cmuTV streaming video epic fail

[Elmo Zoneball]

Use this thread to vent and/or make constructive suggestions so we never have to experience another Race Day with an utterly useless video stream.

There are two areas of concern I can think of:

1. technical -- why can't the nerds at one of America's premier computer science schools manage to feed their video onto the 'net without it dropping out in the middle of a race, or dying altogether for the final 3-4 heats of the day?

2. procedural -- camera (Scaife Hall?) in the corner consistently stayed on to catch the final buggy in a heat instead of switching to the lead buggy as it approached Hill #3, often making it impossible to record FR times for lead buggies. For goodness sake, use a split screen for that situation, so viewers can see BOTH things in real time.

[Elmo Zoneball]

At least they apologized profusely:

Apologies

All - We would like to issue our sincerest apologies for the several live stream issues today. The computer we were using could not handle all of the intake, which resulted in the delay and constant glitches in the stream. We want to ensure you that the stream tomorrow will be clean and consistent as we will be using a different system. The heats from today will be posted on our YouTube Channel ( https://www.youtube.com/user/cmutv ) by tonight. We would also like to thank you all for your patience and support. Again, we sincerely apologize and we hope to see you all online tomorrow. cmuTV Staff

http://livestream.com/cmuTVlive

[TommyK]

The cocktease was in full effect.

Fringe B was gaining on SigEp, trying to pick a side .... left, no! right, left again maybe? here comes the chute, better go inside and tight, hits the flag, moment of truth ... snip.

ARRRRRRRRRGH (sorry neighbors trying to sleep at 4 am)

[Jmohin]

I basically had a hernia at that moment

[aepibuggy]

Were you ever able to see it? If not, here is a video from the chute of most of the race (it starts with the hill 2 shove): https://goo.gl/photos/4EqDxkJnmGuv6UsR6

Also, for those who weren't online for women's heats, here is a periscope from the chute with the last 4 (or so) heats, since the cmuTV live stream was not yet functional: https://t.co/46HdPELxYo

~Barsham

[TommyK]

Were you ever able to see it? If not, here is a video from the chute of most of the race (it starts with the hill 2 shove): https://goo.gl/photos/4EqDxkJnmGuv6UsR6

Also, for those who weren't online for women's heats, here is a periscope from the chute with the last 4 (or so) heats, since the cmuTV live stream was not yet functional: https://t.co/46HdPELxYo

~Barsham

where's the give internet points button on this boat?

[Elmo Zoneball]

So, cmuTV promised to have the videos up on their YouTube page by "tonight."

Anybody seen them? I can't find them.....

[hauser]

Watching the jumbotrons on the course, the broadcast seemed to be higher quality on Saturday than Friday. I don't know if the stream was any better, but they did a better job of getting timing landmarks (stop sign and line at the bottom of hill 3) for the lead buggy, and there was a clock and, more importantly, a race onscreen for all of the heats, though I didn't catch the broadcast of the exhibitions because I was pushing in one of them. I think they could still improve some things, though:

-More precision on the onscreen clock - maybe it's just because SDC was so close to the records and fractions of seconds mattered a lot, but it would be great to know the pace a little better. I don't think you'd actually be able to read hundredths meaningfully, but tenths would be good.

-Better camera placement to see the transitions - again, I like to know the pace at various timing landmarks. On the uphill sections, the transitions are the most obvious landmarks to use, in addition to the desirability of determining whether a transition was legal by watching the video. In particular, the 1-2 transition camera couldn't see over the crowd into lane 1, and the 3-4 transition camera couldn't really pick out the lines on the course. The 4-5 transition camera was usually fine to see the first buggy but followed that buggy instead of sticking with the trailing buggy for its transition.

-Better tracking of the trailing buggies - I'd rather see more picture-in-picture than less of it, especially if it lets me see the chute turn, transitions, and timing landmarks for more buggies.

Do we have any reason to believe that somebody from cmuTV is actually going to read suggestions we propose, or are we just complaining to nobody in particular?

[Pope on a Rope]

i believe they read the comments.
I mostly agree with you.

The hill 1 camera did seem a bit out of place this year.

Every added camera adds complexity. Moving them for the sake of getting transition times might actually make it harder to track the action elsewhere. Getting those might be better accomplished with improvements to the speed traps ( more of them and linked together to provide all the splits). This year, the trap times were updated within moments on the leader board. Imagine knowing all the splits without having to use the camera feed. That would be cool.

Tracking the 2nd and 3rd buggies would require more cameras and more complexity. To me, if the 2nd buggy is not in the shot with the leader, I really could not care less about them.

[shafeeq]

I'm not sure if it was the Hill 1 camera that moved, or if the crowd barriers around the Hill 1 timers were in a different place this year?
There were a few heats where they missed landmarks for even the lead buggy because they were waiting a _long_ time for the following one.
The paint lines at the transition seemed unusually hard to see this year.

We do need to remind the Alumni office that the live stream is critical for keeping non-local people interested in Carnival, so it's in their interest to make sure it works too.

The on-screen clock is a picture-in-picture of the finish line clock, which can only show whole seconds, but is official.
In past years, CMUtv has used their own clock, which did hundredths, but wasn't started in sync with the official one.
The speed traps can do freeroll splits, but will never be able to do transition ones - they can't distinguish the buggy from the next hill pusher.

The Jumbotron in the chute seemed rotated even further towards the gazebo on Saturday, but it did cause a bunch of people walking past Phipps to stop and watch a heat. Except if they happened to walk by between heats and it was showing dogs or the crowd or the announcers. If they don't have anything to show, why not just replay the last heat?

The new commentator (Darcy?) seemed a decent addition. Having more than one knowledgeable person on-air at a time really helped when one would question a BS statement made by the other. There's obvious limitations on how many to have on air at once, but it would be neat to have pre-recorded filler segments that were the whole Bordick/Estes/Connor/Pacella/etc announcer pool arguing about one subject. Kind of like the football halftime announcers.