order) with titles, abstracts and download locations.
The downloads are on the Embarcadero CodeCentral repository (which probably requires login).
- Migrating your Applications to the Latest Delphi
Many developers use Delphi 5, 6, 7, 2005, 2006 or 2007. This session describes how to get from there to more recent Delphi versions. Using a business case where a large insurance company ported 100+ applications in half a year from Delphi 5 to Delphi 2006 with some added notes about Delphi 2007 and Delphi 2009, you will learn how to handle such a process.
presentation, samples and video replay (CodeCentral) - Nullable Types with Records, Methods and Operator Overloading
One of the things where data from databases and Delphi native types differ, is the support for NULL. When you work with databases a lot in Delphi, you want to have a datatype that supports NULL. In the past you had to use variants, but not any more! With the introduction of operator overloading, you can do this with record types, too. This session shows you how.
presentation, samples and video replay (CodeCentral) - Smarter Code with Databases and Data Aware Controls
For most Delphi applications, working with data in your UI is really important. This session shows you a few smart things you can do with the Data Aware Control framework in Delphi (the framework connecting DataSet/DataSource/Data Aware Controls) in a generic fashion.
presentation, samples and video replay (CodeCentral) - What to Watch for When using XML for Data Export and Import
This session shows how you can use XML for Data Import and Export and what to watch for. You will learn how to get XML from your DBMS, how to validate it, how to map it to something else, and map to XML.
presentation, samples and video replay (CodeCentral)
Note that these downloads do not contain the Q&A parts of the sessions (as usual, that is the drawback of not attending a conference).
–jeroen
tugsat said
This site very fantastic and tutorial !!
jpluimers said
Thanks!
–jeroen
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