Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery (Post 1556425)

So, your solution to the time delay is to add additional volunteers? With a potentially different interpretation of the rules, and who quite possibly did not see the event first-hand given that they were reviewing another match?

You're essentially adding another "key volunteer" position. Something that many events already struggle to fill.




So, the district system is over then? Because you're not going to find many high school gyms with the scaffolding/catwalk to support an overhead camera like that. Heck, I'd bet more than 50% of regionals would have to find new venues as well, as plenty of college gyms and convention centers wouldn't be able to support that.


I've watched plenty of videos. Mistakes will always be made, but mistakes are part of any sport. Not just FRC. Video replay is not a panacea to fix those officiating errors, which is my point. It's a lot of added cost and complexity, for minimal return. There's still plenty of opportunity for blown calls. Anyone who has followed the NHL this season, and its roll out of expanded video review, will attest to that. More people are complaining about the additional video review than any other officiating issue this season.


That "simple solution" isn't viable in the majority of FRC venues. That simple solution doesn't solve anything regarding interactions underneath bumpers. Specifically, that system cannot answer close calls in terms of CROSSINGS this year, because it cannot see underneath the frame/bumpers of a robot to know if its wheels fully cleared the defense.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery (Post 1556425)

So, the district system is over then? Because you're not going to find many high school gyms with the scaffolding/catwalk to support an overhead camera like that. Heck, I'd bet more than 50% of regionals would have to find new venues as well, as plenty of college gyms and convention centers wouldn't be able to support that.

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux (Post 1556392)

I don't know that I 100% agree with video replay, but people are blowing the level of difficulty WAY out of proportion here. It's 2016, there are some very affordable & simple A/V setups that are possible now.

Here's what it would take to implement a basic level of high quality video review -

- 1 volunteer to man the webcast PC. I get that volunteers are scarce but that's a bad excuse to not do something that will improve events big time.
- 1 GoPro on a tall pole. The one we used at St. Louis this past weekend used a $20 speaker stand, a 7-8 ft. tall PVC pipe, a GoPro and a cell phone charger with a USB cable to give the GoPro power all weekend.
- An HDMI input recorder like the Elegato to allow for recording of the GoPro's view.
- Software to record the stream locally on the PC. We use XSplit because it's so easy to use, but there are other options too. Match files are saved automatically to the PC's hard drive and can be opened immediately after the match ends.

Here's what I envision the process looking like -

1. Each alliance gets one challenge flag during the elimination tournament. The challenge must be issued within 2 minutes of the match ending. Once the match has been challenged, the head referee must watch the match / incident in question.

2. Head referee coordinates with the webcast PC volunteer and pulls up the locally recorded file of the last match. This would literally take a minute to do.

3. Head referee watches the video and based on the evidence shown makes a call to replay the match or let the match stand. Similar to the NFL, the video would need to show overwhelming evidence that the match should be replayed i.e. no close calls.

My opinion - if we want FRC to be represented as a truly competitive sport then we need to present it as most sports are presented. One great example of this is how E-sports have exploded over the past few years. The coverage of online gaming tournaments is incredible and is a model FRC should look to follow. For roughly $1000 in equipment, every event could implement a basic level of coverage that would up the home viewing experience ten fold. There's no reason this same setup couldn't be used for a basic level of video replay. Will it be like the NFL? Of course not. But it has to be better than what we have today - which is nothing. FIRST could easily include the kit I described to travel with the fields from event to event and include a tip sheet on how to set it up. Anyone that can hook up their Xbox to their TV could handle setting it up.

Saying we can't do this because 'it's hard' and 'would take too much effort' is a total cop out. This is FIRST, we're supposed to be doing incredible stuff right? What happened to trying to make it loud - or is that not a thing anymore?

Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1556433)

Im sorry, but this should be re-worded. Teams that lose good chunks of points and/or get eliminated through sometimes blatant missed calls is not "minimal return".

Originally Posted by MikLast (Post 1556438)

Ryan had a good way of combating this about 4 posts before yours:

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery (Post 1556425)

So, your solution to the time delay is to add additional volunteers? With a potentially different interpretation of the rules, and who quite possibly did not see the event first-hand given that they were reviewing another match?

You're essentially adding another "key volunteer" position. Something that many events already struggle to fill.




So, the district system is over then? Because you're not going to find many high school gyms with the scaffolding/catwalk to support an overhead camera like that. Heck, I'd bet more than 50% of regionals would have to find new venues as well, as plenty of college gyms and convention centers wouldn't be able to support that.


I've watched plenty of videos. Mistakes will always be made, but mistakes are part of any sport. Not just FRC. Video replay is not a panacea to fix those officiating errors, which is my point. It's a lot of added cost and complexity, for minimal return. There's still plenty of opportunity for blown calls. Anyone who has followed the NHL this season, and its roll out of expanded video review, will attest to that. More people are complaining about the additional video review than any other officiating issue this season.


That "simple solution" isn't viable in the majority of FRC venues. That simple solution doesn't solve anything regarding interactions underneath bumpers. Specifically, that system cannot answer close calls in terms of CROSSINGS this year, because it cannot see underneath the frame/bumpers of a robot to know if its wheels fully cleared the defense.

Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1556411)

Taking 2-3 minutes of a ref's time during 7 minute field reset wont add any time.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery (Post 1556440)

I don't think video review would fix nearly as many of those cases as some people think they would.

And even if they did, it's minimal return. What happens on the field is such a small part of FIRST's mission. Don't take me wrong, I'm a huge fan of watching and participating in FRC events. But the outcome is not what matters. It really isn't.

Originally Posted by alicen (Post 1556445)

EricH beat me to exactly why this isn't as simple as you want to make it sound.

Refs don't just idly stand by while field reset is going on, much of the time they're running around like crazy doing 100 different things, or (heaven's forbid!) taking a half a moment to run to the bathroom so they don't delay matches :yikes:

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery (Post 1556425)

So, the district system is over then? Because you're not going to find many high school gyms with the scaffolding/catwalk to support an overhead camera like that. Heck, I'd bet more than 50% of regionals would have to find new venues as well, as plenty of college gyms and convention centers wouldn't be able to support that.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery (Post 1556425)

I've watched plenty of videos. Mistakes will always be made, but mistakes are part of any sport. Not just FRC. Video replay is not a panacea to fix those officiating errors, which is my point. It's a lot of added cost and complexity, for minimal return. There's still plenty of opportunity for blown calls. Anyone who has followed the NHL this season, and its roll out of expanded video review, will attest to that. More people are complaining about the additional video review than any other officiating issue this season.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery (Post 1556425)

That "simple solution" isn't viable in the majority of FRC venues. That simple solution doesn't solve anything regarding interactions underneath bumpers. Specifically, that system cannot answer close calls in terms of CROSSINGS this year, because it cannot see underneath the frame/bumpers of a robot to know if its wheels fully cleared the defense.

Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1556446)

And this is an old argument on CD but the field results is a main part of FIRST's mission, thus why it is call FIRST Robotics Competition not FIRST Robotics Event.

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky (Post 1556448)

Overall these "Misses" seem too obvious. We need Better Ref Training along with more refs.

Originally Posted by EricH (Post 1556406)

In 2015, and 2014 Week 1, there were 5 refs on the field. One extra was on staff, for a full crew of 6 refs, and during playoffs there could be 6 on the field depending on the head ref. (2014 kept ramping up the ref count, though--went to 6 on-field later in the season, I was on a crew with 8 on-field at one point; CMP had 10 or so I hear.)

Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1556447)

The Head Ref is standing by for questions, arent they? How would this change that?