Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Actually Eugene, (while I do absolutely love TBA Gameday) a few of the links weren't working on Gameday this weekend. Both the Dallas and Indianapolis streams required you to go to a different webpage to watch the events, and the Hatboro-Horsham MAR District used different streams on Saturday and Sunday, so when you tried to watch it on Sunday, it just replayed Saturday's stream.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

That wasn't the fault of TBA. The streaming services used by those events didn't make embedding the cast into TBA work well. Check out this familiar thread.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Agreed, but I just wanted to point out that unfortunately there still isn't a one-stop-shop for all webcasts.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Fair enough. In certain situations (like non-premium Livestream accounts) we really can't do anything. For events that have different links for each day, we usually get contacted about the links being old, but we didn't this week.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

It does get you pointed in the right direction for most of them.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

I understand and appreciate what TheBlueAlliance is doing. I thoroughly love what your are doing, but once again, my point is, this should be FIRST's responsibility not yours IF they are wanting to manage and promote their product. And as was stated since there are a variety of services being used, some pop you out to a new window or don't work at all. Not your fault, but this is an issue of everyone doing something independent.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

FIRST could do a much better job of leveraging opportunities to promote event broadcasts and ensuring their quality across all events.

Major League Hacking - the organization that helps run 150+ collegiate hackathons across the country - has partnered with Twitch to get their channel on the homepage and featured in Twitch Weekly. The final demos at several hackathons this season have been featured on the homepage. FIRST viewership is potentially much larger, and it should be promoted through FIRST officially and not on dozens of unbranded Twitch channels. Twitch has shown that they're open to expanding the definition of "eSports" to include things like hackathons and robotics competitions, so I think they're an ideal partner to bring this to thousands of people (or more).

The other piece that's really missing is quality production equipment at each event. I was watching the Inland Empire broadcast today and was sorely disappointed by the terrible clipping audio and barely visible video clearly from an interlaced analog source. There are many events that are putting out HD streams with solid audio, there is no reason this equipment should not be standardized for all events worldwide to ensure a minimum baseline standard. Events that have better AV resources and wish to include commentary, interviews, etc can push the production quality bar as high as they can, but we need to ensure that every event has something that's worth watching.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Week #2:

REGIONALS

Greater Toronto Central Regional
(3/6-3/7) Practice 3/5 Live

http://new.livestream.com/WatchFIRSTNow/events/3839990

Mexico City Regional (3/6-3/7)

?

Arkansas Rock City Regional (3/6-3/7)
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/breakaway-3937 (goes Live March 6th)

Greater Pittsburgh Regional (3/6-3/7)

http://delphielite.com/2015-greater-...urgh-regional/ (goes live March 6th)

Central Valley Regional 05-Mar - 08-Mar-2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSBM2cmqn24


DISTRICT EVENTS

NE First:
Springfield Pioneer Valley Event District (3/6-3/7) - Blue Stream
http://www.twitch.tv/nefirst_blue

North Shore Reading Event District (3/7-3/8) - Red Stream
http://www.twitch.tv/nefirst_red

PNW First:

FRC West Valley District (3/5 - 3/7) - Red Stream
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pnwfirst-red

FRC Glacier Peak District (3/6 -3/8) - Blue Stream
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pnwfirst-blue

FIRST in Michigan

FIM District - Kettering Event (3/5 - 3/7)
http://www.twitch.tv/firstinmichigan2
FIM District - Kentwood Event (3/5 - 3/7)
http://www.twitch.tv/firstinmichigan3
FIM District - Waterford Event (3/5 - 3/7)
http://www.twitch.tv/firstinmichigan

Mid-Atlantic Robotics
MAR District Event - Mt. Olive Event (3/6 -3/8) Thanks Jscout11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1goJRR5WLc (Saturday)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Q7H-W77zs (Sunday)

Week 2.5
Israel Regional (3/10 -3/12)

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Part of the reason for that is that the streaming process is hardly dealt with by FIRST at all. Oftentimes individual teams are responsible for streaming. I think that looking forward for next year it would be a great idea for FIRST to bring on one or two people to be in charge of event video production and distribution. Getting consistent good quality and I think getting it front paged on twitch would be massive for making it loud.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Some notes to inform your complaints:
FIRST used to have pretty strict standards for AV at events. So much so that they had a national contract with an AV company to produce each event. AV costs for an event could be in the neighborhood of $50k - $75k, depending on the venue. And that was in several years ago dollars. This could be a significant contributor to a regional's budget.

Many regional events are held at large contracted venues. Absolutely nothing is cheap at these places, including internet. Renting a low bandwidth internet drop can often cost several hundred dollars. A higher bandwidth drop can cost a $1k or more. Yes this is highway robbery. Welcome to the world of expo centers. At some venues, this could probably be mitigated by short-term 4G rentals. Of course 4G reception is also horrendous at some venues.

Webcaster actually used to be a volunteer position. I don't know if it still is since I haven't gone through VIMs recently.

In case you're not familiar with regional organization, each regional is run by a Regional Director, often backed by a Regional Planning Committee. Neither the RD nor the RPC is necessarily affliated with HQ. So many regionals are fairly independent and they all handle their own fundraising and budgeting. So it's not like HQ can easily declare they're going to do something at all the regionals and it just happens. It has to filter through each regional's planning and budgeting process.

In summary, it comes down to dollars. High-end AV and internet for a webcast are expensive. HQ mandating such for every event is probably going to cause funding issues at some events, and HQ can't actually just step in and do it all themselves. Thus the current hodgepodge of solutions.

About the best you could do is HQ arranging something with Twitch so that atleast there's a central location for regionals to stream to if they wanted. I suspect even then you're still going to have regionals that go with their own home-rolled solution they've been running for several years.

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

MAR - Mount Olive Day 1 (Saturday)
MAR - Mount Olive Day 2 (Sunday)

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Anyone else having problems with GTRC today?

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Pitt webcast on TBA plays a VOD of yesterday's stream. Live link for today is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5-i-mb2GHQ#t=4986

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

Seconded, "Waiting for broadcast to begin"

Re: Webcasts 2015
 

I just updated GameDay.