Hi all,
It's clear that this year The Blue Alliance has been unable to provide match archives for as many matches as we have in previous years. In particular, the dissolution of SOAP has removed much of the organizing drive behind video archiving at events. Perhaps less teams are recording events because they assume someone else will be and the matches will be available online, but if no one records anything, we can't offer them.
The Blue Alliance is weighing a number of options to improve the environment for next year. One possible course of action would be buying 12 Pinacle video recording units, and sending one along with each field. Swapping in and out 8gb thumbdrives would let each event be fully recorded for later processing, splitting, and uploading. This is obviously a somewhat expensive option, but we may be able to obtain sponsorship for this project, and part of the cost could be covered by the relatively moderate amount of advertising revenue we have made.
We would love to open the discussion for other ideas. Match videos are great for showing sponsors what their money enables, letting parents who couldn't come to events see what their children's long hours at the school were for, and relieving your most exciting matches. As a community, we can do a better job preserving these memories, let's just figure out how!
