I’m starting to prepare for our off-season event in June and I’m putting together a list of things I would like to be able to do with the A/V setup.
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Requirements**
FMS overlay
Full field video
MC/GA audio
Field sound
High quality HD stream minimum 720p, but 1080p preferred
Easy to learn and setup
Minimal delay to projector
Easy sponsor pages (display a powerpoint, images, pdf, etc)
Only one operator required needed to run AV (others can be useful, but only 1 needed)
Recordings of every camera angle to allow for instant replay by referees
Preferable separate instant replay computer available for refree
Easy cable runs over long distances (Ethernet is the cheapest for this)
Stay out of the way of the live audience (Some camera poles are okay but preferably, not having people or large cameras on the audience side of the field)
Additional camera angles/feeds (Inside the driver station, pit, etc.)
Inexpensive
Stretch Goals
Display robot photos before a match
Display advanced stats after match (made goals, OPR, ranks, etc)
Audience interaction (High Five Cam, Dance Cam, Mascot Cam, etc.)
Separate Stream and in arena video (Stream gets all 4 camera views, In arena gets switching views from video sources)
Instant replays between matches
What else could be interesting in a FIRST A/V and production setup? What old traditions can be updated or reinvented? For example, do we need to do team intros every match or can we replace those with something more entertaining?
PLEASE use Twitch or YouTube for your livestream. Everything about FIRSTWA’s streams are great except for the fact that they use Ustream, which has almost no customization in quality for the user, something that is a pain for people with limited data plans like me. They also have a lackluster chat and almost no way of watching past streams.
While im on the subject, find someone that did A/V for FIRSTWA. They are a great place to start. The DCMP last weekend shows how well they do, with two feeds for Full Field only and a Main stream that had the cool camera angles and such. They can also give you a rundown of what exactly they used (they also did a webinar on it, and its somewhere on their youtube.[Strike]Ill try and link it here[/Strike] found a whole page on it here)
That’s a pretty good initial list, I think we have almost everything covered on your list expect for the interviews. I’ve seen that done I’m just not sure that is the most entertaining thing for the whole crowd.
I would highly suggest getting a mic just for ambient crowd audio. It makes the stream feel more alive when the GA or MC isn’t talking.
There is analogy that explains that you can’t do this inexpensively and at a high quality, but I can’t remember it for the life of me.
While I’m not one of the core members of PNW A/V anymore, I still know everything about their setup at DCMP.
Their setup for the two stream setup started out jank and then just got jankier later into the event. First, they used two cameras, which is just a bad idea because one is going to be off center. Afterwards, when one of the cameras died they switched to using just one camera into an SDI up down cross and then into their switchers.
The easiest way to do a dual stream, assuming you are using an HD-SDI camera, is to run your cable from the camera to the destinations and then use a T barrel to split the signal between the two destinations. This also assumes that your cable run isn’t going to be greater than 100 meters, which is the maximum length HD-SDI signal can run before degradation.
If you wanted to do two streams with an HDMI camera you would just have to stay under the maximum length and use an active HDMI splitter to send it to two destinations. The downfall of HDMI is the length of the cables. An active extender can help, but just makes for a bulky mess.
The problem with this is copyright. A mic that pics up the crowd will inevitably pick up the music, which will result in streams or archives getting muted or taken down. In my experience streaming services like YouTube are HIGHLY sensitive to even the slightest bit of background music.
In fact the thing I was going to suggest adding to the list was “A way to separate audio from game announcers and field sounds from music”, as this has been one of the biggest issues when running our event streams. Thankfully, basically any sound board with an auxiliary output (that can be individually adjusted on each channel) will have this capability, but it’s something you have to be aware of when you’re planning.
Streaming on Youtube is obviously economical, but I think it should be avoided by any FRC stream because there is a chance of the audio getting shut down. Livestream.com and Twitch are better alternatives, however the former does cost money. The music is usually an important part of the production, taking it away from the stream just hurts the end quality of the production.
In terms of archives, if you could record a version without the music that would be ideal, but that isn’t always possible, so if the audio has to be taken out of the video you can do so quite easily with FFMPEG. The video itself is more important than what the GA/MC are saying.
I have a minor correction to this statement. THE streaming service YouTube is sensitive to background music. In my experience, none of the others are. From my observations recently, here is my ranking of streaming providers (with notable caveats):
LiveStream - $200/month cost for embedding, unlimited archival, viewer-hours, no ads, etc (Only $42/month if embedding and analytics are not concerns); No automatic content filtering; User-selectable quality; Single stream at a time
YouTube - Free, unlimited archival, no ads, multiple angles; content id for audio; must create new event every time the stream is restarted
Twitch - Free, no ads; no archival; very cluttered interface
DaCast - Embeddable only; price probably comparable to LiveStream, but depends on viewership; no filtering; archival separate cost
Ustream - Ad-free paid by viewer-hours; limited archival; not very good player; ads are intrusive
Please comment on these evaluations. I only have hands-on experience from the backend with YouTube and Ustream; my other comments come from reading about the services, along with the viewer experience.
We use a mixer to pull the GA/MC and game sounds and send that to the stream.
This post isn’t just for making the stream better this is also for making the whole event better.
Honestly most people don’t watch off-season streams. (Our stream last year had max 65 concurrent views). I want to make the stream as well done as possible but not at the expense of the archive footage or being able to DVR the live stream. Youtube’s big benefits in my opinion are the ability to DVR and change quality easily and also being able to have a full archive of the event forever. Plus we live split matches and upload to YouTube during the event as well.
Learn to use compression on the mixer board for the GA/MC. It prevents them from clipping (kinda, that has more to do with gain) and getting too loud too quickly.
Could you offer a general ballpark of what you are thinking inexpensive means to you? I’ve heard people use it to mean a bunch of different things, so a general notion will help me make better suggestions.
I’m not looking for ideas of how to implement features (like not specific products, etc). I’m looking for features to implement. I am looking for a much more theoretical look at how events are run and how they can be improved in the future. Things like instant match uploads, that are properly tagged and linked to The Blue Alliance. Ways to improve audience engagement both at the venue and watching on the live stream. For this discussion cost shouldn’t be an issue but the answer shouldn’t be hire a bunch of people to it either.
Now that we know exactly what we are talking about, what exactly does this mean?
Cable runs can be for all sorts of things, but Ethernet does not cover every single data input and output. You will end up dealing with XLR, SDI, Ethernet, EIC Power, and probably a bunch of other ones that I can’t think of right now.
Are you aiming to deal with switching between sources or do you aim to do what California did at Silicon Valley and just put all the sources on one stream separate from the full field view? If the latter it is possible to do your goal, but otherwise it would be really hard to pull this off. One person just can’t manage everything in an AV setup easily.
If the first thing is already true, we at TBA can work with you to make the second one happen - TBA already has the infrastructure in place for authorized users to write YouTube video links.
When you get closer to your event, send contact@tba an email and ask for write keys, and in the meantime, I’d be happy to help you update however you auto-upload matches to add them to TBA on success. All you need is the YouTube ID and the TBA match ID, along the with access keys for your event.
Again, I’m not saying my goals are reasonable or should be the same for everyone. I’m more interested in the features of the broadcast, the technical part of getting a stream done (cameras, encoders, streaming service, etc) have been argued to death there are a lot of ways to skin this particular cat. I’m more interested in how we make our events more enjoyable for everyone involved.
To explain what those two points mean for me. HDMI cable length is always an issue so getting the longer ones away from HDMI is a good idea. The ability for a single person to run the event when they are short staffed, clearly some of the features will need to go in those cases. It might end up just being the full field view and the single person clipping matches and getting them uploaded or something like that.
That’s cool, we should probably get this setup with Ty’s video splitter, he is getting it setup to be able to take in live clipped matches and live upload them, tag them, and add them to a playlist. We’d only need to add in a place for entering an authorization ID into Video Splitter to have them auto link the videos on TBA.
One thing I’d love to figure out how to do is an easy way to do post-match replays & commentary. Think John Madden with the digital write board, being able to mark up the live video but also control stopping & starting a clip from the same interface. I was looking at XSplit’s Gamecaster and haven’t downloaded it yet, but it looks like their feature is mainly for writing on top of your live video stream.
Probably the most realistic way is having someone at the webcast PC stopping & starting match recordings, and then have those files immediately accessible by another PC that can load them into another application designed for replay & telestration. Anyone have suggestions on applications that do this?
Prefix: I was video lead for 3 PNW (FirstWA) events
Your requirements and goals seem achievable. Some things to note that we use/do:
We use the BlackMagic switcher with a laptop. Because of this, ALL of the inputs MUST be the same resolution. So, make sure your cameras can do 1080p (the FMS, I’m pretty sure, now has the ability to output 1080p). One difference for us is we actually run at 720p because our cameras can only do 1080i60 and 720p30. We go with the 1080i60 because we like the smoothness for this type of game. Also, the delay to the projector is almost zero since we go straight from the switcher to the projectors.
With 3 cameras, a Technical Director (TD), DJ, Switcher person, and media person, that’s a minimum of 7 people for us (with no breaks). Keep in mind breaks for people if you’re thinking about using volunteers.
We do use Ustream, but I’m not very sure why. I know Youtube is notorious for blocking out music from our uploaded match videos and I think we do stream to Twitch. We just don’t publicise it as much (for some reason)
Make sure volume TO the stream is sufficient. One of the worst things I’ve found (even with some of PNW’s streams), is the sent volume is too low, so I end up cranking up my computer volume…then an ad comes up blowing up my ears. Monitor stream audio
I would be careful about “field sound”. We thought about doing that (where we would include the field cameras’ audio stream). You might pick up some background discussion from the audience or the refs. Just a precaution
We also use a stream recording software (BlackMagic Media Express) that is run by a separate laptop that’s connected to the same network as the switcher. That’s how we record all of the matches (with the switching of cameras and all)
As for the cable runs, like Metonym said, you’re going to most likely have SDI (Video), XLR (Audio), EIC (Computer/Speaker power), and LOTS of extensions of those three types
Finally, “Inexpensive”. Normally I would say “Good Luck”, but I guess “Inexpensive” is subjective
I’m definitely not the expert on the FirstWA video setup, but I have been helping with it for 3 years now and my dad, Steve Kelly, has been the TD at 4 events this year, and I’ve been under him for those 3 years as well.
I know for a fact that it is possible to do this with some football coaching software and preferably a wacom tablet or something similar. I remember gamesense did something similar at Chezy Champs.
My one concern is whether or not you would use the stream video. I wouldn’t want to because it wouldn’t give you the best view. Ideally you could string up a camera directly above the field with a focal length wide enough to capture everything and minimum distortion, aka not a GoPro. The absolute best setup for this would be a Full Frame camera and an 11 - 14mm fixed focal length lens.
