http://www.dspr.com/www/products/video/compression/pci_encoder/4_channel_h264_pci_encoder.htm
This is a hardware solution that claims from what i read to do real time encoding. not a solution for a laptop, but would fit in a desktop or rackmount case, could be controlled using a laptop setting on top of it (start the capture through remote desktop than unhook the laptop till the end when you reconnect it to stop the capture.
Well its in the horizon, but its not there yet.
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080110006038&newsLang=en
Probably next year, but this product is not going to release anytime soon.
During the competition you could record using our recording software. While the competition is recording use VideoReDo to clip matches out of the original video, even while the DVR is recording to that file. Transcode to H.264 with our software to an equal quality as the original at 1x speeds, or lesser quality at >1x speeds.
If you clip the matches right after one has completed, your delay would be about 3-5 minutes.
Here is the updated list: We have 21 Regionals covered! half way there!
Regional Volunteer
Suffield Shakedown
Rochester Rally Ed Patterson (Koko Ed, team 191)
Week 1
BAE Systems Granite State Regional Kyle Fenton (team 121) *may need parser
Midwest Regional
New Jersey Regional SOAP (team 108)
Oregon Regional Madison Krass (M. Krass, team 488)
St. Louis Regional
Week 2
Arizona Regional Andrew (Donut, team 498)
Finger Lakes Regional Ed Patterson (Koko Ed, team 191)
Greater Kansas City Regional
NASA / VCU Regional Anish (aksimhal, team 1123)
San Diego Regional AJ (ay2b, team 980)
Week 3
Boilermaker Regional Mike Aalderink (mike AA, team 2015)
Brazil Regional sloteera (team 1860), Bruno (Thexder, team 1382)
Chesapeake Regional
Connecticut Regional
Detroit Regional
Florida Regional SOAP (team 108)
Peachtree Regional
Pittsburgh Regional
Silicon Valley Regional AJ (ay2b, team 980)
Wisconsin Regional Kevin Kolodziej (team 1675)
Week 4
Buckeye Regional David Thomas (blakcheez, team 964)
Lone Star Regional Kevin Sevcik (team 57)
Los Angeles Regional AJ (ay2b, team 980)
Microsoft Seattle Regional Madison Krass (M. Krass, team 488)
Oklahoma City Regional
UC Davis Sacramento Regional
Waterloo Regional Jonathan Norris (team 610)
West Michigan Regional Mike Aalderink (mike AA, team 2015)
Israel Regional
Week 5
Bayou Regional
Boston Regional Greg Marra (The Blue Alliance)
Colorado Regional
Great Lakes Regional
Greater Toronto Regional
Hawaii Regional
Las Vegas Regional
Minnesota Regional
Palmetto Regional
Philadelphia Regional
SBPLI Long Island Regional
Championship SOAP (team 108)
So, just as a recap, I need to bring:
If there is anything else I need to bring/download, please let me know.
Thanks,
Anish
Allright sorry for not getting this out earlier (work seems to pile up when you are not keeping up with it…), but here are my recommendations for recording a regional, parsing, and encoding.
Recording and Importing
There are two main ways or recording the footage from the FIRST feeds, you can either connect your computer directly to the feed using a video capture card, or you can record to a DVD recorder. The DVD recorder will add the extra time of importing it to the computer, but for many this is an easier solution.
To record with a computer you are going to need some sort of video capture card (if your computer doesn’t already have video inputs). If you need to add a video capture card I recommend picking up KWorld Xpert DVD Maker USB 2.0 Video Capture Device, its cheep and gets the job done I used it successfully last year to record two regionals. The quality is not as good as a on board video capture card would be. Next you need to record the video to a hard drive, you can use anything you want to record the video but the easiest solution is just using windows movie maker and record right to .wmv. Last year using the recording settings at 640X480 (VGA) at 2mb/s my total file size for all the raw video at GTR was about 15 GB. This is much more managable then most recording software that only records at the highest setting which will be more then 100mb per minute… (if you got a terabyte drive go ahead…)
Recording to a DVD recorder is simple plop a DVD in and set it to record, just make sure you change the DVD when it is full… probably every 4 hrs or so depending on what settings you use on the recorder. Importing from a DVD recorder i would recomend you use a DVD ripping software to rip directly to .h264, my favorite is handbreak works on both windows and mac.
Parsing and Finnishing
Feel free to use what ever video editing software you are most comfortable with, windows movie maker is built into all XP installs and works pritty well. If you allready have all the footage recorded in .h264 you can just use one of the simple video cutting tools seeing that you don’t need to rencode the video at all.
finnaly if you don’t have it in .h264 format yet this is where you take all the cut up matches and rencode them to .h264 ipod format. The easiest ways to do this is using a program like videora on windows or visualhub on mac. in vidora use the settings
VIDEO Quality Standards
I think we all agreed earlier in this thread that it is time to move to .h264 or atleast mpg4. So these are the video quality settings that i am proposing:
Format: .mov (.h264 or MPG4)
Resoultion: 640X480 VGA
Video Bit Rate: 1024kbps
Audio Bit Rate: 128kbps Stereo
This will produce match files arround 20-25mb, similar size to the old .wmv files.
in Videora there is a setting called “H.264 VGA 1024kbps Stereo/128kbps” just use that.
in VisualHub use iTunes-All Devices-Standard Quality-H.264 encoding
How do you get into the video stream at the regionals? Do you need to ask FIRST’s permission?
Thanks,
There is a black box, usually near the pit administration table where you can plug into. Except for the championship, you have to provide your own cables.
So, do you have to reserve the space or do they have enough cables?
Thanks,
There is no reservation, but space is limited. Usually there is only about 5 teams recording the stream, so you should be fine.
When I mean cables, I mean that you have to bring your own Composite video cables to plug into to the black box from your recording device. Also note that FIRST only provides mono sound, so you should only plug it your mono port.
There is usually a mini tv that they provide to check your feed to make sure that your feed is working properly. A power strip should also be near by.
I would also recommend that you check your setup about every 1-2 hours. In the past, I have had my recorder turned off and cables pulled from the back. While I am sure it was not purposeful, just look out for it.
OK,
Thanks
I got Davis Regional covered.
Regional Volunteer
Suffield Shakedown
Rochester Rally Ed Patterson (Koko Ed, team 191)
**Week 1**
BAE Systems Granite State Regional Kyle Fenton (team 121) *may need parser
Midwest Regional
New Jersey Regional SOAP (team 108)
Oregon Regional Madison Krass (M. Krass, team 488)
St. Louis Regional
**Week 2**
Arizona Regional Andrew (Donut, team 498)
Finger Lakes Regional Ed Patterson (Koko Ed, team 191)
Greater Kansas City Regional
NASA / VCU Regional Anish (aksimhal, team 1123)
San Diego Regional AJ (ay2b, team 980)
**Week 3**
Boilermaker Regional Mike Aalderink (mike AA, team 2015)
Brazil Regional sloteera (team 1860), Bruno (Thexder, team 1382)
Chesapeake Regional
Connecticut Regional
Detroit Regional
Florida Regional SOAP (team 108)
Peachtree Regional
Pittsburgh Regional
Silicon Valley Regional AJ (ay2b, team 980)
Wisconsin Regional Kevin Kolodziej (team 1675)
**Week 4**
Buckeye Regional David Thomas (blakcheez, team 964)
Lone Star Regional Kevin Sevcik (team 57)
Los Angeles Regional AJ (ay2b, team 980)
Microsoft Seattle Regional Madison Krass (M. Krass, team 488)
Oklahoma City Regional
UC Davis Sacramento Regional Doug G (team 701)
Waterloo Regional Jonathan Norris (team 610)
West Michigan Regional Mike Aalderink (mike AA, team 2015)
Israel Regional
**Week 5**
Bayou Regional
Boston Regional Greg Marra (The Blue Alliance)
Colorado Regional
Great Lakes Regional
Greater Toronto Regional
Hawaii Regional
Las Vegas Regional
Minnesota Regional
Palmetto Regional
Philadelphia Regional
SBPLI Long Island Regional
Championship SOAP (team 108)
Week 1 Regionals are quickly approaching we have three of the regionals covered, but still need someone to step up for the Midwest Regional and St. Louis Regional. For week 2 regionals the only one we are missing is Kansas City, so if anyone that is going to these regionals we are looking for someone to record the footage from the regional.
This is an update to a previous post:
This one has the 2008 regionals.
For consistency and predictability sake, we have a preference in naming the movie files.
General Naming Rules
Two or three character event abbreviation in lowercase, e.g. “fl”
Underscore, “_”
XOR:
Qualification: Use THREE digits, “001”, “047”, “108”.
Elimination: Use “qf4m2”, “sf2m1”, “fm3”
Awards: Use “award_” + AwardDescription.
Opening: Use “openingremarks_” + “friday” or “saturday”.
Closing: Use “closingremarks_” + “friday” or “saturday”.
Else: any string that does not begin with “qf”, “sf”, “fm”, or a digit.
“.wmv” (or whatever format extention you encoded, hopefully windows media)
Notes:
Abbreviations are as follows:
BAE SYSTEMS Granite State Regional NH
Midwest Regional IL
New Jersey Regional NJ
Pacific Northwest Regional OR
St. Louis Regional MO
Arizona Regional AZ
Finger Lakes Regional ROC
Greater Kansas City Regional KC
NASA / VCU Regional VA
San Diego Regional SDC
Boilermaker Regional IN
Chesapeake Regional MD
UTC Connecticut Regional CT
Detroit Regional DT
Florida Regional FL
Peachtree Regional GA
Pittsburgh Regional PIT
Silicon Valley Regional SJ
Wisconsin Regional WI
Brazilian Regional BR
Buckeye Regional OH
Lone Star Regional TX
Los Angeles Regional CA
Microsoft Seattle Regional WA
Oklahoma City Regional OK
Sacramento Regional SAC
Waterloo Regional WAT
West Michigan Regional MI
Israel Regional IS
Bayou Regional LA
Boston Regional MA
Colorado Regional CO
Great Lakes Regional GL
Greater Toronto Regional ON
Hawaii Regional HI
Las Vegas Regional NV
Minnesota Regional MN
Palmetto Regional SC
Philadelphia Regional PA
SBPLI Long Island Regional LI
New York City Regional NY
Many thanks,
KA-108 
I still really feel we should move to a modern video format. The videos Wildstang has posted are in xVid and are wonderfully easier to work with than Windows Media Video files.
I’m pretty sure 2175 will be recording MN.
I think we definitely should try and pick one video format for all the videos.
Has anyone tried SnapStream yet? (I’m downloading it right now)? Any opinions?
I have and my honest opinion is that it is far easier to just record directly with windows movie maker. SnapStream is a good program, but for this application its just too much effort to set up, firing up windows movie maker is just alot easier.
As I stated above outputting to .mp4, or .mov (h.264) is really easy with all these free ipod video converters. This is what I recommended above:
Format: .mov or .mp4 (.h264 or MPG4)
Resoultion: 640X480 VGA
Video Bit Rate: 1024kbps
Audio Bit Rate: 128kbps Stereo
But doesn’t Windows Movie Maker only output to .wmv?
And my experience is batch converting out of WMV is very slow.