[themccannman]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

Here's a quick suggestion, make the instant replay camera the only camera used for the webcasts. Make it a fisheye cam like they use for recording FIM matches, and have it be the ONLY cam used for web streams. This would cut production costs (by eliminating all the cameras and cameramen they currently have), and let the people watching the web stream watch the robots for the whole match instead of someone wiggling joysticks for 30 seconds at a time, as the currents stream seems to do.

The camera would be a high end USB cam connects to a PC controlled by FMS. It would automatically start recording as soon as all robots are connected, and automatically stop 10 seconds after the match ends. Videos would be available for teams to save off the PC or to upload to TBA at the end of the day.

Just saying, the OPs idea isn't a totally unreasonable proposal. It solves a few logistical problems in neat ways, and gives the teams the huge benefit of being able to challenge bad calls. Perhaps this isn't the exact way to do it, but if we continue to say its impossible, it will continue to never be a reality. This is 2014. We should be able to figure out how to automatically record matches at a robotics competition.

The recording isn't an issue at all. As the team that ran the Inland Empire live stream I can vouch for our programmers that the technical aspect was not very difficult.