I’ll pop in here with a conversation I had with some AV people who had run both of the two Kansas City events (Heartland, than Greater Kansas City three days later). If you look, all of the Heartland match footage is full-field and was absolutely WONDERFUL to look back at to evaluate our performance from last week. However, the stuff this week isn’t. Supposedly, and these are rumors from volunteers over lunch, is that FIRST wants the “main” stream to be the stream that follows the action and jumps back and forth, like this thread is talking, while the Webcast unit (which we have at these events) also streams the quad view. However, the webcast unit is configured (and cannot be changed) to only archive the main webcast view. The simple solution (which we all agreed to be the better solution) was to simply archive both streams. However, there is a contractual obligation somewhere (again, supposedly) that requires only one stream to be archived. I think just about EVERYONE here could be made happy if FIRST simply archived both streams, and honestly, I don’t know why they don’t. They already have the infrastructure to record and display each, just simply save both to disk rather than just one, it would make everyone happy.
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I agree, and I don’t at the same time. There’s also a lot of points I’d like to cover, and I assume that only OP will really read all of this (lol).
Yes, I like being able to see everything on the field, but at the same time it’s nice to see a close-up view of a bot when they’re doing something useful, resourceful, etc. - Most of the time, though, I’ve noticed that they zoom in on things that are “appealing” but might not be useful to people really watching.
I’ve noticed that some people are saying that the action shots are good for casual viewers, but I’d like to disagree with that as well. My parents, they don’t really understand Power Up very much. They just respect that I really enjoy what I do, so they tuned in to our matches to see how we were doing. They got a better understanding when seeing everything going on, able to find our bot instead of being zoomed in on one bot for 30 seconds and not seeing what we were doing at all.
I’m perfectly fine with the camera zooming in on, let’s say, a team getting a two or three cube scale. My issue comes from the fact that, a lot of times, they zoom in on a bot that does a one cube switch while the other bot is doing a two or three cube scale. You’re left seeing maybe the side of that bot. Even casual viewers would like to see the bot that makes the most impact. Look at American Football, Soccer, Baseball, etc. - They don’t zoom in to the people who aren’t making the biggest impact. In American Football, they’re zoomed in on the ball usually. In Soccer, they’re following the ball as well. In Baseball, they’re following either the person who’s running or the batter. They aren’t zoomed in on someone standing at one of the bases, standing at the outskirts waiting to see if a ball is thrown at them, or waiting for a ball to get kicked toward them. They’re zoomed in on the highest action, and unfortunately it’s there that I feel like webcasts drops the ball (as almost everyone here has said).
I might be doing media production and marketing for our team, but because I’m so close to the field (media pass for LSR) I got a great view of each of our matches and helped out with strategy. That said, stream scouting is terrible and when I was waiting in the pits (watching the matches on the stream or on the TV (depending on what I was doing)) it was really hard or just impossible. When we were back at our hotel talking about strategy, we didn’t even bother viewing matches from the stream. I pulled up the matches on my camera from the SD card and we used that to see how bots were doing. If I didn’t have footage of the match, we’d go off of what we saw if we could.
I completely understand both views and both arguments. Full-view is personally the way I’d like to see it go, but that’s just because if I want to watch one specific bot, I have that choice. If you’re zooming in on something, you’re restricting my eyes. Who cares if I choose I want to watch something boring? I can rewind the stream on Twitch as a VOD after if I need to. I can record the stream on my own end if I’d like as well to re-watch if necessary. Restricting the viewer’s freedom to watch what they’d like is what I feel like drives a lot of casual viewers away.
As I said before, my parents would much rather focus on my bot and our alliance than some bot on the other alliance spinning in circles. They’d rather focus on those on our alliance who’re actually doing “action” than moving to the other side of the field to grab a cube while another bot is battling for scale possession with the other alliance.
tl;dr I feel like having a full-field view would benefit more people than it would hurt. Zooming in over and over is confusing, and allowing viewers to have the freedom to find what they’d like to watch and focus on themselves would be much better than forcing them to see what the directors “feel like” is the biggest point of action.
Twitch deletes their VODs after a few months. Of course, someone from the community could just back up the videos, but an official mirror would be nice.
Agreed. To me, this should be changed/improved. The full field view should be added alongside this, not a replacement to whats currently there.
If theres other Twitch VODs that arent uploaded to YT, DM them to me.
Because of our partnership with Twitch, the VODs will remain on the platform indefinitely (example).
Additionally, we automatically upload the cut up VODs to YouTube the night after the broadcast, and those links are available on our https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=(https://frc-events.firstinspires.org/2018/MOKC2/qualifications/1) , and also tagged on TBA.
There shouldn’t be any need for individuals to rip the content, please support FIRST and use our official uploads :]
I know at least 2 events are now gone from last year that were on Twitch (not explicitly from the FIRSTInspires Twitch channel though) and its a lot harder to bring back videos that were copyright striked if nobody has copies of them. TBA Also doesnt allow for linking Twitch VOD’s afaik which makes it more difficult for others to find it later also. Im all for supporting the official uploads, but if theyre not all being uploaded and maintained, why shouldnt they be uploaded to where others can find it?
The FRC Webcast Unit project expanded from a beta program last year of 2 truck routes to 7 truck routes this year. We hope to continue expansion in the future, to allow all broadcasts to become official broadcasts. As far as official broadcasts go, we retain the original source files, and we use those for our YouTube uploads to prevent muted audio. If you think there are videos missing that were broadcast on “firstinspires” channels, feel free to PM me.
You can find upcoming official broadcasts at our new TV Guide:
http://frc.watch
There are also links on the event pages at http://frc.events to the official broadcasts, or to the archive if they’ve already happened.
They’re archived on the Twitch page:
We don’t currently chop and upload quad view to YouTube, as it seems that the program view is desired by most fans.
Is this saying FIRST is looking to remove the aspect of AV from areas such as PNW, Indiana, and Australia, who already have equipment and volunteers along with their own setups, and assimilate it into their own? Not trying to be accusing or anything, but thats what this sounds like.
Not on the YT Channel though…
If this thread is any indication, I think you guys need to go back and re-evaluate this.
Regardless of opinions about what action should or shouldn’t be shown, I think we can all agree that this view is nothing anyone has ever wanted in the history of video.
The red pixel robot is on the blue side and the blue pixel robot is on the red side. Literally unwatchable
That should be considered a crime against humanity. The perpetrator should be imprisoned and fed nothing but pineapple pizza.
And JVN’s raisin brownies… shudders
Well at least it solves the constant problem of forgetting the name of this game is or what district we are in…
On this note I’d like to take a moment and recognize the awesome work Jacob, Alex, and co. at FIRST have done with the webcast units. The whole deal is fantastic, and they’ve done a fabulous job getting it all together and cohesively functioning.
Seriously— I know there are folks out there that can’t remember when GameDay was just an idea and figuring out if there was a livestream for a given event meant keeping an eye on the CD thread for it, but the FIRST/Twitch partnership, combined with GameDay, have made viewing FRC matches so much more enjoyable. Kudos to everyone involved— sure we’ve got nitpicks, but the community as a whole has benefitted to much and I for one greatly appreciate the work put into it.
Anybody else here remember the original Gameday–the SOAP Gameday? TBA just made it better, and more permanent.
I like the option used out here in SoCal: the A/V group out there does 1 camera, a full-field mannable camera from the top of the stands. (Basically… it’s full-field unmanned unless there’s somebody needing to be followed for ceremonies or something.) The FWU (FIRST Webcast Unit) was set up on the far side of the field from that (scoring table side) with an opposite view plus the switch-cams. Streams as single (production) and quad (FWU+production).
Here in PCH we put a lot of work into creating the best possible experience for not only the spectators in the venue, but the viewers online as well. We try to go above and beyond wherever possible, for example we have fieldside microphones so those watching online can not only see the robots, but hear them as well (example: https://youtu.be/Dz5gU_-7uyU). I’m glad to hear people like our effort.
We always stream and upload both a “production” view and a full-field view. If we have the internet bandwidth at the event, we will upload each match immediately after the match ends.
It’s pretty easy for them to evaluate, simply look at the amount of viewers each broadcast receives. Currently the production view for the San Fransisco regional has 249 viewers while the quad view has only 72 viewers.