Taking videos at Championship?

[Maxwell777]

Originally Posted by cbf

This is the first time in six years that our team is going to the championship.

I've been taking videos for our team for the past couple of years. My videos are better than the official streams because I take full 1080P, and try to keep the whole field and the scoreboard in the frame. This is much better for following what's going on. Usually, I just set up somewhere high in the stands for this, using a large video tripod. You can see my videos on our homepage: http://www.ligerbots.org. I post all the videos publicly to YouTube.

So my question for people who have been there before? Is it appropriate to do our own recording at the Championship? Is it going to be possible for me to find a good filming position? (I have a good zoom and a quality tripod -- I don't really care how far up I'll be.)

Are there official videos and are they any good? (I hate it when the official video tries to zoom in on the "action" -- with six robots on the field, there's always something that's missed when you focus on a small space.)

Which division will you be filming? I'm going to be filming curie division, in case that helps you at all.

This is going to be my first time filming championships (I did film the AZ regional though). Any tips/advice would be appreciated.

[ErvinI]

Two years ago I was taking videos on Archimedes from some chairs set up near the entrances by the railing. It's slightly elevated so that spectators don't get in your way. I believe 2056 was taking videos from a similar position last year, if you want to compare camera angles.

[Hallry]

FRC Team 1676, The Pascack Pi-oneers, will be recording 1080p full-field footage of Curie and posting it on our YouTube Channel, as we try to do at all the events we go to. And I promise you it will be up in less time than the MAR Champs footage is taking

[plnyyanks]

Just a reminder, if you record video in big chunks (like you leave the camera running all day) and want help automating extracting individual matches, I wrote some scripts to do that. Shoot me a pm if you want some help using them.
https://github.com/plnyyanks/match-archive-tools

[DonRotolo]

1676 records matches in small chunks, just over 2:30 long. Yes, it means an operator needs to babysit the camera, but would you leave a video camera unattended anyway?
We use the videos for scouting Friday night, pre-parsing them trivializes seeing what we need to see, and has the benefit of making them easier to upload to YouTube.

But regarding the OP: Yes, taking your own video is appropriate and allowed. And a good idea. You might be able to get up to the upper tier to video, which would be a great angle. If not, there are plenty of good locations up higher in the stadium. Remember, it is a football stadium.

[Maxwell777]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

Just a reminder, if you record video in big chunks (like you leave the camera running all day) and want help automating extracting individual matches, I wrote some scripts to do that. Shoot me a pm if you want some help using them.
https://github.com/plnyyanks/match-archive-tools

Awesome! I would love to use this! Does it need to be one large file, or can it be split up into chunks? I don't know If I have the capacity to film for large periods of time with my camera. I could probably do 3-hour intervals though.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by Maxwell777

Awesome! I would love to use this! Does it need to be one large file, or can it be split up into chunks? I don't know If I have the capacity to film for large periods of time with my camera. I could probably do 3-hour intervals though.

Doesn't matter how long the video inputs are, you can have as many chunks as you need - all the script does is extract one match-length of video starting points you specify and can then upload to youtube for you.

Basic instructions for getting started are on the GitHub wiki, sorry you have to go through the trouble of creating a Google API project, but I can't find a better way to do it.

The input is a csv file with two columns: TBA Match Key (scheme described here) and the timestamp in the video (formatted HH:mm:ss) where you want to start extracting.

The script will cut out all the videos, upload them to YouTube (and optionally add to a specified playlist) and output a csv file that you can copy and paste into the TBA spreadsheet for archival.

[Conor Ryan]

Also check out the Championship A-Z, I found this:

Originally Posted by 2014 Championship A-Z v4.18.14

Video Recording Hookups: Teams are welcome to record their matches. Please see the Field Supervisor for the location of the Multi AV boxes, which you can connect your audio and video recording devices to. There are a limited amount of Multi AV boxes available, so we ask that you kindly limit recording to the matches that your team is playing in.

http://www3.usfirst.org/sites/defaul...RC_CMP_A-Z.pdf

[MrTechCenter]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

Also check out the Championship A-Z, I found this:



http://www3.usfirst.org/sites/defaul...RC_CMP_A-Z.pdf

This will give you the low quality footage, and you're forced to record all of the camera switching that they do versus having one fixed angle.

FIRST said in their last blog post that the next deck up (I believe this is the Club Level in the Edward Jones Dome) will be open for spectators. It might be too high up to get a good view for filming, but you won't have to worry about people getting in the way.

[cbf]

Originally Posted by MrTechCenter

This will give you the low quality footage, and you're forced to record all of the camera switching that they do versus having one fixed angle.

FIRST said in their last blog post that the next deck up (I believe this is the Club Level in the Edward Jones Dome) will be open for spectators. It might be too high up to get a good view for filming, but you won't have to worry about people getting in the way.

Well, like I said, my camera has a pretty good zoom (specs: http://shop.panasonic.com/shop/model...s&support#tabs . But could someone give me an estimate about just how far away we're talking about? At the far end of the zoom there is a little optical distortion and even tripod-mounted, camera shake could be an issue.

[MrTechCenter]

Originally Posted by cbf

Well, like I said, my camera has a pretty good zoom (specs: http://shop.panasonic.com/shop/model...s&support#tabs . But could someone give me an estimate about just how far away we're talking about? At the far end of the zoom there is a little optical distortion and even tripod-mounted, camera shake could be an issue.

This might give some perspective. The deck would be the blue seating you can see across the middle.

[Monochron]

The camera work is pretty abysmal, at least on the Newton field. "zoom in on the action" seems to mean just zooming in on some random part of the field.

[cbf]

Originally Posted by Monochron

The camera work is pretty abysmal, at least on the Newton field. "zoom in on the action" seems to mean just zooming in on some random part of the field.

So I was actually filming right next to the official cameraman for Newton up in the Terrace/Club level, and complained to him about zooming in tight and missing action on the other side. He said they did that because First told them to. He said his instructions were to focus on the part of the field that had the most robots.

This guy is also a camerman for St Louis RAMs games. He would have been quite capable of doing a good job, but he said First doesn't explain the game rules to his director, so the instructions he was getting were often clueless. He thought First was great (said he was going to get his grand kids involved when they were old enough). I explained the rules to him as the matches went along, and I'm hoping that the videos got a little better because of that (within the limits of First's instructions). But he was only the up top guy -- the one who could get the full field (and without any people in the way). The director liked to switch to the ground level camera, which was obscured by the refs half the time, and zoomed in so tight, that no one on earth could possibly have a clue of what was going on. It would be like zooming in on Tom Brady's nose hairs and claiming you're filming a football game.

During team selection he said his director had no idea what was going on. (I had explained all of it to him.)

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by cbf

So I was actually filming right next to the official cameraman for Newton up in the Terrace/Club level, and complained to him about zooming in tight and missing action on the other side. He said they did that because First told them to. He said his instructions were to focus on the part of the field that had the most robots.

This guy is also a camerman for St Louis RAMs games. He would have been quite capable of doing a good job, but he said First doesn't explain the game rules to his director, so the instructions he was getting were often clueless. He thought First was great (said he was going to get his grand kids involved when they were old enough). I explained the rules to him as the matches went along, and I'm hoping that the videos got a little better because of that (within the limits of First's instructions). But he was only the up top guy -- the one who could get the full field (and without any people in the way). The director liked to switch to the ground level camera, which was obscured by the refs half the time, and zoomed in so tight, that no one on earth could possibly have a clue of what was going on. It would be like zooming in on Tom Brady's nose hairs and claiming you're filming a football game.

During team selection he said his director had no idea what was going on. (I had explained all of it to him.)

I've worked with TV crews for track & field competitions, and too often they have no clue what's happening on the field and make many bad decisions. It's the nature of TV that if an event isn't wildly popular, the production crew rarely makes the effort to gain real insights into how to improve their broadcast. I've found them to be quite arrogant at times, unwilling to accept advice from true experts in the sport.

The second element is to be sure to have an announcer who is actually interested in the sport--that he's not just there collecting a paycheck (I've worked with those before). Tom Hammond is an absolutely awful track announcer who hurts the sport unfortunately. If we stuck with a Tom Hammond, we won't get the wider appeal we should. Instead we want Phil Liggett as he does the Tour de France.

[Maxwell777]

Originally Posted by MrTechCenter

This will give you the low quality footage, and you're forced to record all of the camera switching that they do versus having one fixed angle.

FIRST said in their last blog post that the next deck up (I believe this is the Club Level in the Edward Jones Dome) will be open for spectators. It might be too high up to get a good view for filming, but you won't have to worry about people getting in the way.

What type of A/V connection do they give you? Does it include the scoreboard HUD in the video? Do they save the matches for later download? I'm considering recording it myself and saving their footage as an added bonus.