Sam, you make some good points. Ones which I did consider. I have actually done work with video recording systems and have setup a similar camera setup to what your talking about.
First you suggest GoPros and an Atem. The Atem is a good piece of hardware, and would do what you need, for video mixing in a production environment. In this case however, you need something better. It only offers 1 video out which works for the audience video and webs stream, but does not allow you to record all 3 of the camera in your setup.
The second point that I would like to make is the GoPros, they are a good example for a camera for this. I personally have used them in this type of environment, and I believe the Mid-Atlantic had done this as well with their video system last year. The GoPros don't hold up in a streaming environment. They easily over heat when run for a long time. Getting them up and running takes a bit of work. They also did not play nicely with a black magic Atem that I used, and required multiple adapters (costing about $200 for each camera) to get them to work reliably.
Third, your video streaming server is severely under budget. A cheep black magic card, to handle HD video recording on one feed, costs around $200. Something to handle 3 or more recorded feeds starts around $300-$500. There goes your budget for that one, even if you get cheep hardware, you are still looking at around $1000 for that setup. You can get cheaper hardware, but I would not expect it to hold up well during full event.
I should also mention about camera setup. I have tried to place camera around the FRC field to effectively cover the full field. Its hard especially this year, and don't forget last year too. Once your stacks got above 4 high, it blocked robots, chutes, human players, and drivers. There was no way to ensure full video coverage over this, or last years, games with only 3 cameras. Also i would not say that its over yet either. With the increased production value of this years game, and the looks that it will be carried over to next year, I think we will see another low visibility game in our near future.
Second, i do agree that my every event gets video replay is a little crazy, but I don't think its out of the question. And yes, the question box is under used right now, since often there is nothing that can be done to re score matches. In my years of first, I would expect that if you watched match replays, then you could re-score about 50% of matches based on the video recordings of them. It happens that a ref is watching a robot for a penalty while another that they are not watching scores points, yeah this can very easily get over looked. I as a field staff member have caught myself focusing on the movements of a single robot for long parts of a match and ignoring the others. The game is exciting and that's really easy to do when your 3 feet away. You said it your self a few posts ago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sperkowsky
I'm sure I missed at least 1 crossing yesterday and that wasn't for lack of trying or knowing the rules. On an Frc field there is a ton of stuff going on and despite 1 ref watching courtyard fouls and 1 watching crossings its extremely easy to miss something.
|
How many matches would you have wanted to replay at that off season event? Are you telling me that you trusted every score you entered and would have only done match review is someone came to the question box? and even then, are you telling me that one team should get their match re-scored just cause they came to the question box? If you do it then, it should happen always in order to make it fair for all teams.
I do agree with you that its a great idea. Video replay would be a handy tool for refs when scoring matches, but i don't think there is a good implementation that would not make more of a hassle for teams and volunteers. There would be countless delays that this would create and i don't think any event could accurately predict its own running time with this as an added factor.