Disappointed by Kickoff webcast quality

[skippy178]

I have to say that I was disappointed by the quality of the Kickoff webcast.

The Kickoff producers seemed to be concentrating more on fancy motion backgrounds (like those clouds that were on the big screen behind the lectern area much of the time). The result, for those of us watching by NASA TV webcast, was that the poor old MPEG (or whatever) encoders providing the Windows Media feed wasted too much precious bandwidth trying to keep up with the ever-changing background images that were behind the speakers.

For me to read the speakers name and title, it took about 2 seconds after it appeared before the static elements in the video stream stabilised enough from a grainy initial image, to one that was actually readable. I was watching at a corporate sponsor's site that should have had plenty of bandwidth on the incoming Internet feed, so I do not believe that bandwidth was an issue that can be used to explain such poor video quality.

Maybe for future FIRST events the producers will remember that not everyone can tune into the NASA TV satellite feed, and so doing without some of the fancy "slick" production that we typically see on game shows, the nightly news, MTV awards ceremonies etc has to be forsaken in order to provide a decent quality live feed for webcast viewers i.e. the lowest common denominator.

Cheers

Skippy

[ThomasP]

At the UHCL kickoff (Clear Lake, Texas), the stream flickered right when they were pulling the curtain down and a few other times in the broadcast... but we still found out about the game and got to listen to the speakers which is what really matters, not having an awesome video stream.

[dlavery]

Due to the nasty, rainy weather in Manchester during the kick-off broadcast, there were some momentary drop outs of the uplink which sources both the NASA TV and webast signals. This was unavoidable with the equipment that was deployed at the time.

To prevent any re-occurance of this problem next year, NASA has already completed and submitted a Form 431/"Postponement of Potential Predicaments Predicated Upon Preposterous Precipitation" request to God. Both electronic and hardcopy versions, in triplicate, were submitted (consistent with the requirements of the recently passed "Efficiency and Effectiveness in Third Millenium Astral Communications" Bill, the electronic version was submitted to the new WeatherRequests@iGod.com address). We will inform you of the response once it is received - probably some time around January 5, 2008.

-dave

[Psychoflood]

God is an apple product?

[JaneYoung]

When watching the background with the tumbling logo elements, the circle kept reminding me of a white life saver (peppermint). Wonder why....

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Psychoflood

God is an apple product?

Actually, I think it is the other way around - Apple is a product of the Heavens. And since everyone knows that Bill Gates is Satan, it would make sense...

-dave

[Stuart]

"Actually, I think it is the other way around - Apple is a product of the Heavens. And since everyone knows that Bill Gates is Satan, it would make sense.."

I always thought DNA looked to proprietary to be open source, yet to simple to be Microsoft.

[ADP456]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Actually, I think it is the other way around - Apple is a product of the Heavens. And since everyone knows that Bill Gates is Satan, it would make sense...

-dave

Amen to that brother

If I remember right NASA began webcasting in 1999 with the SV Regional, and has webcast every kickoff and every championship plus several regional events every year. This is before anyone else had even heard of webcasting and most connectivity was over 28kbaud dial ups. NASA provides this service to FIRST at no cost to FIRST - it would be many 100Ks to purchase this service commercially. I know Dave and others have to sweat blood to get these events to work. If It wasn't for the webcasting/broadcasting of the kickoff there is no way FIRST would have grown from 7 to 37 regional and from 300 to 1300 teams in 8 years. I happened to be able to get both the cable and webcast at my home, and other than the 45 second buffering delay, I though the webcast was peachy keen.

So if you were really serious about unsung heros, talk about the NASA Contractors and Civil servants that bust their chops making sure you get media.

[Alekat]

I think most annoying was when the decryption key was displayed for only a few seconds at a time. A flyby of the field was cool, but we just wanted that key!

[dangerousdave]

Originally Posted by KelliV

As for the game decryption code, I do agree that it should have been a centered title instead of a subtitle, or at least left on there long enough to type into your computers.

Originally Posted by Alekat

I think most annoying was when the decryption key was displayed for only a few seconds at a time. A flyby of the field was cool, but we just wanted that key!

I don't know if you watched the NASA TV telecast after the video from Manchester went away. The code was displayed in larger text on a blue background for at least 2 minutes giving anyone plenty of time to write it down. Perhaps you were speaking about the webcast which I did not watch.

The NASA telecast had some problems but I was glad to be able to view it.

Thanks to dlavery for his description about how the broadcast problems will not reoccur next year.

Dave

[KelliV]

Originally Posted by dangerousdave

The code was displayed in larger text on a blue background for at least 2 minutes giving anyone plenty of time to write it down.

I saw the two minute one which was good, but was talking about the first time it came on and was only a subtitle under Dave. Sorry for the confusion.

[Team_2220]

yeah at the University of Minnesota it was blacking out every now and then right when they pulled the curtin and befor and after it was hard to stay along with what the were saying

[3DWolf]

I concur. The quality could have been better. With that rather larg skip right as they were opening the curtain, the ENTIRE room I was in either gasped or screamed "NO!"

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

So if you were really serious about unsung heros, talk about the NASA Contractors and Civil servants that bust their chops making sure you get media.

I think the original poster in this thread was referring to issues caused by the production of the show rather than the webcast itself. For example, as mentioned previously, having that moving, cloud background with the FIRST logo behind it caused the webcast encoder to have to waste a lot of bits encoding this movement. A static image would have allowed more of the bandwidth to be dedicated to encoding the faces and movement of the speakers rather than the background. The other problem was that all of the overlay text (which showed people's names and, more importantly, provided the password for the manual) was way too small and unreadable after it was encoded.

These issues are no one's fault, however in the future it would improve the webcast greatly if the production of the kickoff event took the webcast into account for things like this.