1 already looking into it, it's very hard to set up, but theoretically possible given the right resources

2 we did that at i49 a bit, very much depends on the players location in the halls, we could only do it a bit at i49 because HRG and iM were next to each other and the VTV booth.

3 done this before, hard to set up and harder on lan with multiple different mumbles to swap between

4 not much we can do other than run the game on max

5 we always do use it

6 not technically possible (to the best of my knowledge) and we don't have the manpower

hey d4m0

Replays is something myself and dashner are working hard to make a reality. We have a basic method already in place which will allow the director to bookmark the last minute of play and transfer that to the production machine as a video file to be shown during a pause or as a series of highlights that the commentators can talk about at the end of the game.

Footage of the players is also something we are trying to improve on. We are working on a live wireless video transfer so a "roaming" cameraman can walk around the hall getting shots which will be relayed live to our production team.

Team comms, this is something we toyed with having at i49. But unfortunately like you said its too risky. You never know when someone might blurt out a casual racist slur or raped this and that. So it was decided against having that option. We will reevaluate if its something we may do this year.

There is a bunch of far more intelligent people than I working on the graphics and overlay for this event, so hopefully you will have more eye candy.

We will be using the caster cheat script, and because we are dividing the job between 2 people this time, the director will have more time to think and react to events in the script.

I dont see a way of making the STV thing possible while the game is being played because the file is still being generated. Anyone else's input welcome though.

A few of these features do depend on whether multiplay allow us to have a secure wifi connection and allow us to transfer files over their network. fingers crossed, and dont worry we will find work around even if it means running 50m cables around the gaming hall.

Just trust us when we say that the coverage for this event will be good alright :P

fuck you dave, beaten like the ginger step child i am

Sorry if it came off like I was saying that the i49 stream was not done well, its the best TF2 streaming I've seen to date.

I'm talking about the limitations of the stream, the fact that anything a few feet away from the casting table won't be seen by the stream viewers. People don't know that Shade and Ramown played in an Epigenesis tournament against 12 year olds and won Logitech gear. Very few people know that b4nny tried out the Oculus Rift, they don't know what the players were like during a match, or even what the entire venue looked like.

I had to search for hours after I got back to find pictures of the event. Everything was scattered around, so many important moments were missing and were forgotten in the moment of things. To this day I have only seen one picture of the entire HRG team at i49, and that was the picture of us getting our 3rd place winnings. We raised $10k, sent 6 Americans to Europe to play in the biggest TF2 event in the world and we have such little to show from it.

I've had some talks with people and I'm scrapping the idea of a donation as of now. There are alternatives that are being worked on.

i would donate...

edit: still would be worth it to put something up imho.

the idea of a documentary that eXtv did was fantastic -- the problem was that it took entirely too long to get it finished...

I don't think there is a need to anymore
Things are being worked on

c u @ lan

http://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/jtv_user_pictures/chansub-global-emoticon-3a624954918104fe-19x27.png

Just send tagg to Europe no matter how. We need this. I need this.

You did a great job taking pictures and videos on ESEA LAN, but could you maybe use something other than twitter? It's all there but it still looks pretty disorganized.

All the pictures I took will be viewable on the site at a later date. Things are still being set up to make it easy to host pictures on the site. Twitter was the easiest and fastest way to get the pictures out at the time which is why I used it.

Twitter will continue to be what I use initially since it is still the fastest and most effective way to get the pictures out using a wifi dongle between my camera and phone. Photos will be uploaded to the site when I have 10 or so minutes to sit down at my laptop and work from there.

I don't know if this would actually work, but someone suggested on another thread running ShadowPlay in the background and then after a highlight or big play or something that the stream missed, stop it, get the video file and quickly set up a replay. You could maybe couple that with the Epic Pen thing that slin found if you did a replay of a mid fight (using the freecam) during halftime or something.

plz send me to lan. I promize to take pics and vids and cover the evant via twitter xD

Agreed with Cinza. Twitter will not accomplish the goals you set out. You need a better way of putting out content. Just because twitter is easy and convenient it doesn't mean it is good. The main weak point is I have to actually go an search for whatever you made. I'm not going to do that... If you really want people to take you seriously you bring your content to them so it's easy and convenient.

It really is counter-productive with your idea that tf2 isn't getting the coverage it deserves and what not. When I first read your post and what you claimed to have done at the lan, the first thing that came to my head was "what coverage?" I didn't even know you did anything at all... And to be honest I'm really not interested in finding your twitter account and searching through it for something that I think might be interesting. If there's even one video I think is crap I'm definitely not going to watch another video on your personal twitter account.

That would just be a replay: you can't get anything the streamer 'missed' unless you have multiple cameramen doing this and can replay something from one of their POVs. With 3 cameramen and the cheat sheet I could see it being possible to not miss anything and do this, but that's a TON of resources. What BoneS was saying was that as of now you can't rewind an STV while it is live.

Also, an idea for the VTV/i52 production guys: (I'm sure you've already thought of it) If you guys have access to multiple cameramen and are separating the production and camera-manning then one other potential solution to missing big plays would be implementing a delay between the 'live' STV/ the casters and the visuals. As in, the production guy, the cameramen, and the casters are seeing the STV with the normal 90 second delay or whatever but the actual twitch stream is 10 seconds further behind so the production guy can seamlessly switch to the cameraman that actually gets the important action. No idea how it would be implemented or how difficult it would be, but it would satisfy my nerd fantasies.

Appreciate the responses guys. I'm glad pretty much everything I didn't like about the i49 stream is being considered/worked on :)

You could run multiple tf2 instances per computer, ideally one per player pov, and record each of them separately.... perhaps those could be run without the streaming mods etc to save on processing power+make for a different sort of look for those replays. Again, it would be a technical juggle.

Reeeeally excited for the event now guys, thanks everyone!
(Sorry for hijacking your thread Tagg -- I'm also looking forward to what you're cooking up!)

That's too much processing for one computer to do, streaming a single TF2 instance is hard enough, and that entire set up would be way to much to deal with just for replays, we could spend the time elsewhere and gain a better increase in production values.

I agree, and a way to do that has been in development for some time now. As I said before, there is an update to the in the works that that will improve the way media is handled on tftv. Everything will be easily accessible soon, but coding is hard so it will take some more time.

Twitter is a very valuable tool in getting media out to the public and I will continue to use it to offer up to date glimpses to what is happening at events. It is not something that should be used to archive media which is why work is being put into the tftv site.

Let's take the current WC as an example. Here's what we have access to as viewers:
1: Cast of the match with commentary
2: Cast of the match with no commentary (tactical cam)
3: Live highlights
4: Post-game, half-time, pre-game review and talk shows
5: Blogs
6: Live twitter updates during the match (player scored, player got a card, etc.)
7: Facebook updates similar to the twitter updates
8: A live updated app
9: Google live update of scores and stats
10: Live update discussion boards like reddit
11: Post-game interviews
12: When there aren't games going on, they'll have a review show with highlights every once in a while, interspersed with scenes from Brazil and other content to show what it's like to actually be at the WC.

Here's what we have on most casts:
1, 2 (STV), sort of 4, 5 occasionally (write-ups), 10 sort of (discussion in twitch chat if you want to call it that), 11

Here's what we can have:
1: Duh
2: Duh
3: Not feasible
4: There was a previous ESEA Lan where Blank would come in at half-time and do some analysis. This could easily be done fully!
5: Not really a point, it's a 2-3 day event.
6: Seems pretty easy. Some players already do it sometimes.. but not fully and not with a standard format.
7,8,9: Probably no point
10: Open a thread for each match on tf.tv and/or reddit (good way to get new people involved) and encourage discussion during the game. Great way to pass boring stalemates!
11: It's been done at i49, keep it up, if you have more staff it's easier to do one for each match.
12: This is what we're really missing, as Tagg's said. During downtime have him walk around and talk to players, have pre-scheduled 1-on-1 interviews with star players, or just follow around a group of players as they have fun at LAN. Twitter is a good way to get pictures out during matches... but during downtime we can have live footage on stream, which is so much better.

3 isn't infeasible, we have some options. Half time analysis doesn't work in Europe since we don't do half time, but we do have analysis between maps. We did have some twitter stuff at i49, skully had tweet deck open the entire time he wasn't casting but we can work on that.

I don't know how feasible this is, or how much editing time you'll have, but it would be really cool if you could make really short videos to use as bumpers to actual commentary/action. Just big plays from matches being played all over i52, not necessarily the matches being casted. Throw some clips over some music and you've got a great way to fill some time and keep people engaged in between live action. Hell, have people bring you their pov demos after their match with a short description.

Live sports broadcasts do this as commercial bumpewrs

iirc justin did this for the quakecon stream a couple years back

All you'd really need is someone with some basic video editing experience and a computer dedicated to rendering them. The editing can be super minimal.

Get Beater on it. He cranked out those legacy videos like it was nothing.

I've thought about that too, it's definitely possible, but I don't think you have the ressources.
Even if the cameraman/director decides when to play a replay you still need at least one or two additional "cameramen" who capture the replays beforehand, unless you capture all 12 POVs.
Recording 12 POVs would probably be possible, even with only one PC (mine could do it with tf2 capped at 60 fps), but there would be a ton of programming required to make it work* and I doubt it's possible within one month.

*12 instances of tf2 -> hardware encoding (2*NVENC=2*8K) -> LAN -> streaming PC
Getting OBS to put overlay + whatever onto the video would be complicated so the easiest way for the replay would be
file -> decoder (possibly just a player + scripts for quick file/time selection) -> OBS

Use something like sandboxie to run 12 instances of steam+tf2.
Now you "just" need to figure out how to have 12 instances of tf2 run properly (60fps) at the same and get their output into a hardware encoder. Stream the output files to the streaming PC (the files will be huge so don't bother trying if they aren't connected via fiber or LAN). Getting a decoder/player set up with hotkeys/whatever to have quick access to the replays and adding the scene to OBS should be fairly easy compared to that.

I've already contacted Arie about doing image editing for the stream at i52, if it's just "basic photoshopping" as he described it, I'd have enough free time to do that. Don't know how fast you can get STVs from the Multiplay servers, but if players bring POV demos that shouldn't be a problem.

From experience it is best to keep things as simple as possible when putting on a live event being viewed by thousands of people.

We are however looking into Shadowplay as our method to run replays. This would mean we can only replay what the Director captures live ingame. Director will press a button when something good happens and a 1min video file will be generated in a shared location on his machine. Then the producer grabs that file and throws it on the stream. This also leaves us with a folder with all the highlights from a game ready to be quickly edited together into a post match frag highlight reel.

This all hinges on Multiplay allowing us to file share on their network, as I think they have a protocol in place which blackholes anyone caught file sharing. Its on our list to ask them in our next meeting. In the rare case they dont allow it, we can simply use a usb hard drive and foot power to move the clips over.

cya@