Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

We could try and get free hosting and set up a database (Rackspace sponsor an entire regional?).

The 'simplest' solution is the Drive one, which is about $10 per month for 1TB.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

For the whole hosting thing.... firstvideoarchive.com has been doing this for around 10 Years... or more... I pay for a HUGE amount of storage and a HUGE amount of bandwidth. When TBA and soap and any other old video archiving site went down either temporarily or for good I have hosted the videos and still do. I actually have 2 servers with similar specs for this purpose. I do this as a convenience for FIRSTers everywhere, it costs me some money but nothing i cant handle each year or two. Back in the day we would setup an FTP location that would be shared via PM to allow uploading and downloading of the files and allow downloading and splitting. If you want to do something or have video available to upload please let me know. While I have your attention may I download anyone's video to my site? I will after seeing this come up, put on each page notes on the top about who donated video. Keep in mind this is a system that has been in place for a LONG time.

Thanks.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Just throwing it out there -
As much as I appreciate everyone's efforts to document the history of FIRST, is this maybe something FIRST itself should be doing? They're always about PR and Making it Loud, but they have all of us struggling to record and archive matches independently. Any thoughts on directing some of the effort in these struggles towards procuring an official solution?

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Just a suggestion - have you looked in to using a storage platform like S3? That's probably the best way to scale a video archiving service in FRC

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

If we just waited for FIRST to do things, they'd never get done. That said, webcasting (and archiving) is the next thing FIRST needs to standardise. Ideally, they'd work out a deal to get a 4G Mobile Hotspot for each event, set up a single space for all webcasts and archives. HD would be great, but they haven't even gotten there for Championship yet, so I'm not holding my breath.

Given how bad FIRST has been for so long at similar things (FMS problems, match results/rankings/etc page inconsistency, @FRCFMS inconsistency), they would probably need to hire some good people or contract a legit company to get a system like this working well. I just can't see it happening in the next couple seasons (prove me wrong, please!).

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I will have to take a look at s3, i like the idea of only getting charged for what i use but in some instances this could be bad when i upload large files temporarily then have someone else download them.

Thanks for pointing them to me.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

This is a useful conversation...but I'm a little scared to participate given the passions involved.

Here's a thought though: WatchFirstNow wants to be an archive for FIRST competition videos. Notwithstanding the ownership issues, why can't links to their archives be added to TheBlueAlliance (which only accepts youtube videos AFAIK)? TBA is pretty barren for video content as it stands. Would WFN be willing to mirror their content on Youtube to be linked by TBA? Alternatively, would they be willing to edit TBA (which is open source) to permit embedding from their site?

(apologies if this has already been suggested)

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

It would be much more trivial to modify TBA to allow for embedded vimeo videos. Then, you'd only need an export of some database relating vimeo keys to specific matches from WFN (since their archives page URLs aren't really helpful in figuring out which match is being shown).

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Also WFN would have to open up their Vimeo archive. You currently can't link to the videos directly (they're in a "Secure Vimeo LocalStorage Proxy", whatever that is).

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

As a Vimeo Plus user it is relatively easy to allow everyone to view the videos on the channel. I think WFN should go one step further and strip down the player to basics (again easy to do) and allow anybody to embed the videos. Teams then can find videos of their matches and embed them on their own websites for their alumni to follow. Vimeo ultimately is the archive here, not Watchfirstnow.com.

I would love for our teams videos to be added to the archive, but only with that caveat. I put a lot of work in to putting together our teams matches, as I too was no satisfied with how video is currently archived. I don't see Youtube going away anytime soon and in terms of search result ranking, Youtube videos are always going to rank higher than Vimeo.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

While discussing this in the other thread, the point was brought up that teams want to use the analytics for their videos.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

To be clear, I'm not talking about waiting--I'm wondering if some of the people who are already putting in great effort couldn't reduce the contenciousness (and other difficulties) of the situation by finding a more official underwriting, perhaps even at the region level. From the perspective of outreach and retention, official support is hopefully a good thing.