Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Regional Season is quickly coming along, its time to do a little organization to see how we are going to get EVERY Regional this year recorded and up on the interwebs. Last year by my rough count we got video footage from 26 regionals, with only about 7-8 of those regionals with at least 90% of the matches uploaded. Which for our community is a great achievement, with a little more organization I believe that we can get 90% of the regionals totally recorded from Match 1 to the last Final match. :ahh:

I think you all know how great a scouting resource having match footage of different robots is. But it take a lot of effort from volunteers to get all that footage up on the internet. I know that last year I recorded and parsed three regionals (New Hampshire, Waterloo, and GTR) and it took a couple hours to set up the recording and then basically took a day or more for me to go through all the footage and cut it up the upload it for each regional. This year (because I am now in University) I will only be able to record and parse Waterloo. Now that means we need at least 41 other people to volunteer their time to record (the easy part), parse (i.e. cut up the video into matches), and upload them to the different online resources (The Blue Alliance Match Archives, SOAP, Youtube, ect.)

I'll try and keep this list updated of who is volunteering to record what (feel free to have more the one person record a regional! you can split up the hard work of parsing and uploading!)

(I believe the SOAP people usually will archive the Championship event, i'm sure they will find this thread and let us know if that is happening again)

I'll post some more in-depth tutorials on how to go about recording, parsing, and uploading (and my personal opinion on formating, mpg4 FTW!) later on, but right now its more important to find someone interested in recording each of these regionals. Feel free to ask here or PM me with any questions.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

For those who don't know the history, the last couple years the folks at team 108 have donated a server to host FIRST match video that any one can access, called SOAP. Much of that video is recorded by the team, and some of it is uploaded by others. In the past year the guys at The Blue Alliance have built a great website taking all this recorded video and put it all into Flash video (like Youtube), and add match scoring information and tagging for teams. This lets you go through and search by team number and come up with a list of all the team's matches. It really is a great resource for scouting, and have made going through matches on SOAP's a lot easier.

So not to say that SOAP doesn't have its place, but I believe the system that The Blue Alliance guys have built for online video is very polished and easy to use. So my personal opinion for this next season of Regionals is to try and use The Blue Alliance as the central hub for match video (I know that I am making a lot of work for you guys, sry :p). This is just my opinion, I'm sure I'll hear others with their own ideas about how to centralize match footage.

Youtube... last year we heard from Dean that he wants Youtube flooded with FIRST video, and for FIRST to grow in the media and on the internet this great resource needs to be used... properly. If you go on Youtube today you can find a large amount of FIRST video, however it is spread all over the place and does not do a good enough job at linking back to one another.

To get exposer on Youtube we need to make sure that every new video is properly tagged, title, and linked by channels and community groups. So I propose that we try and find a standard tagging and naming system, and create a large group and channel for all FIRST video. Hopefully we can find a 'standard' and spread the word to all FIRST teams to use this format so we can get better exposer!

Formating... I know in the past the standard video format for all matches has been Windows Media Video (.wmv), but let me try and make the case for MPG4 (.mp4). .wmv files for a long time were a popular standard video file, because basically every one had a PC and it was the best compression format. But these days of mass internet video .mp4 is clearly the new standard and the only .wmv video I have on my computer are old matches (most I have converted). Every type of mass portable media player supports the format (iPods, Zunes, Cell Phones ect.). Even HD DVD's, online movie rentals, ect. use a form of the MPG4 format. In the near future flash video will support MPG4 video (in the form of h.264), so the world is moving towards MPG4 as the standard video format. By using MPG4 as a standard for video it will make it a lot easier for people to put these great match videos where ever they want... on their computer, on their iPod, ect.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I can cover Buckeye this year and submit them to TBA, SOAP, and back it up on our site space.

YouTube channel just setup at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FRCommunity Contact me by PM, YouTube PM, or media@bedfordrobotics.org to add videos or info.

I agree that there should be a standard tagging convention if we are to do this as a whole community. We can discuss it in this thread.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I can do FLR.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I can pull LSR again, but I think part of the problem last year was SOAP running a little low on server space to handle such a massive amount of footage. I think it'd be polite to give them a heads up that CD is making a concerted effort at archiving all the regionals.

To the suggestion that we just concentrate on TBA as the central hub.... I like their format and layout and etc for the convenience, but it's flash video. It typically looks marginally better than something filmed on a cell phone cam covered in vaseline. If TBA is willing to host better quality WMVs of all the matches in addition to the cheesy flash video, then I'm happy, otherwise, I'd rather find someone who really wants to archive the files.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Something to think about as far as bandwidth goes, but how complex would it be to get teams with massive amounts of excess webspace and bandwidth to host their own videos and maybe other area teams, then get these sites to link to them?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Ed - Make sure you bring a real VCR and not the mono cheapster one from the site or else the quality is pretty crappy.

FYI - it took me quite a long time to convert 1 regional of all matches so plan on spending a good weekend.

Ellery

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

That is what both the SOAP archives and The Blue Alliance archives (both linked above) are doing for us. They both provide hosting for Regional Match videos and a central location to find all the seasons matches. Its a lot easier to just have a centralized service to host all the footage, then to have the matches spread over a bunch of different servers.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

On every match on The Blue Alliance you have the option to download it in the higher quality format (most of them right off SOAP last year). Maybe they need to make that more obvious on their website.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Well, I understand that, but someone stated above that they started running out of space. It's an idea just in case they start runnning out of space.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I'll point The Blue Alliance guys over to this thread to see if they have the capabilities to archive all the matches this season.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

MP4 is fine on our side. (In fact, it's much better. Hopefully when flash 9 is polished we can do away with FLV's)

It will take more resources for compression, though. We are battling an h264 encoding problem at the moment. Does anyone know a good way to compress this stuff in real time?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

h.264 is really processor intensive both on the compression and playback ends, and it's definitely not designed for real-time encoding (at least by anybody other than DirecTV and the likes). I don't think you're going to get good performance unless you buy a specialized encoder card or have a REALLY high end system.

I recommend staying with wmv for now. The encoder performs well in real-time professionally, and is freely available. Plus I would argue it's the more accessible than quicktime MP4.

FLV is great for easy website integration, but not much else.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I prefer to disagree to the pro-WMV argument. It is a dying format, more and more players support MP4 well, than Windows Media.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I will be able to record via DVD Boilermaker and West Michigan. I will do my best to get the video uploaded for downloads. Also inaddition I have been hosting video archives for the last 3 years. I only have most of last year and part of 2006 online. I am hunting through my DVDs looking for past years video and slowly updating it.

I run www.firstvideoarchive.com I have approximately 1.5TB of storage and 15000TB in bandwidth each month. Feel free to PM me about getting the videos that are recorded onto the web, I will not run out of storage and as my 2.5GB downloaded so far this month would show the videos are relatively easy to find.

Last year SOAP did run out of space and had to delete some videos before championship to be able to record all the fields. I think later in the year they said they had that problem fixed.

-Mike

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.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I can offer my services to edit/encode any videos a team sends to my FTP. Also, are most people just recording off of the main feed, or adding their own camera work into the mix?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Blue Alliance Capability Low Down:
Some facts about The Blue Alliance's server:

• The Blue Alliance runs on a dedicated server generously donated by Host Rocket
• We have over 1 TB monthly bandwidth, and survived making the front page of Digg. I don't expect traffic volume to be a problem unless we see astronomically higher numbers than last year.
• We have a 120 GB disk, which is enough to hold about two years worth of full-quality video at once. We are investigating upgrading it, but we also plan to phase "older competition" video off of The Blue Alliance's archive and into archives on sites like firstvideoarchive.com so there will be redundent copies online.
• So far in January, we have served 23799 unique visitors, including 123813 views of our embeddable team badges.

The Blue Alliance system ought to have no problem with the quantity of video that needs to be hosted on it to add the 2008 Competition Season, nor should we run into bandwidth problems from serving it. We are running on a beefy box, and have systems that can handle the load we are expecting.

The Blue Alliance will be able to handle the load.

When competition season (and scrimmages!) rolls around, we will allow people with recorded match video to upload it to our site via FTP. We will then import the video into our database, and everything will be ready to rock.

The thing that took the most time last year was converting WMV files to FLV videos, since it required an intermediate step into an AVI, and converting out of WMV takes forever. I fully support a move to an mp4 video standard and it will greatly reduce the effort required to convert videos to be web viewable. In fact, h264 is embeddable by Flash 9 already. Theoretically the high-quality version of the video could be used.

I hope this has helped clear up The Blue Alliance's capabilities for the 2008 Season. If anyone has any other questions, feel free to PM me. :)

[edit]Hey look, my 1337th post[/edit]

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Also, The Blue Alliance will be recording and webcasting the Boston Regional.

I'm going to write up instructions on how to webcast a regional. I have a solution where literally anyone with a DV Camera, a laptop, and an Internet connection can do it. Hopefully we'll see more broadcast regionals this year than ever! :)

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I've heard rumors that one of my kids has a device that can record directly to a DVD. We can then change that DVD to a format than can be used on the web. Let me double check before commiting. this is for the VCU event btw

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Thanks for clearing that up, Greg! I can just use your server then, although I'll still keep a backup on our's. You can never have too many copies!

Also, is Buckeye the only regional that doesn't allow a supplied internet connection? I contacted our director about it for web-based scouting and she stated that FIRST doesn't allow internet at events. Do you all use Wireless Broadband? If so, what's your speed and how much does it cost?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I see that the Rochester Rally is listed.
I can get you video of that event.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

SOAP will be recording the Florida and New Jersey regionals as well as the Championship.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

So what exactly will I need to bring to record the VCU regional?

Thanks,

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I did one better.
I got a Digital Video recorder with a VCR attatched for good measure..
Hopefully it'll save a step.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Is there a way to record directly onto a laptop, and therefore skipping all the conversion and transferring hassle?
Thanks

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

In a way, yes. Someone will reply shortly with very detailed instructions, links, and prices on how to go do this. The integrity and helpfulness of this post is null.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I am working on getting my recommendations together for how to record directly to your computer. I am just doing some testing right now, give me a day or so and I will post a tutorial on how to record and parse everything.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Thanks,

I'm looking forward to your post.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Please be sure to cut the match video after the match results, not after the timer ends. The match results are the most important single thing in the video.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Eek. I disagree.

If the scores are displayed quickly this year, then that is great, but if its more than ten or fifteen seconds (sometimes it has been minutes in the past) then please cut it off.

The match results are published by FIRST and will be released alongside the video on The Blue Alliance. Cutting video sooner makes the video MUCH smaller and easier for people to download and watch.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Woooow

On behalf team #1860, I'll be so proud to recording Brazilian Regional!



:D

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Really, you should cut the match at some appropriate and intelligent end point. THEN slice out a one second clip of score being displayed. Mash'em together, convert, and everyone's happy. It's honestly not that difficult and makes everyone a lot happier. I'll grant you that it's a little more work this way, but if you wanted to be lazy and turn out a nearly useless mass of video archives, then you'd just record the webcast of the event and upload that to SOAP/TBA, right?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Just to let you know that the turbo 264 is not a real time mpeg4 converter. The files need to be captured first, and then it can be converted. Also the encoding speed depends very much on what CPU you have.

I will be recording the BAE regional, but I don't know if I will have time to encode and parse it.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

hopefully this year the real time scoring will give a good idea of the score at the end of the match. The blue alliance has the scores right next to the matches anyway.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I have to confirm with our mentor who does it but I can pretty much guarantee 498 will be able to record Arizona again (I don't see it stopping, this system is down to a science now).

We always record our own footage of the matches though, so if we also want the "official" ones with the nice banners and whatnot, Kevin or someone else will need to record that as well.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Hey Guys,

I am an Alumni from 118 and would like to help with this. I now work for SnapStream Media, a PC-DVR software company and have alot of knowledge of recording to computers. Originally I was wanting to interface the SDK from our software with the field software and create an automated recording solution, but have not been able to find the time to work on that.

Our software uses Hardware MPEG Encoding cards such as the Hauppage HVR-1600, or software MPEG Encoding such as the ADS-Tech Mini HD USB Stick. Our software can Record Directly to MEPG or WMV and has the capabilities to transcode to H.264. I can help you guys put together systems that would record directly to the computer and skip using VCRs. Using the 21 day Trial Mode you can use the software for FREE during the competitions.

Also if someone would like to try to interface with the field using our SDK, let me know so I could help you out with that.

Kevin, I would like to help you out in Houston for LSR. I would like to try something using our stuff that could help teams get better access match videos onsite. Maybe something with our RSS feed generator to host an onsite podcast for match video.

Guys feel free to PM me or contact me at chris(AT)snapstream(dot)com to let me know how I can help.

Chris

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Team #1382 will record and upload Brazilian Regional too. :D

Will anybody record Israeli Regionals?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I think the key here would be hoping against hope that the Sundial folks have an inside track to interfacing their software package with the field control system. At that point, I think interfacing with your software would be relatively easy. In fact, at that point all sorts of interesting possibilities present themselves, like Sundial browsing past matches and having the video right there flash encoded for easy viewing. Having your software chop up matches into separate files will be rather useful, but it might still be a good idea to have the entire uncut video somewhere as well, as there are often important and/or funny events between matches.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

That is one of the cool things about our software, we have the ability to clip files while they are recording. The original file will stay in tact, but our software will generate separate MPEG clips from the original.

If we could hook into the Field or Sundial, when we get an update with scores we could submit a file to be clipped, tag the file with team and score data, transcode to H.264 and coppied to a webserver auto-magically.

The H.264 files could be streamed from a web-server using flash or just hosted.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Chris, what exactly are we supposed to download from the SnapStream site? (BTW, I was browsing the site, and it looks really cool). Also, what hardware would be needed?

Thanks,
Anish

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

To setup a digital recording setup, the what you need from our site is our software. Download Page We have a 21 day trial so you can use our software at the competitions during that trial period. Our software will work with most consumer TV capture cards. My recommendation for a capture cards is the Hauppauge HVR-1600, ~$90. Search google for "HVR-1600". It is a hardware MPEG encoding card. It is available from Amazon, Newegg and some other brick and mortar retailers like Best Buy and Frys.

With those two pieces you need a Windows PC and some hard drive space. With this rig, you will be able to record the competitions digitally then clip them with some third party software. I recommend either VideoReDo or Womble. These programs work best for clipping video generated by caputre cards.

If someone with programming experience is down for the challenge. I would like to see what we could put together using our software's SDK and the field controls. Again I don't have much time to spend working on this, but would be willing to help however as I can, anyone willing to try to do some automation with the field.

- Chris

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Thanks, I don't have a TV capture card, but I'll ask around. How large do you expect the files to be? (like 1 GB for an hour?). Also, is there any free (open source) software available to clip files. I also thought that the SnapStream could clip video.

Another question, since the VCU regional is broadcasted on NASA TV, is this a way to bypass the TV capture card?

Thanks a million,
Anish

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Allright I was planning on doing this in one big post, but my advice (it was recomended to me last year) is to use the KWorld Xpert DVD Maker USB 2.0 Video Capture Device as a capture device. Its the cheapest USB capture device that I have found (if you do not already have video inputs on your computer). It takes video from the A/V component connection provided by FIRST and lets you record it directly to your computer. (I found a way to use this with a mac if anyone is interested, I used it with my PC last year but have recently upgraded to a mac)

For capturing it you can use any video capture program, quicktime pro does a great job of recording directly to .h264 at 640X480 (max resolution) at 1500 Kbps. Which looks great, and is probably higher bit rate then needed. I'll post more detail about how to use different capture programs, I am testing a bunch out trying to find one i really like.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Chris I have been playing arround with your program and was wondering if there is anyway to record to mpg4 or .h264 with it?? Because i can only get it to record to DIVX, WMV, or mpg2.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

looks like my dreams of finding a direct to h264 recording software is crashing in my face, the best i can do is quicktime pro in 320X240 2400 kbps... I am really looking for something that will record in 640X480 at arround 1500kbps. If anyone knows of a software solution that will work let me know... right now it looks like I will be recording in a different format (maybe even wmv), and reencoding it all to h264 when i have it cut up. I am still hunting for a solution (mac or windows).

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

http://www.dspr.com/www/products/vid...ci_encoder.htm

This is a hardware solution that claims from what i read to do real time encoding. not a solution for a laptop, but would fit in a desktop or rackmount case, could be controlled using a laptop setting on top of it (start the capture through remote desktop than unhook the laptop till the end when you reconnect it to stop the capture.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Well its in the horizon, but its not there yet.
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080110006038&newsLan g=en
Probably next year, but this product is not going to release anytime soon.

During the competition you could record using our recording software. While the competition is recording use VideoReDo to clip matches out of the original video, even while the DVR is recording to that file. Transcode to H.264 with our software to an equal quality as the original at 1x speeds, or lesser quality at >1x speeds.

If you clip the matches right after one has completed, your delay would be about 3-5 minutes.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Here is the updated list: We have 21 Regionals covered! half way there!

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

So, just as a recap, I need to bring:

• Laptop (I've got a PC. What are the minimum specs needed?)
• A TV capture card. (Is there a cheap one, and what exactly is it and what does is do?)
• Some Software. I think SnapStream is all I need.

If there is anything else I need to bring/download, please let me know.

Thanks,
Anish

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Allright sorry for not getting this out earlier (work seems to pile up when you are not keeping up with it....), but here are my recommendations for recording a regional, parsing, and encoding.

Recording and Importing
There are two main ways or recording the footage from the FIRST feeds, you can either connect your computer directly to the feed using a video capture card, or you can record to a DVD recorder. The DVD recorder will add the extra time of importing it to the computer, but for many this is an easier solution.

To record with a computer you are going to need some sort of video capture card (if your computer doesn't already have video inputs). If you need to add a video capture card I recommend picking up KWorld Xpert DVD Maker USB 2.0 Video Capture Device, its cheep and gets the job done I used it successfully last year to record two regionals. The quality is not as good as a on board video capture card would be. Next you need to record the video to a hard drive, you can use anything you want to record the video but the easiest solution is just using windows movie maker and record right to .wmv. Last year using the recording settings at 640X480 (VGA) at 2mb/s my total file size for all the raw video at GTR was about 15 GB. This is much more managable then most recording software that only records at the highest setting which will be more then 100mb per minute... (if you got a terabyte drive go ahead...)

Recording to a DVD recorder is simple plop a DVD in and set it to record, just make sure you change the DVD when it is full... probably every 4 hrs or so depending on what settings you use on the recorder. Importing from a DVD recorder i would recomend you use a DVD ripping software to rip directly to .h264, my favorite is handbreak works on both windows and mac.

Parsing and Finnishing
Feel free to use what ever video editing software you are most comfortable with, windows movie maker is built into all XP installs and works pritty well. If you allready have all the footage recorded in .h264 you can just use one of the simple video cutting tools seeing that you don't need to rencode the video at all.

finnaly if you don't have it in .h264 format yet this is where you take all the cut up matches and rencode them to .h264 ipod format. The easiest ways to do this is using a program like videora on windows or visualhub on mac. in vidora use the settings

VIDEO Quality Standards
I think we all agreed earlier in this thread that it is time to move to .h264 or atleast mpg4. So these are the video quality settings that i am proposing:

Format: .mov (.h264 or MPG4)
Resoultion: 640X480 VGA
Video Bit Rate: 1024kbps
Audio Bit Rate: 128kbps Stereo

This will produce match files arround 20-25mb, similar size to the old .wmv files.

in Videora there is a setting called "H.264 VGA 1024kbps Stereo/128kbps" just use that.

in VisualHub use iTunes-All Devices-Standard Quality-H.264 encoding

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

How do you get into the video stream at the regionals? Do you need to ask FIRST's permission?

Thanks,

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

There is a black box, usually near the pit administration table where you can plug into. Except for the championship, you have to provide your own cables.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

So, do you have to reserve the space or do they have enough cables?

Thanks,

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

There is no reservation, but space is limited. Usually there is only about 5 teams recording the stream, so you should be fine.

When I mean cables, I mean that you have to bring your own Composite video cables to plug into to the black box from your recording device. Also note that FIRST only provides mono sound, so you should only plug it your mono port.

There is usually a mini tv that they provide to check your feed to make sure that your feed is working properly. A power strip should also be near by.

I would also recommend that you check your setup about every 1-2 hours. In the past, I have had my recorder turned off and cables pulled from the back. While I am sure it was not purposeful, just look out for it.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

OK,

Thanks

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I got Davis Regional covered.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Week 1 Regionals are quickly approaching we have three of the regionals covered, but still need someone to step up for the Midwest Regional and St. Louis Regional. For week 2 regionals the only one we are missing is Kansas City, so if anyone that is going to these regionals we are looking for someone to record the footage from the regional.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

This is an update to a previous post:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?p=576804

This one has the 2008 regionals.




For consistency and predictability sake, we have a preference in naming the movie files.

General Naming Rules
* Two or three character event abbreviation in lowercase, e.g. "fl"
* Underscore, "_"

* XOR:
Qualification: Use THREE digits, "001", "047", "108".
Elimination: Use "qf4m2", "sf2m1", "fm3"
Awards: Use "award_" + AwardDescription.
Opening: Use "openingremarks_" + "friday" or "saturday".
Closing: Use "closingremarks_" + "friday" or "saturday".
Else: any string that does not begin with "qf", "sf", "fm", or a digit.

* ".wmv" (or whatever format extention you encoded, hopefully windows media)

Notes:
# Always use lowercase, please.
# No spaces in a filename, please.
# Sometimes a match gets replayed- name the one that counts in the standings as "fl_001.wmv". The one(s) that do NOT count, "fl_001bad1.wmv", "fl_001bad2.wmv", etc...

Abbreviations are as follows:
BAE SYSTEMS Granite State Regional NH
Midwest Regional IL
New Jersey Regional NJ
Pacific Northwest Regional OR
St. Louis Regional MO

Arizona Regional AZ
Finger Lakes Regional ROC
Greater Kansas City Regional KC
NASA / VCU Regional VA
San Diego Regional SDC

Boilermaker Regional IN
Chesapeake Regional MD
UTC Connecticut Regional CT
Detroit Regional DT
Florida Regional FL
Peachtree Regional GA
Pittsburgh Regional PIT
Silicon Valley Regional SJ
Wisconsin Regional WI
Brazilian Regional BR

Buckeye Regional OH
Lone Star Regional TX
Los Angeles Regional CA
Microsoft Seattle Regional WA
Oklahoma City Regional OK
Sacramento Regional SAC
Waterloo Regional WAT
West Michigan Regional MI

Israel Regional IS

Bayou Regional LA
Boston Regional MA
Colorado Regional CO
Great Lakes Regional GL
Greater Toronto Regional ON
Hawaii Regional HI
Las Vegas Regional NV
Minnesota Regional MN
Palmetto Regional SC
Philadelphia Regional PA
SBPLI Long Island Regional LI

New York City Regional NY


Many thanks,
KA-108 :cool:

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I still really feel we should move to a modern video format. The videos Wildstang has posted are in xVid and are wonderfully easier to work with than Windows Media Video files.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I'm pretty sure 2175 will be recording MN.

I think we definitely should try and pick one video format for all the videos.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Has anyone tried SnapStream yet? (I'm downloading it right now)? Any opinions?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I have and my honest opinion is that it is far easier to just record directly with windows movie maker. SnapStream is a good program, but for this application its just too much effort to set up, firing up windows movie maker is just alot easier.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

As I stated above outputting to .mp4, or .mov (h.264) is really easy with all these free ipod video converters. This is what I recommended above:

Format: .mov or .mp4 (.h264 or MPG4)
Resoultion: 640X480 VGA
Video Bit Rate: 1024kbps
Audio Bit Rate: 128kbps Stereo

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

But doesn't Windows Movie Maker only output to .wmv?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

And my experience is batch converting out of WMV is very slow.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Two capture programs that ought to be significantly easier to capture with than Windows Media Encoder or Windows Movie Maker are WinDV and VirtualVCR.

WinDV literally records straight from a DV camcorder (90% of these will take video input by buying a composite jack coupler and plugging a feed into the traditional video output port.) Then, spacebar will start and stop recording, automatically splitting the file each time, making it very easy to parse matches. (As long as you don't have it set to capture every 150th frame, like 177 did for Jersey 2007 (Though this is nice for timelapsing)). DV files are not tiny, but capturing only a few hours should not be too large.

VirtualVCR serves a similar function, except it is compatible with any capture device that has a WDM driver, not just DV cameras (that means ~everything). I honestly have not used it much and am unfamiliar with the way it operates, but it could be a great alternative if you cannot capture using DV.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Interesting...

What would work best with the FIRST Regional setup?

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I don't know what I'll be using yet. It's up in the air. Guess I can try to build some inexpensive rig to do a capture on. We do plan on also making our own recordings available.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I put together this graphic explaining how The Blue Alliance plans to record the Boston Regional. Hopefully others can find it of use.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

for capturing on the cheep I recommend this USB Capture device. It worked well for me last year and it runs off usb. for capturing to DV I would be be worried about hard drive space for most people, I recorded in wmv last year at about 2 mb/s and got about 15GB of footage for a regional. If you got a big external HD go ahead and record in DV.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

At the regional, the feed will be provided with composite type cable or something else?

Thanks

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

It is generally a composite feed through RCA cables. You likely will need your own RCA cables.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

yep you get yellow red and white outputs (otherwise known as composite), I believe there is also a s-video output but I'm not 100% sure. Sometimes they put the box in a weird location around the arena, feel free to ask one of the volunteers where it is if you can't find it.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Ok, thanks. Is the usb capture device you recommended reliable? (Also, is ther any thing cheaper.)

Thanks for everything. You guys help a lot.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I recorded 3 regionals with it, hasn't crapped out on me yet. It certainly isn't the top of the line, but its a safer bet compared to some of the ones that are $5-10 cheeper. Be aware of some of the no-name brand ones on sites like tigerdirect and newegg, I wouldn't use any of the software that comes with the capture device, but it works for getting the video into your computer. You should expect to pay at least $30...

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I found this video capture card: http://www.pacificgeek.com/product.a...5&ID=36239&P=F.

It seems almost to good to be true, and its already on back order.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Looks like every first week regional is covered!!! I'll be sending everyone a PM with instructions on how to upload their recorded video to The Blue Alliance and SOAP.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

2175 will definitely be recording MN, you can mark us down.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Toronto is being webcast by Discovery isn't it? so you can put that too :D

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Yea it is but we don't have access to their recordings for sites like The Blue Alliance and SOAP, so Steve Warren and I recorded it ourselves last year. Hopefully i'll be able to come down for Friday and Saturday and record it myself, but i am not sure yet.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I'll do the OKC Regional. Hopefully we'll have a webcast, too.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I'm looking into doing Chesapeake (don't put me down yet though) and if so, we will be probably trying a webcast.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

In addition to gathering the mass amounts of raw video, team 964 will be providing a live webcast via SOAP 108's Gameday for Buckeye.

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

I've been transcoding all day. My processor has literally been at 100% non-stop since this morning. I'm about to have all of the Midwest Regional on TBA, and New Jersey will finish up overnight. BAE ought to be up soon as well.

-Greg

Re: Archiving Recorded Regionals 2008
 

Greg are you cutting up Kyle's raw footage from BAE??? I'm willing to help out a bit if you are.