Poll-Video Replay
 

So a few days ago, this thread went up, about video replay. Another thread related to the subject has gone up since. As it so happens, patar8746 was not the first to raise the issue-it had come up sporadically before, and at least one person has sent a message to FIRST about it before that. I think that the "Video Review Needs To Happen Now" thread has brought to the surface a simmering debate. We will hear much more about it in coming days, and eventually, FIRST will address it.

At this early stage, though, I was interested in what people think on the subject. Therefore, I have created a poll to address the issue. If you so desire, feel free to debate in this thread.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

;)
LOLz
If I simply click "No", will I be chastised?
When I simply posted "No." in one of those other threads, I was given the stink-eye :eek: by a few folks.

Blake
PS: Clear (1976) evidence that imagery doesn't lie.
What are Dave Lavery's rovers really doing up there???
:eek: :D ;)

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I like the idea Ryan and others have been floating, to try video review at off-season events before allowing it at official FRC events. I believe there will be significant learning, development, and training required to make this work.

As EricH observed recently, red/yellow cards were only introduced to FRC events in 2010, after several years of use at IRI.

So I voted no, for now. I would like to see this implemented when the bugs are (mostly) worked out.

----------

P.S. Can we have another thread for Pole-Video Replay? I'd like to see a few matches from the DS-mounted, R94 legal-height pole POV.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I don't think the issue is as binary as yes/no.

I think there SHOULD be some form of system in place outside of "sorry kid, that's what I saw", but there should be rules!

Like in the MLB how managers now get 1 or 2 challenges per game, or NFL coaches get x amount of challenges per game, FRC teams should get 1 challenge per event. You challenge correctly, you keep it. You challenge incorrectly, you lose it. You could even print out challenge coupons and have teams turn them in at the [?] box. Reset challenges for playoffs with Alliance Challenges, which are handed out along with the timeout and replacement robot coupons.

If done right, it wouldn't interfere with gameplay, and would divert pressure and misplaced anger away from the refs.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I think that it should only be allowed in eliminations. I also think that setting in up with a system like other sports. For example, you can ask refs to look at a video replay (basically challenging the call on the field) and if the challenge was successful then you move on with the competition. If it was not, then a small penalty like loss of a timeout or a small point penalty. I think it works well in the NFL, and although not perfect, I think it has the opportunity to add more positive aspects than negative.

I think using it in quals might take too much time for what it's worth, but that's just me. I like zebra's idea of a challenge coupon for elims though. There should definitely be a point penalty for getting the challenge wrong but it should be applied in the next match. Otherwise, every elims would have 7 to 8 challenges.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I agree with the idea that it should be instituted on a trial basis at off-season events. I think that since there is more lee way on the rules at these events that implementing it wouldn't be impossible and might even lead to more excitement and audience interest in what is going on on the field. With this game there has been less trouble getting audience interest in the game because they have an impact on how it is being played with the audience selected defense. But other games, and especially last year there have been games that have been pretty boring to watch. Allowing video reviews could bring so much needed excitement to these very unentertaining games.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

But in football you have three timeouts so it effects you less than it would in first. After any challenge where it was a close call there is one side entirely unhappy with the outcome to the point where fans will yell at the tv or refs. The system now is bad but wait until a freshman is screaming at your drive coach to throw the challenge flag over 3 points not awarded.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I voted "no" because this isn't a professional sport and I'd rather not see officiating become the focal point of FIRST events.

1678 has been on both sides of controversial calls, at some point you just need to live and let live.

Maybe I'm just an old, crotchety FIRSTer who reminisces over the "good ole days"...?

Who am I kidding, FIRST is so much cooler now than it was when I was a youngin'!

-Mike

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I voted "no" because the solution I would rather see is for the GDC to design games in which there are fewer fouls that can be committed, in which fouls are blatantly obvious, and that are generally less burdensome on the referees. Too often, I feel the answer to "But we don't want teams to do X" is "Well, let's make it a foul then" instead of "Let's incentivize teams to do Y over X".

I know the VEX Robotics Competition manages to do this (offenses are either DQs, which are rare, or nothing); I'd think this approach to game design could scale at least partially to FRC.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I voted "no" for the exact same reasons as Mike and Pat as well as another.

We can barely get robots to connect to the field. FTAs are already overworked and under appreciated. I don't think we need another piece of technology on the field to fail at the least opportune time.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I'm still in favor of adding official scorers whose sole job is to track crossings.

On a completely unrelated note, someone needs to make an emoji of a guy putting two cents in a jar.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

Same reasoning for me, but I vote yes to show my support.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I would suggest that if the field replay is unavailable due to a technical glitch, all replay requests are automatically deemed "insufficient evidence" and handled appropriately. If the FTA doesn't bother to make it available, we penalize whoever forgot to put 25 hours in the day.:rolleyes:

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

Then we'll start seeing threads like "Back-up Video Review System Needs to Happen Now" :rolleyes:

-Mike

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I voted yes because I just want all matches* to be recorded and this is a great excuse. If this were to happen, I would like people to be able to come at the end of the regional to transfer the matches to a hard drive for future upload for the blue alliance.

Edit*: Or at least just elimination matches. I think that would be a happy compromise.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I voted no. I reserve the right to change my opinion after the potential off-season trials. If we ever do get video replay, I hope it is only for scoring, not for fouls.

I agree with above posters though. The game design should have fewer fouls, and fouls should generally not be used to dictate how games will flow.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I like the concept of review only applying to scoring and not to fouls. I believe it would significantly cut down on the number review that people would want, and make things more efficient.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

It should be beta-tested at some events, and if it works properly I would be happy to see it rolled out across FRC - if FIRST runs the system end to end perhaps they can also use it to save high quality match recordings.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

video replays are a part of sports that captures audience attention. It also is the easiest way to teach spectators the game. during the match resets an announcer does a little run down of the last few matches like game sense does at chezy champs.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I voted YES in limited but seemingly critical scenarios.

1. High order ranking sorts in DAY 1 issues (70% of all matches) primarily for "end of day" ranking corrections.
2. Elimination W/L decisions.

This year ranking points and auto points are HUGE so my proposal is any team can request "Video review" at any time during day 1 (until end of the day offline, not during their match) to "correct" missing RP (Breach and/or Capture) , win vs loss or auto points..and in subsequent years any other "high order" ranking metric...this way "hopefully" at end of day 1 teams will know proper ranking to avoid an 8 seed wiping out a 1 seed because of bad rankings order and an overly powerful 8th alliance. Unfair to #1 seed.

Elimination issues need to be addressed by end of each match and available as an option each round (QF/SF/F) you get ONE challenge for video review. If its a "ludicrous low-chance review" you lose all subsequent challenges.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I love seeing this friendly debate. It is great to see both sides of the issue and handle it as needed. While putting my opinion of "Is FIRST really a sport" to the side, I'm going to compare this game to soccer. Here's a little background of me and soccer. I'm an official grade 8 soccer referee. I have refereed soccer for 5 seasons and I've noticed a few things when refereeing soccer and decided that things can't be too different.

In my soccer referee games, there are times I wish I had video replay. When I referee 8-10 year olds, it is only 1 referee on the field at once. It's impossible to keep your eye on the ball all the time as a referee. Sometimes a kid falls and you need to make sure they are ok. Sometimes you need to look behind you when running backwards to make sure you don't plow a little kid. Sometimes during these distracted moments, the ball gets kicked out and I have to make a guess about who has the throw in. My point is, if you aren't looking at the play, how are you expected to make the right call?

In this game, it's a little different than soccer. 5 referees. 6 robots. 18 boulders. 10 goals. 10 defenses. Lots of fouls to look for. My point is this game is complicated. With 5 referees and if each covers 1 robot, 1 robot isn't being looked at during any given time. Each time something is scored, they have to hit it into their tablet as scored. No stops to do that. The reason for bad calls in this game is because there are just so many things for referees to get distracted at while refereeing a match.

My comparison: FRC is super complicated. If there is a foul in my soccer game, I stop the game and explain the foul. If there is a foul in FRC, the referees waves a flag and has to enter that in withOUT stopping the match. If the ball goes out of bounds in soccer, the game is stopped and I make an educated guess on who has the ball. In FRC, all of a sudden a robot that was in the neutral zone when you looked down is now in the courtyard when you look up, you have to make a guess about which defense was crossed.

In a game like soccer, I see video replay as important. It tells which foot touched the ball when it went out of bounds. It could be used to see where a ball should be placed. In FRC, we can use it to see which defense was crossed. If a robot was actually on the batter or not. We could use it to see what errors were made in scoring auton.

The video replay isn't to tell the referees they are doing bad. It's a tool I think they would find useful. I'd find it really useful in moments I get distracted in soccer. So why wouldn't an FRC referee find it useful for when they get distracted?

I agree with one post I saw earlier. Video replay shouldn't be used to negotiate fouls. Fouls are typically an opinion thing. The video would be perfect for things that are quantitative like defense crossings that are a definite yes or no thing.

Hopefully my comparison made sense to you all, but video replay if used correctly should make teams, referees, and spectators happy. There is no loss in using video replay (except money because that of live archive tool needs).

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

LoganK - What you wrote made sense, but you left something out.

When would the stronghold referees look at the video?

Would each match be followed by 1-5 minutes of hectic searching through the video by each ref as they attempted to double-check all the calls that they remember might have needed a 2nd look?

Would refs slap a button, or do something similar, during the match to mark (in the recording) each spot in the video they wanted to examine post-match? If not, finding the spot(s) they want to review could be a hugely confusing memory test.

Similarly, each call they made (or didn't make), or scoring credit they awarded (or didn't award) would need to be correlated with the recording, so that they don't have to have memorized that info too.

In soccer, and in many other sports, refs get to stop the action to make a "call" (or the action stops for them (When the only ball goes out of bounds)). FRC is exactly the opposite situation; and that is a very important difference.

Back to the Yes/No poll ....

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

Thanks for pointing that out. I actually though of something for that but forgot to share it. I'm going to switch to American football now. They always say that they will send video reviews to New York to discuss about it.

Well, assuming we have live archive tools at each event (if we ever did video replay, I'd hope that they have that), send the archive directly (or however long it takes to archive) 1 or 2 other referees in a back room. They could review every match if they wanted to. It'd be tedious but it'd get things right. Or the back room could be used for only "challenge" calls. Then continue to play matches through the review and after the match has been reviewed, say the official outcome of the challenge in between matches.

The only issue with this is that it would require another referee volunteer.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

No. It will add time to an already very long process. It will add stress and burden to already over-burdened refs. And.... to top it off...

Even professional sports who have invested hundreds of millions in it have routine bad calls. The NFL, for example, utilizes dozens of camera and has an entire room of techs watching each game.

The NHL, probably the game you would assume to be the easiest to use replay, still has issues with replace because all to often objects are obscured.

FIRST, on the other hand, changes games completely on a yearly basis and would have to work out how to do replay for a totally new game every year. It's simply not feasible.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

And the technical talent to allow them to 'send the videos to the back room'. And the time involved in reviewing the calls.

Folks are drastically over-simplifying video replay. If it were easy it wouldn't have taken the NFL (in a game that stays the same every year) a decade to implement it.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I completely agree and I think people forget how many cameras are used for video replay. Usually 4 angles are used for reviews to get all angles. That is 24 cameras just aimed at the robots and have to be able to see them at obscure angles in HD slow motion to accurately view any replay. I am for replays but the logistics on this field especially is near impossible

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I happen to agree with you on this. If FIRST implements review, there will definitely be rules- I think we can all agree on that. By the question, I am simply asking whether there should be video review at all. I should have specified this in my original post.

Also, I think there is an interesting debate to be had on this. If video replay is implemented, what rules should be put on the books surrounding the subject?

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

To quote a phrase;

"The results of this poll are terrifying."

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

Here's the disconnect - stop thinking of FRC video replay on the same level as NFL, NHL, MLB, etc. video replay. We'll never be at that level. When you stop thinking of it being the same as a professional sporting event, it becomes drastically simplified.

What we can do easily is provide a setup to both provide a high quality webcast (higher quality than many have today at least - not the same level as areas with fantastic video production teams i.e. PNW, Orlando) and record that same video feed locally.

Here's what we use for our setup in case anyone needs to see a diagram of how this works. It's painfully easy to setup, spent maybe an hour setting it up by myself for St. Louis. We didn't even have a volunteer to run it, I would just occasionally check up on it. Having 1 dedicated volunteer or a couple to swap out means you can do fancier stuff, but it's really not required to sit at the laptop constantly all day. A field reset person could hang out there while taking a break just to make sure it still looks good.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

Ryan - Whether or not they are creating the right mental model(s), here is why I think most folks bring the big sports comparisons into the discussion.

They are following a thought process that takes them down this path:

1. Some people want to be able to answer questions about match events after-the-fact
2. The types of questions they want answered are similar to the questions big sports leagues try to answer (contact between players/objects, player/object location, when an event occurred, etc)
3. The player/object speeds, traffic jams, and chances for obstructed views are similar to big sports league scenarios
4. The action is less "interruptable" than most big league sports (this places burdens on the playback system's ease-of-use).
5. Because of the similarities between FRC and big league sports, getting the answers people want (see item #1) will probably require using a recording and playback set-up similar (in some respects) to the ones big league sports use.
   • Without an explanation of why they should think otherwise, I think that for most readers, a "drastically simplified" replay system sounds like something that would answer a drastically small subset of the questions people/teams want answered.

To get them thinking differently you need to interrupt that 5 step process, and insert something different that puts trains of thought onto a different set of tracks. You might insert statements like these:

• The system won't answer all questions. It will answer ___, ___, and ___.
• The system will have blind spots (X% of the total field, Y% of the high traffic areas of the field). Teams will know those spots in advance, and teams will know mistakes occurring in those spots can't be corrected using video replays.
• Depending on line-of-sight angles and distances, the system will determine locations with accuracies between +/-X and +/-Y. Teams will know this in advance and may plan gameplay and review-requests accordingly.
• A time-and-motion style analysis of the activities that will be involved in processing a review request predicts that processing each will add N seconds to the time between matches, so ...

Bottom line: In the absence of specific descriptions of why/how FRC questions are different from big sports questions, or need to be answered using different methods than the big sports methods, or are going to be limited to a subset of all the possible FRC questions, or are going to be answered well-enough (give metrics) using low-fidelity (give numbers) systems, or ... I think the "big sports" yardstick is going to be the one most people instinctively choose to use.

Blake

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

There should be another option, "During Quarter-, Semi-, and Finals Matches"

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I'm missing something here. You mention wasting time. Do you think that EVERY team will ask for a video review of EACH match? I don't think that would happen.
If a team comes up and ask for a video review because they think there was a mistake made, the Head Ref should deny the request. If a team says that a crossing was missed and can give you an approximate time the crossing was made, than the Head Ref should consider the request.
We had one of the defenses come loose during a match (I won't say which match) and I feel it cost us the match. I could see it move every time a robot crossed it. That would also be a good time for a review.
But, just like in the NFL, you could maybe have a consequence for falsely asking for a review. I think this would limit to the ones that really occurred.
Just my $.05.
*puts on flame proof under garments :D

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

After losing on a foul point tie breaker in quarters in GTRC, a video review would have been nice. Is it practical? I don't think so. The delays between matches were already long enough. However, if implemented it should be consistent from event to event, in other words fool proof. I like the idea of testing this at offseason events for a few years, and seeing where it goes.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

I think something got lost in translation.

For one thing, "fool proof" doesn't exist. There's "fool resistant", but nothing is EVER fool proof. Anybody who thinks something is fool proof severely underestimates the ingenuity of the common fool (and the uncommon fool on top of that).

And for another, "fool proof" means that it's hard to mess up. Consistent from event to event means that it's the same in multiple places (within a certain degree of tolerance). Now, something that's consistent is likely to be MORE difficult to mess up the setup on, but they aren't the same thing. Example: If you want to be consistent, you use the same type of connector on all your wiring. If you want to be foolproof, you make sure that any given connector side can only go into it's matching one, and not into any others!


I think that for the initial rounds of testing (AKA, offseason events), variation--intentional variation--is good. This is called "exploring the alternatives". For example, will any old video work? That's one possible way to cut the costs down. Or camera variety A vs. camera variety B. Various locations can be checked (food for thought, if you've got a driver-cam, you probably can't tell if you actually got a Crossing on it unless it's a pole-mounted one).

After those initial rounds, everybody compares notes (publishes) and then the "standardization" work can begin. Run a couple rounds of checks on what's been shown to work decently, compare notes, repeat until you have a process.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

We have banned the term "it's easy" from our team. It SHOULD be relatively easy to configure your laptop and radio to connect to the field... and yet that doesn't seem to be the case for many teams each year - even teams that already connected at a prior event. Put this in the hands of a hundred individuals at a hundred different regionals and watch total chaos commence.

Let me put this a different way. You would think mounting a go-pro on a pole and recording matches at an event would be fairly easy. Yet many regionals don't do it. Now take a step beyond that - it takes technical skills to turn that simple recording into a replay. Skills that 95% of folks that are volunteering at FIRST events don't have.

The funny thing here is that I'm arguing against something that I would actually like to have. We've had matches go for us, and against us, when they shouldn't have. I can show you a couple years ago where we should have moved on into the semifinals on our championship field but didn't because of a scoring error.

Re: Poll-Video Replay
 

That's because a lot of regionals don't already own the equipment and view it as lower priority in the grand scheme of things. If the equipment traveled with the field and was part of the venue setup, I think you'd quickly see high quality video recording at every event (and in turn high quality webcasts assuming they have internet access.)

If we can set up a full size FRC field and get all of that working with FMS, surely each event can handle setting up an additional laptop, a camera on a pole and running a few connections cables. A bit more work? Sure. But c'mon, not really. A 2-3 page setup tip sheet is all that would be needed.

Also - it really doesn't take any additional skill to 'turn that simple recording into a replay' - you just stop live recording and go open up the video file that was saved.

Question to the volunteer - 'Can you open a file on a PC?' Congratulations you have the job!