Poll-Video Replay

[Michael Corsetto]

I voted "no" because this isn't a professional sport and I'd rather not see officiating become the focal point of FIRST events.

1678 has been on both sides of controversial calls, at some point you just need to live and let live.

Maybe I'm just an old, crotchety FIRSTer who reminisces over the "good ole days"...?

Who am I kidding, FIRST is so much cooler now than it was when I was a youngin'!

-Mike

[Pat Fairbank]

I voted "no" because the solution I would rather see is for the GDC to design games in which there are fewer fouls that can be committed, in which fouls are blatantly obvious, and that are generally less burdensome on the referees. Too often, I feel the answer to "But we don't want teams to do X" is "Well, let's make it a foul then" instead of "Let's incentivize teams to do Y over X".

I know the VEX Robotics Competition manages to do this (offenses are either DQs, which are rare, or nothing); I'd think this approach to game design could scale at least partially to FRC.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

I voted "no" for the exact same reasons as Mike and Pat as well as another.

We can barely get robots to connect to the field. FTAs are already overworked and under appreciated. I don't think we need another piece of technology on the field to fail at the least opportune time.

[alephzer0]

I'm still in favor of adding official scorers whose sole job is to track crossings.

On a completely unrelated note, someone needs to make an emoji of a guy putting two cents in a jar.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

We can barely get robots to connect to the field. FTAs are already overworked and under appreciated. I don't think we need another piece of technology on the field to fail at the least opportune time.

I would suggest that if the field replay is unavailable due to a technical glitch, all replay requests are automatically deemed "insufficient evidence" and handled appropriately. If the FTA doesn't bother to make it available, we penalize whoever forgot to put 25 hours in the day.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by EricH

I would suggest that if the field replay is unavailable due to a technical glitch, all replay requests are automatically deemed "insufficient evidence" and handled appropriately. If the FTA doesn't bother to make it available, we penalize whoever forgot to put 25 hours in the day.

Then we'll start seeing threads like "Back-up Video Review System Needs to Happen Now"

-Mike

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

I voted yes because I just want all matches* to be recorded and this is a great excuse. If this were to happen, I would like people to be able to come at the end of the regional to transfer the matches to a hard drive for future upload for the blue alliance.

Edit*: Or at least just elimination matches. I think that would be a happy compromise.

[pandamonium]

video replays are a part of sports that captures audience attention. It also is the easiest way to teach spectators the game. during the match resets an announcer does a little run down of the last few matches like game sense does at chezy champs.

[Boltman]

I voted YES in limited but seemingly critical scenarios.

1. High order ranking sorts in DAY 1 issues (70% of all matches) primarily for "end of day" ranking corrections.
2. Elimination W/L decisions.

This year ranking points and auto points are HUGE so my proposal is any team can request "Video review" at any time during day 1 (until end of the day offline, not during their match) to "correct" missing RP (Breach and/or Capture) , win vs loss or auto points..and in subsequent years any other "high order" ranking metric...this way "hopefully" at end of day 1 teams will know proper ranking to avoid an 8 seed wiping out a 1 seed because of bad rankings order and an overly powerful 8th alliance. Unfair to #1 seed.

Elimination issues need to be addressed by end of each match and available as an option each round (QF/SF/F) you get ONE challenge for video review. If its a "ludicrous low-chance review" you lose all subsequent challenges.

[logank013]

I love seeing this friendly debate. It is great to see both sides of the issue and handle it as needed. While putting my opinion of "Is FIRST really a sport" to the side, I'm going to compare this game to soccer. Here's a little background of me and soccer. I'm an official grade 8 soccer referee. I have refereed soccer for 5 seasons and I've noticed a few things when refereeing soccer and decided that things can't be too different.

In my soccer referee games, there are times I wish I had video replay. When I referee 8-10 year olds, it is only 1 referee on the field at once. It's impossible to keep your eye on the ball all the time as a referee. Sometimes a kid falls and you need to make sure they are ok. Sometimes you need to look behind you when running backwards to make sure you don't plow a little kid. Sometimes during these distracted moments, the ball gets kicked out and I have to make a guess about who has the throw in. My point is, if you aren't looking at the play, how are you expected to make the right call?

In this game, it's a little different than soccer. 5 referees. 6 robots. 18 boulders. 10 goals. 10 defenses. Lots of fouls to look for. My point is this game is complicated. With 5 referees and if each covers 1 robot, 1 robot isn't being looked at during any given time. Each time something is scored, they have to hit it into their tablet as scored. No stops to do that. The reason for bad calls in this game is because there are just so many things for referees to get distracted at while refereeing a match.

My comparison: FRC is super complicated. If there is a foul in my soccer game, I stop the game and explain the foul. If there is a foul in FRC, the referees waves a flag and has to enter that in withOUT stopping the match. If the ball goes out of bounds in soccer, the game is stopped and I make an educated guess on who has the ball. In FRC, all of a sudden a robot that was in the neutral zone when you looked down is now in the courtyard when you look up, you have to make a guess about which defense was crossed.

In a game like soccer, I see video replay as important. It tells which foot touched the ball when it went out of bounds. It could be used to see where a ball should be placed. In FRC, we can use it to see which defense was crossed. If a robot was actually on the batter or not. We could use it to see what errors were made in scoring auton.

The video replay isn't to tell the referees they are doing bad. It's a tool I think they would find useful. I'd find it really useful in moments I get distracted in soccer. So why wouldn't an FRC referee find it useful for when they get distracted?

I agree with one post I saw earlier. Video replay shouldn't be used to negotiate fouls. Fouls are typically an opinion thing. The video would be perfect for things that are quantitative like defense crossings that are a definite yes or no thing.

Hopefully my comparison made sense to you all, but video replay if used correctly should make teams, referees, and spectators happy. There is no loss in using video replay (except money because that of live archive tool needs).

[gblake]

LoganK - What you wrote made sense, but you left something out.

When would the stronghold referees look at the video?

Would each match be followed by 1-5 minutes of hectic searching through the video by each ref as they attempted to double-check all the calls that they remember might have needed a 2nd look?

Would refs slap a button, or do something similar, during the match to mark (in the recording) each spot in the video they wanted to examine post-match? If not, finding the spot(s) they want to review could be a hugely confusing memory test.

Similarly, each call they made (or didn't make), or scoring credit they awarded (or didn't award) would need to be correlated with the recording, so that they don't have to have memorized that info too.

In soccer, and in many other sports, refs get to stop the action to make a "call" (or the action stops for them (When the only ball goes out of bounds)). FRC is exactly the opposite situation; and that is a very important difference.

Back to the Yes/No poll ....

[logank013]

Originally Posted by gblake

LoganK - What you wrote made sense, but you left something out.

When would the stronghold referees look at the video?

Would each match be followed by 1-5 minutes of hectic searching through the video by each ref as they attempted to double-check all the calls that they remember might have needed a 2nd look?

Would refs slap a button, or do something similar, during the match to mark (in the recording) each spot in the video they wanted to examine post-match? If not, finding the spot(s) they want to review could be a hugely confusing memory test.

Similarly, each call they made (or didn't make), or scoring credit they awarded (or didn't award) would need to be correlated with the recording, so that they don't have to have memorized that info too.

In soccer, and in many other sports, refs get to stop the action to make a "call" (or the action stops for them (When the only ball goes out of bounds)). FRC is exactly the opposite situation; and that is a very important difference.

Back to the Yes/No poll ....

Thanks for pointing that out. I actually though of something for that but forgot to share it. I'm going to switch to American football now. They always say that they will send video reviews to New York to discuss about it.

Well, assuming we have live archive tools at each event (if we ever did video replay, I'd hope that they have that), send the archive directly (or however long it takes to archive) 1 or 2 other referees in a back room. They could review every match if they wanted to. It'd be tedious but it'd get things right. Or the back room could be used for only "challenge" calls. Then continue to play matches through the review and after the match has been reviewed, say the official outcome of the challenge in between matches.

The only issue with this is that it would require another referee volunteer.

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by logank013

Thanks for pointing that out. I actually though of something for that but forgot to share it. I'm going to switch to American football now. They always say that they will send video reviews to New York to discuss about it.

Well, assuming we have live archive tools at each event (if we ever did video replay, I'd hope that they have that), send the archive directly (or however long it takes to archive) 1 or 2 other referees in a back room. They could review every match if they wanted to. It'd be tedious but it'd get things right. Or the back room could be used for only "challenge" calls. Then continue to play matches through the review and after the match has been reviewed, say the official outcome of the challenge in between matches.

The only issue with this is that it would require another referee volunteer.

And the technical talent to allow them to 'send the videos to the back room'. And the time involved in reviewing the calls.

Folks are drastically over-simplifying video replay. If it were easy it wouldn't have taken the NFL (in a game that stays the same every year) a decade to implement it.

[Moskowapplepi]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Folks are drastically over-simplifying video replay. If it were easy it wouldn't have taken the NFL (in a game that stays the same every year) a decade to implement it.

I completely agree and I think people forget how many cameras are used for video replay. Usually 4 angles are used for reviews to get all angles. That is 24 cameras just aimed at the robots and have to be able to see them at obscure angles in HD slow motion to accurately view any replay. I am for replays but the logistics on this field especially is near impossible

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Folks are drastically over-simplifying video replay. If it were easy it wouldn't have taken the NFL (in a game that stays the same every year) a decade to implement it.

Here's the disconnect - stop thinking of FRC video replay on the same level as NFL, NHL, MLB, etc. video replay. We'll never be at that level. When you stop thinking of it being the same as a professional sporting event, it becomes drastically simplified.

What we can do easily is provide a setup to both provide a high quality webcast (higher quality than many have today at least - not the same level as areas with fantastic video production teams i.e. PNW, Orlando) and record that same video feed locally.

Here's what we use for our setup in case anyone needs to see a diagram of how this works. It's painfully easy to setup, spent maybe an hour setting it up by myself for St. Louis. We didn't even have a volunteer to run it, I would just occasionally check up on it. Having 1 dedicated volunteer or a couple to swap out means you can do fancier stuff, but it's really not required to sit at the laptop constantly all day. A field reset person could hang out there while taking a break just to make sure it still looks good.