Last year we saw match footage from 32/42 (76%) Regionals, which was an increase over the previous year. But we can do better. It is still my goal to see every match of every Regional recorded, every year it gets easier and easier to do, and I think this is the year that anyone can do it. To make this happen I am going to look for a team of two other people to help me organize this. Our job will be to organize volunteers for every regional, spread the required information about uploading the video, share the information about how to record and parse the video, remind volunteers to record and upload the video, and organize the parsing of the video if required. If you are interested in helping me out, please PM or email me.
If you are interested in voluteering to record a regional please state so in this thread, and feel free to add your name to this list. I ask anyone willing to help me keep track of this list just update it by copying the last one, adding the new names, and pasting it into your post surrounded by "["CODE"]" text... "["/CODE"]" without the quotes.
Code:
Regional Volunteer
Week 1
BAE Systems Granite State Regional
Buckeye Regional
Greater Kansas City Regional
Midwest Regional
New Jersey Regional
Oklahoma City Regional
Washington DC Regional
Week 2
Boston Regional
Finger Lakes Regional
Oregon Regional
San Diego Regional
New York City Regional
Week 3
Dallas Regional
Florida Regional
Los Angeles Regional
Peachtree Regional
Pittsburgh Regional
Silicon Valley Regional
Wisconsin Regional
Week 4
Israel Regional
Arizona Regional
Bayou Regional
Boilermaker Regional
Chesapeake Regional
NASA / VCU Regional
Philadelphia Regional
St. Louis Regional
Waterloo Regional Jonathan Norris (2809)
Week 5
Colorado Regional
Connecticut Regional
Greater Toronto Regional Jonathan Norris (2809)
Hawaii Regional
Las Vegas Regional
Lone Star Regional
Microsoft Seattle Regional
Palmetto Regional
Sacramento Regional
SBPLI Long Island Regional
Week 6
Michigan State Championship
Minnesota 10000 Regional
Minnesota North Star Regional
How To Record
This is the most often asked question, and finnaly I have a simple answer for everyone. the
Pinnacle Video Transfer, its a $99 ($95 on amazon, I've seen it for $70 on ebay) device that records a component video and audio input right to an external hard drive at the push of a button in glorious h.264.
If you are looking for a more low cost solution (requiring a computer, and someone to watch the computer..) check out
last year's thread.
As for where to capture the video from, FIRST at all its Regionals provides a station with about 20 outputs where you can hook right into the main scoreboard video feed. We prefer this feed over you recording the matches with a camcorder, FIRST hires a professional company at every regional to tape the matches.
Parsing and Cutting Up the Video Into Individual Matches
If you really don't have time to do this after recording a regional, please contact us and we will instruct you where to upload the raw video.
This can be done with whatever video editing program you would like, every windows machine comes with windows movie maker (I think Vista does... I'm a mac user) and every Mac comes with iMovie.
As for the output video and naming standards please see below!
Standards for Parsing:- DO NOT include the announcers introduction, we are just looking for the robot action.
- End the video once the play has stopped, if you like you can cut in the final score (this is a bit of a pain, and TBA already has it listed on their site anyway).
Video Format Standards- Format: MPEG4 or H264 (.mp4, .mpv, or .mov are all acceptable containers). WMV is acceptable, but for reasons explained below not favored
- File Size: 15-25 Mb per file, this roughly a bitrate of: 1000-1250 kb/s, with an audio bitrate of: 128 kb/s.
- Video Resolution: recommended 640X480, acceptable 320X240
- HTTP Streaming: when encoding the video to its final format of MPEG4 or h264 enable http streaming (for most encoders it will be an option). This will allow anyone with a smart phone, iPhone, or iPod touch to stream the matches and watch them directly on their handset.
Naming Standards
Check out this post from last year for naming standards
as for uploading you will be contacted by myself or one of the other volunteers helping me with detail of how to upload it to The Blue Alliance (TBA) and SOAP.
I am sure the TBA and SOAP people will chime in at some point with their plans for this season.