Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I will bring this up at our next meeting, but I am guessing that 108 will be recording the regionals they are attending being New Jersey regional and Florida regional. Please wait for a response from me or Matt Keller in this thread before you put 108 down for any regional or championship. Thanks.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I would have to agree that WMV is a dying format, however .h264 recording is just not feasible at this point because of how processor intensive it is (you need a beast of a computer to do live .h264 recording). but quicktime .mp4 is not nearly as processor intensive, i'll do some tests and research in the next couple weeks and provide some recommendations for recording directly to a computer (hopefully with .mp4).

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Although if someone CAN get something running .h264 recording please please PLEASE share it with us. I just want to see what a match would look like.

Anyway, what equipment do you all use besides VCR/DVD recording from the main feed? We have a Sony Handycam DRC-DVD300 and a JVC compact VHS camcorder. I've got Vegas on a mediocre laptop, and at the school's computer lab there is a machine with Vegas that's nicer than mine.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I want to echo the standard format/naming conventions. It's a nightmare to put the videos in a database/retrieval system when you have to rename them. Last year was somewhat-standardized, but there were some lapses (which are time-consuming).

...

Well I can't speak for folks from TBA or SOAP, but it wouldn't be too hard to implement a system commonly used for open source software distribution that goes like this: on the back end, any number of web/FTP servers mirror the same file tree, usually through automatic synchronization. On the front-end, knowing who has what files, you use some scripting to randomly send each downloader to a different one of your mirrors.

It's essentially a form of load-balancing.

There's also bittorrent to consider, but you'd have to bundle match files and get a good swarm going for it to be effective. That totally eliminates the strength of the current system which allows you to select individual matches, but some do want ALL of them, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to parallel the web hosting with a torrent tracker for people who want whole regionals.

...

I'd love to help the recording efforts but I'm usually way too busy during competition. I'll see if I get one of our members or parents to do the HI regional and let you know.

If you ever got a mirroring system up I'd be willing to offer up some of our storage/bandwidth to help out. We have way more than we'll ever need.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

That load-balancing type solution you mentioned wouldn't be a bad idea. If we could get TBA, SOAP, FIRSTvideoArchive.com, along with teams/people willing to pitch in then that would be something to consider. That's only if it's really needed. Personally, I think it should be implemented anyway, that way it's already there if something happens.

As for the Bittorrent, we could offer the seeds by regional. So all of FLR would be one file, Buckeye in another, etc. Championship would be a different story.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Having everything encoded using h.264 or MPEG-4 is definitely my preferred choice for all the match videos. I personally use h.264 now for all my edited video that makes its way online, because it's a superior and much more versatile codec than WMV.

Also, if anyone needs another mirror for the videos online, I have half a terabyte of storage space and five terabytes a month of bandwidth at my disposal. ;)

Just use a hardware h.264 encoder, like this:

http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/main...oduct1.en.html

While I agree that the h.264 codec is intensive on the encoding side, it's not so much on the playback side. I can play movies encoded in h.264 at HDTV (720p) settings just fine on my two-year-old 1.4Ghz Celeron laptop with 1.25Gb RAM and an integrated graphics card. And since I doubt that the match video would be encoded at such a high resolution and bit-rate, any computer made in the five or so years should play h.264 video just fine.

And on the encoding front, it's a lot easier just to bring along a massive eSATA or Firewire external hard drive, and capture all your video as uncompressed DV. Then, chop up the video in a video editing program, and again export each match as uncompressed DV. Then when you have a huge playlist of videos, use a batch conversion program (SUPER Media Convertor works for this, and it's free) and just let it run overnight.

Also, if you just play the video using VLC Media Player, MPlayer, or Media Player Classic, it will play a lot faster and smoother than with Quicktime. ;)

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

linkified:

VLC: http://www.videolan.org
MPlayer: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
Media Player Classic: http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ckage_id=84358

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

That little hardware encoder looks very nice, I may have to pick one up (if I can wrangle up the funds...). I'll also experiment a bit with just using quicktime Pro to record directly to the computer, see if I can get stable recording in .h64 at something like 640X480 and at least 1.5 mbps.

I think we should recommend people try and use .h264, but I don't think everyone will. Maybe we should just stay with the quicktime .mp4 format (which still looks great, and is less processor intensive)

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

That seems like a pretty cool device, but none of us are fotunate enough to own a MacBook. The price tag is fine for me. If there's some type of PC alternative please share it with us.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

We will record both the Oregon Regional and the Microsoft/Seattle Regional.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I just linked to the Mac one, because most of elgato's hardware gets very good reviews.

There are also h.264 hardware encoders available for Windows. Here's one from Best Buy:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=10-64531371-2

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I'll cover WI again this year. I'll make sure to do some recording on Thursday to make sure the audio is correct this year, and let them know if they need to fix it for Friday/Saturday. I may not have the time to parse this year, but we'll cross that bridge after March 15th.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Here is an updated list of volunteers, apparently I cannot edit the other one now.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Hi!

I noticed that no one has volunteered to record the NASA VCU Regional in Richmond. And since VCU is the only regional 1123 goes to, I am willing to help with the recording process.

Just one small catch: I've never done anything like this before.
So, if anyone could just get me up to speed on what I would need (in terms of hardware/software) that would be great. (I am also willing to partner with some other team too, to make this possible.)

Thanks,

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Since LSR is our local regional, I just been dragging a desktop with a Hauppage video in card up to the regional and recording everything on it in a high quality MPG. I might change things up a little this year, but it seems to work well if you can do it. Granted, it's my desktop computer so it precludes me from editing and posting the videos until after the regional, but it works.

I may be able to cover Arizona, since 57 is attending, but if there's a local team that's better able to manage it, that'd probably be smarter. If they can only manage recording, I'd be happy to grab a dump of the video from them on a firewire hard drive and edit and encode everything after the regional.