Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

A lot has been talked about recently about the ability to live stream and record events. This has been something a lot of groups have been looking into.

Spectrum has been working on a paper on how we set it up at the Lone Star regional this year, but I know there are different ways of doing it at different events.

Here is the current draft of the paper . It still needs a lot of work before the paper is polished but I think the system is pretty good for the cost. We spent a little over $500 total on our setup excluding the laptop (we just used my personal laptop). The original setup was conceived by Clinton Bolinger and the EngiNERDs and they use a system similar to this to do many of the MSC recordings and streams. At Lone Star we had a very poor audio input and we were also streaming over a 4G modem because there wasn't a very good internet connection at the event.

Current features of this setup

• Full field view
• score overlay
• easily add splash screens and graphics
• able to record portions of the stream directly so clipping matches is easy. If you have a fast enough internet connection you can upload archived matches while streaming.
• a lot of control over the streaming bit rate, so streaming on a slow internet connection is possible.

There are still a lot of issues to work out.

What is the best streaming site? I really liked youtube but our stream was taken down pretty quickly. I have heard of other teams/groups getting around the copyright take downs but I'm not sure how this has been done.

What is the best way to get HQ audio at every event into the stream? Is there an easy way to get the MC and announcer mics separate from the music? Are the streams more enjoyable with the music; is it important to keep it?

How do we make the streams more enjoyable for the average fan, parent, or grandparent?

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

As a COD and Battlefield streamer I love twitch tv bandwidth is a non issue and the stream lag is acceptable (sometimes 5-10 seconds) I heard they implemented a system that increased this delay but have not tested myself.

I suspect internet bandwidth might be part of the problem with the low quality streams. I have had success with a blue snowball ($60) on a tripod for audio. Set up by the stands it gets a very nice mix of music and MC along with being very difficult to clip. Another problem is frame rate as 720p 10 fps is not acceptable any year where things fly through the air.

An idea to make things more interesting would be to cut out the constant FIRST sponsor adds and replace it with event standings, upcoming match info or even a shot the teams walking off the field.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Thank you for writing this. FIRST needs better webcasts if we are to ever "Make it Loud."
Any good audio mixer should have multiple outputs in addition to the main mix, and be able to assign different channels to each. You would need to work with whoever is running the audio to set it up, but it shouldn't be to difficult.
I personally could live without the music on the streams, but it does make the event seem more exciting.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

At the Great Lakes Bay Region District event we were lucky enough to have our primary sponsor, Dow, bring in their AV team and equipment to manage the entire livestream and video system.

That said, even with the great crew we had, it was a huge problem trying to get the stream to stay up without it getting pulled by YouTubes hyper-sensitive Copyright system (it was literally flagging music coming through the speakers mics, as the music system was isolated from the rest of the audio for the stream input).

I'm curious what other events have done to deal with this and if anyone has gotten any official guidance from FIRST on streaming and dealing with copyright (Multiple calls we made to FIRST HQ on the topic went unreturned)? Using a stream service that doesn't check for copyright is of course an option, but it doesn't solve the legal limbo that FIRST livestreams are currently in.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Great work! I love the paper. One small thing to improve on the setup, is that in District Fields, FIRST does not supply the full CRT monitor, instead only providing a separate flat screen, and the video ports on the scorpion (33) are all that is available to be used. It would be awesome if you could include a section for Districts that just mentions this difference.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

I'll need to know what the differences are, we are doing this only from what we set up at a single event. Anyone know what outputs are available out of the scorpion case? Even better if there is a picture. I'll get more pictures during the off-season as we continue to test this setup.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

This is the best picture of the back of the scorpion case I can find. I can snag a better one in a couple weeks at an offseason event, if it would help.
Attachment 16936

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Our team just started live streaming events this past year (FLL, FTC, AZ) and have been looking into upgrading our setup to be in HD, so this was definitely a great read.

YouTube Live has great features for being free, including automatic encoding of lower resolution streams, DVR playback, and instant archiving. Of course the only downside is their music content ID system. For our FLL and FTC streams we were in charge of the music as well, so on our high school's sound board, we found a button to "ground out" the music input allowing just the mic audio to be sent to the streaming laptop. This worked well enough that we did not get flagged by YouTube, but did make some parts of the broadcast a bit dull.

I also second the recommendation for Open Broadcaster Software. It is pretty easy to use and outputs a very high quality and reliable stream, especially for being free!

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Looks good. I've posted some of what we're working on at http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...5&postcount=62. We haven't yet tested the setup with the new, much cheaper equipment, but plan to do so at the Minnesota State Championship in 3 weeks. If the quality turns out, we're excited that we might be able to bring the equipment down to <$50.

We had not tried any of the replay stuff you mentioned in the writeup, so we'll have to check that out. It'd be interesting to hear from 2337 and 1678 as well about overlays, camera quality, streaming hosts, etc.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

For roboshow we have a pretty great setup (and Full HD) but its not nearly as inexpensive as you are looking for. But here are some things that will translate to what your looking for.

First the audio, pretty much every mixing board has an AUX send, you can pick which channels, and how they are mixed, and sent out of these ports. We used this at Robocon once YouTube took down our stream for copyright (you live you learn) and it worked well other times we did it. On smaller boards I have seen them labeled as Monitor out.

For encoding we use a Mac mini and two devices to get full HD.
We use a BlackMagic Ultra Studio Mini


Its supposed to take embedded audio but there are some serious driver issues with that and losing sync, so we use a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2

What great about this device is it can use XLR or 1/4" inputs, with individual gain controls and monitoring on the device, so if we have to make a long run for the audio cables its not a problem finding long XLRs and the lights around the knobs blink to the audio so we can see we are getting signal.

As i said before we have used YouTube, but also uStream and LiveStream. Nothing really to say about any of them that hasn't been said. Unfortunately for free there aren't many options.

With that said we had a streaming partner Stream Monkey that gave us super awesome streaming service for the Orlando regional.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Had a few more thoughts after looking through the thread.

Instead of lugging around a big heavy concrete filled bucket or umbrella stand, I would get a lightweight aluminum speaker or lighting stand. I have seen where people modify shorter speaker stands with a long pole for the last segment to get extra height, the stands are designed to keep 50lb speakers up, so making it tall and putting a few pounds is safe.

We used a GoPro for wide angle shots pretty effectively, we also have used a HD security camera to get some other interesting shots.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

I've heard stories of Twitch banning for not streaming gaming-related content, so I wouldn't count on being able to stream there.

Livestream.com has always been great for streaming IRL content in my experience. Their system is a little closed and I haven't used it to stream in a while, but their services are great.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Allen I love the paper so far, A question I assume this currently requires someone to be sitting at the streaming table hitting start stop at the end of each match to split the match footage? It there anyway to automate this and not require an addition person at the event?

Secondly a more general question is there someone at FIRST that we can get in touch with and work with to get a universal set up?

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

It does require a person, but I don't really see this a problem. Literally anyone can do this plus they get a pretty good view of the matches. I had two students switching out during the event and it was never an issue. If you want to do some of the nicer things, like instant match uploads or match replays you will need a person anyway. We also had alliance selection results to the side of the screen and were able to quickly make gone to lunch or other graphics as needed. All of this needs to have a person working the laptop.

I'm sure there is someone to talk to, but I'm not sure who. I know Clinton and I have both spoken to Frank about it, not really sure what the progress is.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Citrus Circuits also plans on having a whitepaper out on the streaming system we used at Inland Empire and Sacramento. Also look for further developments in Northern California.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

KC was streaming on Twitch yesterday (With music/mc/video), and they got BANNED for copyright music apparently! Today they're on UStream and only streaming video.
I'm working on an email to FIRST HQ giving them my comments on this topic and suggestions on improving it in the future (including getting comments from those who have streamed events in the past) and including a link to this topic.
I'm surprised with how much they work with Show Ready Events to ensure the same feel of events in person, that they have never set a standard for themselves when it comes to virtual viewers of events, who will be watching long after the event ends.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

This would be unusual, can anyone confirm?

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

How did this camera and setup work out for you guys? I am looking into putting together some higher quality streams for St. Louis going forward and this is a great price point. I went ahead and purchased the camera just to play around with it and see what we could do.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

I've been out of the country for most of our events, but I'll send some of our webcast people over here.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

I don't think we ever used the cheap camera for an actual broadcast. We're using the GoPro again this year because we wanted to use that widescreen webcam on our robot instead.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

I received it yesterday and it does seem perfect for on-board robot use. The field of view is pretty great for a cheap webcam but the video quality was somewhat 'grainy' and had some noise. I suppose you get what you pay for and the GoPro is still a great inexpensive solution compared to some of the high end A/V solutions out there.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Thanks for posting this Allen. It has been very helpful as we prepare to stream the 10,000 Lakes Regional for the first time. Here are a few thoughts I'd like to share:
- The HD Hero 2 is a mini HDMI port where as the newer GoPro models are micro HDMI. We bought this skeleton case for our Hero 2 and made a cutout for the HDMI and SD card slots.
- Much like the Elgato, the AVerMedia LGP C875 is a USB capture device, but it also has a driver that allows it to be DirectShow compatible allowing it to be used with a greater variety of software.
- Like Andrew suggested, we purchased a speaker stand that we were easily able to slide an extendable painter's pole into.

Thanks for everyone's input in this thread. It has been very informative. ::rtm::
Nate

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

One question I have is how are you guys getting the high resolution real time scoring overlay? I thought the Scorpion box could only output a composite video source, but streams like PNW have really sharp real time scoring info - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWduHPHCZjk

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

Although I didn't see it, people who were watching Ventura told me it was very good. Anyone have the specifics for that event?

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

We were banned from Twitch while streaming the NYC Regional. Not for music copyright though, for "nongaming content". We were displeased to say the least and have still yet to receive a response from Twitch on the matter.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

The FMS case outputs DVI, at least on the PNW fields. This is then converted and split into an HDMI signal that we overlay on our stream and show on the FTA's desk.

Twitch is a gaming focused streaming site. They have the right to take down any stream that doesn't fit with the style of content they want on their site. I agree that it is frustrating, but you just have to accept that fact.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

The only thing is, Twitch has "FRC: Recycle Rush" as an option in their "what game are you playing" menu when you setup the stream, so unless those categories are submitted by the community and not reviewed by anyone, Twitch should be ok with FIRST competitions being streamed.

The real problem is that the "non-gaming content" flags are submitted by users, not twitch admins, if you get enough flags you get banned automatically for 24 hours and the appeal system is too slow to be of any use.


Our first event this year was streaming to Twitch and got banned in the middle of Friday competitions. We switched over to Hitbox.tv (basically a twitch clone with fewer restrictions) and had no issues aside from having to refresh the stream every few hours due to length limitations.

Re: Live Streaming and Recording of Events
 

All the District scorpion cases do not have a scan converter in them so FIRST gave us an option of what video output we wanted. I think all the districts opted for DVI as you can get DVI, VGA, and HDMI from the DVI-I output.

For MAR, we've done it two ways since the audience screen is limited to 1280x720 resolution.
1) 720p: 15ft DVI to HDMI cable straight into our video switch equipment.
2) 1080p: DVI -> VGA adapter into VGA->HDMI scan converter which scales the resolution up to 1080p then via HDMI into our video switch.

Obviously what you can connect to is out of your control, but on the standard scorpion case you could connect to the VGA pass through which will output the audience screen as if it was on another computer monitor. From that you could scale that to whatever resolution you wanted. This is what we were going to do in MAR before we found out this year that we were getting a DVI output.