Quote:
Originally Posted by KosmicKhaos
please, I am begging you FIRST with all my heart, please have a professional company do the stream and the audio. For those of you that were not watching the stream you have no idea what it was like.
- Awards for so grainy and washed out you didn't even know who was talking
- we were lucky if we got audio at some parts
- During Einstein, we saw more of the human players and drivers than the actual robots
- the cameras kept cutting back and forth between individual robots and missing the action so when it was over your like "huh, when did that happen"
- please for the love of "bot" just show us a full field view that's what the people want
- You were lucky if you got a whole match without it freezing.
I could continue in with this list but you get the point. Even if you didn't get pros to do the audio and video at least get the kids from PNW that were doing it. Shout out to the PNW A/V crew you guys were the best. High quality streams and never missed the action. |
I second what you said completely. Establishing a standard for AV quality at worlds is a MUST to encourage growth and recognition of the sport. You don't see grainy promo photos on the banners that drape the entrance to the dome nor do you have to struggle to hear Dean speak through an sporadic microphone. The AV quality online should be the same offered to those at the event in person.
The same can be said for districts and regional events. Mentoring the students in pre-scouting worlds this year the number one complaint was low quality video or no video footage at all of the teams from the smaller regional events.
Encouraging these lower level events to try and achieve quality video as a goal would be great. Talking with the AV crew from PNW several times, I know it is a lot of work and acquiring the quality equipment they have is not necessarily cheap either. But if FIRST could help support teams in finding the funding, resources, and volunteers to pull it off would be a good start.
I know at the school we mentor some of the teachers that support the team will stream our teams events live during class sometimes. Having quality video of matches makes FRC look truly awe inspiring when presented to a novice of FRC. It makes it easy to show your school, sponsors, and parents what we are all about. Not to mention recruiting mentors or volunteers.
In short...yes it is not easy or cheap, but putting the resources out there for teams to improve it would be a major step in the right direction for ease of scouting and most importantly, promotion of FRC teams.