FIRST Fans,
We will be webcasting the NASA/VCU event from Richmond on Friday and Saturday. The link is available at:
http://virginiafirst.org/webcast.shtml
Links to all NASA webcasts should be available soon (not yet) from:
http://robotics.nasa.gov/events/webcasts.htm
There are two of us from NASA working the VA event, myself and John Evans. The wecast was up today for practice and we expect that it will be failry stable over the next two days, but of course this depends on network traffic on our end, and the local network traffic in the region of any individual viewer. If all you care about is whether or not there will be a webcast so you can get your first week FIRST fix, you can stop reading now.
If you want a little more behind the scenes info about these webcasts, read on.
(1) We encode the audio/video locally, and this encoded stream is sent to servers at NASA KSC in Florida, so thanks to our buddies in sunny Florida for supporting these webcasts! (They have also handled the Championship webcasts for the past few years). If you view the webcast, you will be accessing the stream provided by NASA KSC, fed to them from Virginia.
(2) We have a test camera that we use for setting up the webcast, which is the video feed that is usually seen on at least part of the practice day. Once things are up an running and we have coordinated with FIRST, we switch to the FIRST production feed for both audio and video. When we make this switch on the practice day, you see the fixed, full-field view.
(3) On Friday and Saturday when the actual competition is in progress, the FRIST production usually consists of a mix of the wider field view, and close-ups provided by a roving camera operator. This is the feed that we will be encoding.
(4) Periodically, we will "reset" the webcast. Since we are archiving the stream locally at the same time that it is sent to the KSC servers, the encoder works best if we save this local file every couple of hours, instead of letting it grow to be a single, large file. We try to time these resets at logical breaks (lunch, field repair breaks, etc). There are many reasons that could cause your connection to drop including technical problems on our end, network issues anywhere in the path between us and you, or one of these periodic resets. The best advice is for you to try and reconnect after 2-3 minutes if you lose your connection.
(5) If you notice that your connection has gotten "fuzzy" after being connected for a while, you may want to stop your connection and reconnect. One behavior that we have noticed is that Real Player will connect at a fairly high bit rate and over time if there is any network congestion, it will negotiate down to a lower bit rate. When the network congestion clears up, Real Player may not renegotiate back "up" to a higher bit rate. So if your video stream is not as good as it used to be, reconnecting may make things better.
(6) There will likely be other webcasts this season, many provided by NASA. The NASA people supporting them often have multiple responsibilities at the events beyond the webcasts. They lug their AV and networking equipment to the events and do their best to provide the webcast because they realize how valuable it is to the FIRST community all across the country. As the season goes on, and you experience "imperfect" webcasts, feel free to provide your feedback (so improvements can be made) but remember that the people working the webcasts love FIRST as much as you do, and are probably working very hard to make things "right".
(7) While we can't guarantee it, here in Virginia, we will try to periodically monitor the CD forums to check out your feedback on the webcast.
Have a great FIRST season . . . we're all looking forward to seeing your inventions spring to life on the first day of competition tomorrow!
-- Jeff --