Suffield Shakedown Scrimmage

[Tottanka]

Woody flowers is currently speaking...

[T3_1565]

this is sweet wmp works great for me!! this is nice to see!!

[s_forbes]

Great performance by the Gaelhawks! 20 points solo in hybrid, 3 laps, 2 hurdles, and a placement at the end for 54 points by themselves. Nicely done!

[Greg Needel]

anyone know who andy grady's co-announcer is? he has made some "interesting" comments

[Leav]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

anyone know who andy grady's co-announcer is? he has made some "interesting" comments

lol... I don't know who that guy was but he was awesome...

(In case you are wondering he made some comments over the PA about someone's mom coming to live with him and the website BoysBouncingBalls.com, among other things... )

I really enjoyed the scrimmage.. but the video quality was pretty low and it froze alot... any chance of uploading higher quality versions of the games?

-Leav

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

anyone know who andy grady's co-announcer is? he has made some "interesting" comments

Although he was very enthusiastic, I'd have to agree - our kids asked us to mute after a while (because of some mildly inappropriate stuff) so that they could still scout the matches without listening to what was being said.

Scrimmage looked good - wish we had one here. Seems like a really good opportunity, and I was surprised to see so many robots that were looking GREAT this close to ship date.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

anyone know who andy grady's co-announcer is? he has made some "interesting" comments

He is a dj from one of the radio stations in Hartford.

[stevek]

Well we were sending the webcast at about 250kbps and it looked good comming back to us from our website. There are a few things I can suggest going forward

1) Play Window Media Video Content in Windows Media Player. If your having issues with another player dont blame it on the webcast. I do global webcasts for companies with several hundred thousand employees, I know what I'm doing. If I want to watch real content I know I will get best results in Real Player, QT content in QT player, and Flash content in a Flash player application. Though other players like VLC seem to handle multiple types of files, you are adding something different to the mix when you streaming from video servers. Its no longer just a codec/player question, there is communication betweeen the player and the server as well.

2) The video is a standard 320x240 window. I played my at 200 percent and it still held up fine if you do somthing crazy like blow it up to full screen and expect it to look like it does at 100% then please dont blame it on the webcast. I could send out a 600k stream but only half of you would be able to see it as we have to limit the number of connections based on bandwidth. So I figure its less selfish and more gracious to allow more people to watch the files than to have half as many. So we may push the quality to 300kbps for the regional, but we are trying to host for the entire first community so please keep that in mind.

3) somebody talked about projecting it... again you take a small file and blow it up, you lose quality. So please dont fuss if thats what you are doing.

4) thank you to all those who watched it.

Before somone says, but we always play full screen or project it or what ever.... I will tell you that we normally have a manually opperated camera that zooms in and follows the action, but we opted for a stationary camera for several reasons. It allows our students to focus on the event and not running a camera. It is much better for scouting, since you can see almost the entire field and every robot. When we follow the action there are always 3-4 robots that get left off camera for portions of the match. And at a First Regional there is a PAID video crew with several cameras and live production equipment. We typically take their feed and rebroadcast that at a regional (we do the CT regional every year, and in the past we have done Las Vegas and this year New Orleans - we basically volunteer the service if one doesnt exist when we attent). We are volunteering our time, equipment, and knowedge, and we want to enjoy the event and not kill ourselves in the process. We couls rent cameras, crew, switchers, ect... but then the attendees flip the bill since they'd have to charge more... and they are less likely to need the webcast since, well... they are attendees!

SO this is not a typical video feed to compaired to a typical Kick-off/Regional webcast as we are not giving a closeup picture of people/robots that can withstand the artifacting and breakup that happens when stretching images.

I hope those with issues take this as helpful advise and not criticism. If my intent was to criticise I could have chosen much different words!!!

Good luck to everyone in the final days.

[s_forbes]

Thank you for the webcast, Steve, I enjoyed watching it!

And for what it's worth, I prefer the angle you guys went with rather than the zooming in and out that we usually have to deal with. It's easier to see more of the action with a wide view.

[GBilletdeaux930]

Is there anyway to watch the event now? Is there a link or somthing?

[MOE]

Helloooo from the NE
Thanks again to the Aces High Team 176 and all the volunteers what a great competition it was, please put us on the list again, TJ2 will be attending in 2009. We had a great time with our 2 bots (yes we did pick one) before we left CT late Sat. night. This scrimmage gave us some super drive time.

(ANDY GRADY) is an AWESOME announcer (He is the voice of the North East)

THANK YOU AGAIN Team 176 you are ACES

Good Luck to all the great FIRST Teams in 2008

Thanks again Team 88 TJ2 and MOE

oh yeah ???? OH YEAH !!!!

[looop76]

Hey, I was wondering if there was a place to view the recording of the web cast. If anyone can direct me or send me the footage (complete unedited version is fine) it would be helpful.

Thanks tom

[T3_1565]

Originally Posted by looop76

Hey, I was wondering if there was a place to view the recording of the web cast. If anyone can direct me or send me the footage (complete unedited version is fine) it would be helpful.

Thanks tom

I would also like to know if the archieving of the competition is going to be put up somewhere, and if so where?? and when?

[stevek]

Hi guys. I am working on getting a slightly editied version of the event. I have a plan on how to do it fairly painlessly (i think) I will get a link up as soon as possible. Thanks for the interest!

Basically there was a lot of downtime so I want to edit that out to some extent to make it a more practical file. A contact a NASA webcast team has offered to host as well as another resource of ours. We were able to expand the visibility of FIRST by having the events stream from a CT Sports website that is a central location for High Scool and regional sports. They also loaned us some equipment to help us elimiate lugging some of our computers arround. If you can click to their site and have a look around. (for support purposes) They will also host an archive when we get it up to them.

http://www.sportingnewsct.com/