While everyone is building their robots for Stronghold, I’m busy planning the details for FIRST Mid-Atlantic’s (previously known as MAR) event live webcasts. As a result, I’m curious to know what kind of camera angles people would like to see. We’ll have 3 static camera views, one of which is dedicated as a full field camera. What would you like to see from the other 2?
How about a pit-cam that wanders the pits?
Would certainly be interesting, but would be difficult (read: expensive) to do technically with our venue setups (pits away from field). Would also require volunteer resources that we just don’t have.
Full field view from the “50 yard line” may make it difficult to see what is going on in the outer works (ex. a portcullis or drawbridge in the nearest slot will block line of sight to the others). How about an iso view?
Thank you for starting this post. I have been cogitating on this.
A full field view is essential.
Maybe a view of each of the Outer Works.
The real time scoring would also be nice.
IMHO, separate views of the Robots performing actions on the field is a bonus, but is useless to analyze alliances strategies.
Pit-cam = Not worth the bandwidth.
All i want to see to analyze is the full-field view.
As always, Team 1676 will be recording full-field footage of the 2016 Mt. Olive and Bridgewater-Raritan MAR Districts (and hopefully District Champs as well), and posting videos of all of the matches on our YouTube channel.
I’ve always thought that a top-down view of half or full court would help with scouts that aren’t at the event.
That’s what the Catwalks are for. 
Right Navid?
Ultimate Ascent Curie Match 89
Aerial Assist Newton Match 137
Rebound Rumble Newton Match 94 Human Player shot at the buzzer is great.
What about cameras behind the towers to capture robots lined up for shooting?
Top down views are always cool as well as driver station views but those are more cinematic then usefull. A tower view would be cool as well as a secret passage view.
Depending upon the cable available, I would think that one mounted to the rigging that supports the lights/projector would be cool. We had one or 2 that were mounted up there that were remotely controlled one year. I think one of each of the court yards and one of the mid-field (maybe a go pro to get more of the whole field, but with the center on the mid field since it’ll be hard to see the whole field this year from the bleachers I have a feeling.
I just sent a note to our planning team last night (as I was volunteered to help with this at the Iowa regional) and taking this into consideration that one camera angle will be very difficult to see all of the field and robots this year.
First, thank you so much for planning this stuff out! I can’t wait to watch the MAR (FMA?) webcasts this year.
The most essential thing is to get that full field view from as high as you can. With all the defenses this year, that top-down view will really help.
As for other static views, I think the best would be to mount a camera on a tower like others have said, or even elevated above the tower for a better view. That could be the two additional static views, one from each alliance tower. If you’d like more variety, going in the opposite direction, it might be cool to have a static camera mounted really low looking through the clear guardrail polycarb for like a “robot’s eye view” or something into the NEUTRAL ZONE.
Kinda off topic, but would it be possible to run the webcast from a different feed than the one shown at the events? It’s really nice to get the shifting camera views when watching the projector at events, but when watching a webcast, a moving camera view leaving out parts of the field while the match is in play is honestly really frustrating. MAR may not even have the equipment to do this, but running that non-changing feed through just to the webcast (with FMS overlay) and the standard switching one to the projector at events would be so awesome. They could even be the same feed when not in a match, but just do different things when a match starts.
TL;DR Static top-down view during matches on the webcast pls
Thanks everyone for your input so far. Addressing a few common items:
- Scoring overlay from FMS will be present. I (and others) view this as a requirement.
- We don’t run any lighting or projector rigging at all but one of our events. As a result, we are limited to ~10ft from a tripod mount. We may be able to mount 1 camera from the ceiling at a few venues but that complicates setup significantly.
- The portcullis and drawbridge will definitely impact visibility. Trying to keep this in mind but may be unavoidable.
- A camera behind/on the tower may be interesting, but difficult to place. We cannot interfere with the teams behind the wall and mounting on/around the tower cannot interfere with the game or FIRST
intentions.
Thanks! The extremely positive feedback from last year made purchasing a second set of equipment this year an easy sell to the MAR/FMA board of directors. I haven’t heard anything official on the new acronym, but FMA seems reasonable.
I actually experimented with this a few hours ago. Technically, we already have the equipment to put just the static full field view on the webcast, but unfortunately it would lose the FMS scoring overlay. YouTube does allow multiple camera views during a live event, but this would require a different capture card in our system. More importantly, this would stress our encoding computer and venue bandwidth more than I am comfortable with. The instructions for the person manning the switching controls are to stay primarily on the full field view and I felt like they did a pretty good job last year (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–JiLScl-4I&list=PLIIiligkELGOb9JhVqkEBjhVbzavPNJfP&index=13)
What I would like to see is 360 videos. While it is not for streaming, it allows to watch it later with preferred focus, not the angle that camera man chose.
This shot, one facing each way from just above the outerworks facing backwards across the neutral zone at the other castle. With a wide angle lens you can see the center balls, all five defenses, the tower goals and importantly the eyes of the humans driving. Exciting stuff:
How to get this shot is another issue. Since robots will be less than 4.5 ft, and not shooting in the courtyard, you might be able to string them across the top, or put it on a boom. Otherwise a wireless camera on the Sally Port / Portcullis Maybe?