Full Field View Only PLEASE

FIRST General Forum
#1

The most frustrating thing in FRC is any camera angle that isn’t a full field view. When you’re zooming in on robot XXXX while they’re spinning in circles, robot XXXX just did a 2 Scale autonomous.

I don’t care how cool you think closeup views of robots are. They suck for 5 other teams on the field that are trying to see what their robots are doing. They suck even more for the members of those teams that are in the pit area during their matches and have no choice but to watch the match from the live stream. Closeup views also suck for scouts that are reviewing match footage for teams that they compete with in future events.

STOP ZOOMING IN ON ROBOTS! NOBODY CARES! WE ALL HATE IT! STOP!

Most regions have it figured out. It is also my understanding that FIRST has provided some events with the tools to quickly upload videos to YouTube in addition to partnering with Twitch to stream the events. PLEASE STANDARDIZE THIS!

The Northern Lights Regional is a perfect example of the benefits of these new additions. The videos are all full field views and they were on TBA the same day.

Just 30 feet away is a perfect example for why standardization is necessary. The Lake Superior Regional features exactly 0 matches with a steady full field views and lots of closeup views of robots. I’d tell you to check it out for yourself, but the videos still aren’t on TBA…

I would love to see the full field static view be the go-to standard for FRC (as the minimum… obviously having multiple cameras with 1 of them being a static full field views would be better). I understand that this conversation has been had before, but it clearly didn’t reach every corner of the FRC world. I appreciate the hard work done by teams that stream their local events, but I would love for all of those teams to understand what the FRC community wants to see.

#2

^ This. This happens all the time at CHS events, and it’s incredibly annoying. It makes post-match analysis difficult to impossible, because the cameraman will decide hold on a single robot for large periods of time, regardless of what it’s doing. I don’t want to see a robot struggle to put a cube into the exchange for 15 seconds, I’d rather be able to see the entire flow of the match to understand what actually happened.

#3

Seconded. The PNW streams always have this problem. Just before match start it will be full field then 2 seconds into auto it will switch to being zoomed in on one robot, invariably the robot that does the least impactful actions.

#4

Full field is great for scouts or FIRST-enthusiasts who want to get a read on every single robot at all times. The unique nature of FRC/FTC/VRC creates simultaneous action in multiple sections of the field that often cannot be captured in a single camera frame unless panned out.

Full field kinda sucks for casual observers who want to actually see what the robots look like and how their mechanisms work. No professional sports broadcast (save perhaps Tennis) would ever go with a locked full field view. The cameras follow the play so the spectators can get a detailed view of what happens. The broadcast operators will switch between multiple cameras both during and after plays to try and get the best views. While most team sports have it easier due to the fact there’s only one game piece in play, even sports like racing don’t maintain a single shot of the entire track and will pan around to specific hotspots of action.

Full field also isn’t particularly useful for broadcasting to the in-arena crowd. For the most part, they can already see the full field. For many of these web streams that feature changing camera angles, it’s a byproduct of the fact that they’re simply re-broadcasting what is being displayed by the projectors in the arena.

#5

I kinda wish anouncers anounced based off of what the screen was showing for webcasts sake. Nothing worse than an anouncer talking about all the awesomeness happening off-screen while you are watching Dirpsy McSpinsalot drop another game piece.

#6

I agree with all of that.

Some week 1 webcasts on TBA gameday had the option of stream 1 or 2, one with full field and one with a bunch of cameras. I applaud that. I can send the multicamera one to my non FRC friends to make it look hype, and I can watch the full field view.

Now I only wish we had the music back as well, because watching with dead silence is b o r i n g

#7

FIRST has made great strides to standardize the webcast and uploading process, but they still are guilty of not providing the full field. Their streams have one stream that switches camera angles (which usually becomes the one that gets uploaded to youTube) and then quad view. Especially when watching multiple events at once, the quad view is unwatchable. I really wish FIRST would replace the quad view with the stationary full field view instead and upload that to YouTube. I suspect this should be a pretty easy switch for FIRST.

#8

I agree that it is frustrating. I believe FIRST has specifically instructed livestream hosts to do this for consistency among all events. 2 of my team members are hosting SBPLI #1, and in their training they were told something along the lines of this. Not sure exactly what, but I’m not certain it’s a choice per regional/district planning. I’m not running the livestream but I’ll ask my teammates who went through the training.

Sniped by XaulZan11

#9

How did you know what we were going to name our 2019 robot?

#10

Bonus points if you can name the robot and year for Tippy McFlipsalot… Not to be confused with Tippy McFallsalot. The McFallsalot clan used to be really big through the late 90s and early 2000s, but then stayed relatively small in numbers for many years only to have a large crop of newbies this year. Must have been something in the robot water in early January 2018…

#11

TIL I dont care about this…

Could the transitions to bots doing things be better? Yes. Should this be removed alltogether? No, and its downright stupid if you think it should and expect it to be watched by a casual audience in this format. More casual viewers are going to perfer the “action shots” as it will (in theory) show whats going on that the audience should see. Sure, the full field is great for scouting, but it becomes harder to see who’s who if the camera isint at a good angle (which ruins that too) or with some whack fish-eye lens. Id rather have what PNW does now over those.

PNW Does this when they combine both of their webcast units at DCMP.

#12

Solution: Record your own full-field footage!

#13

I enjoy action shots. Watching a zoomed out field is extremely boring, nothing is in high detail. Action shots are a nice way to see up close all the robots.

Though maybe we could lessen the action shots of dead robots or spinning robots during auto.

#14

+1 to the OP. The only time I’ve ever in my life seen zoomed-in shots be better than a full field view is IRI 2014, where they could focus in on one of the two game pieces that would ever be on the field at once, and the camera operators were all experienced FRC people.

#15

If I had to pick one, it’d be full field. But both are useful. An “action shot” of 254’s robot is probably the closest I’ll get to actually seeing it this year.

#16

I would bet nearly every casual observer watching the webcast is affiliated with some team competing in one way or another. Most complaints I hear are from casual observers who just want to see the team they are affiliated with play and they sometimes can’t because the camera person decided to zoom in on another robot. I’m pretty sure FRC is nowhere close to where random unaffiliated people online want to tune in and we shouldn’t pretend like it is with these “action shots”.

#17

https://goo.gl/images/2Qn85i

#18

I’m going to take a guess that most “casual observers” have some sort of relation to a specific team. Maybe they’re a grandparent of one of the students on the team.

I’m going to guess that Billy’s grandma probably doesn’t care to see action shots of Dirpsy McSpinsalot dropping cubes. Billy’s Grandma wants to watch Billy’s robot so she can congratulate him and tell him that she saw his robot do a thing.

If the live stream is zoomed in on Dirpsy McSpinsalot for 20% of the match and Dirpsy splits camera time evenly with all of its cousins, I’m going to guess the Billy’s grandma is going to miss a lot of action from Billy’s robot. When Billy asks his grandma if she saw his robot place cubes on the Scale, Billy’s grandma will probably irritably say that the camera spent the whole time focusing on the Dirpsy family.

In my opinion the best way to serve Billy’s grandma is with multiple camera angles including a static full field view, as well as another angle for action shots. If you only have the ability to stream a single video feed then I believe the best option is a full field static view. At least with a full field views Billy’s Grandma can watch Billy’s robot the whole match.

Let’s be honest… who does the live stream of an event primarily serve? By the time FIRST grows to the point where it’s generating a large viewing interest from people that aren’t related to teams, I have a feeling this won’t be an issue. Right now, people want to see either specific robots or they want to see the entire flow of the match for strategy/scouting purposes. A full field static view is the best solution in both of those cases imo.

#19

I’d have to agree with this post because post-match analysis is somewhat difficult when the camera is only showing a single side of the field.

#20

PCH District posts both live feeds - Full Field and close up. You pick the one you want to watch.

Problem solved …