Hi there,

I wanted to post some info and a couple of questions and see how people feel about streaming video of races this season.

As some of you may know for quite a few seasons we've attempted to do video streaming of some of the action during the season. We've had good times and bad times but usually it's worked okay.

Now bearing in mind that LFS and the tools used to do the streaming have barely moved in in four years, is it worth setting things up to stream races this season?

Notes:

• Commentary: The way in which the footage is captured and streamed means it's impossible for live spoken commentary unless I (or someone in my house) does it. We always get people asking and offering to do it - this can only be done locally on the PC being used to upload the video/audio. I am not a commentator and as such, can't offer this.
  
• Music: I have always liked playing some great tunes on the stream to make up for commentary but nearly always people don't like it. It appears that most viewers have crap taste in music compared to me. This means that the only thing you'll hear is LFS Sounds.
  
• Camera work: There are currently two options for camera work.
  An automated system that tries to keep up with the action but doesn't always work properly. Also when it's running - you can't see player names. Manual camera controls means I need to sit here for hours and change it all myself, I've done it before but it starts to hurt my butt after a while. Usually I end up doing a mix of both.
  
• Quality: In theory I have enough upload speed (around 10Mb) to do a gorgeous High Def stream - however my PC currently only has 2 Gigs of RAM and Flash Encoding seems to have issues when I stream High Res. Also I'm still not 100% sure if I can do high def on things like UStream or JustinTV. If anyone knows more, please let me know. Also anyone rich who wants to buy me 2 extra gigs of RAM can let me know too! resent:
  

So with all this considered is it worth doing a stream this season?

If I did a stream, would you be watching?

Quote from russraine :

• Commentary: The way in which the footage is captured and streamed means it's impossible for live spoken commentary unless I (or someone in my house) does it. We always get people asking and offering to do it - this can only be done locally on the PC being used to upload the video/audio. I am not a commentator and as such, can't offer this.
  
• Music: I have always liked playing some great tunes on the stream to make up for commentary but nearly always people don't like it. It appears that most viewers have crap taste in music compared to me. This means that the only thing you'll hear is LFS Sounds.
  
• Camera work: There are currently two options for camera work.
  An automated system that tries to keep up with the action but doesn't always work properly. Also when it's running - you can't see player names. Manual camera controls means I need to sit here for hours and change it all myself, I've done it before but it starts to hurt my butt after a while. Usually I end up doing a mix of both.
  
• Quality: In theory I have enough upload speed (around 10Mb) to do a gorgeous High Def stream - however my PC currently only has 2 Gigs of RAM and Flash Encoding seems to have issues when I stream High Res. Also I'm still not 100% sure if I can do high def on things like UStream or JustinTV. If anyone knows more, please let me know. Also anyone rich who wants to buy me 2 extra gigs of RAM can let me know too! resent:
  

So with all this considered is it worth doing a stream this season?

If I did a stream, would you be watching?

Commentary: It's cool with me, I don't really think commentators fit in so well in OLFSL, compared to the big leagues

Music: Don't play music! If people wanna hear music while watching the stream, they will, imo, choose music they like. No matter if you think our music taste is crap, but I'm putting the sound off if it's playing a lot of modern shit music, I wanna hear some rock...

Camera work: I don't really know how it's dealt with in general. But why can't it show names? The overlay with names and distance between the drivers like there is in the big leagues would do it for me, and then we must see how well the automatic camera works. Ofc would be better if a person could change it, but I get your point, and I cba doing camera work for several hours either.

Quality: Nothing to say about this

Quote from jensbrix :

But why can't it show names? The overlay with names and distance between the drivers like there is in the big leagues would do it for me, and then we must see how well the automatic camera works.

The auto camera app takes LFS out of it's normal camera mode and into another one, in this mode you can't see player names above the cars. I've not seen any other LFS streaming lately, if you can point me in the right direction I'll go and see what they're doing.

Have you never seen the MoE, GTAL, IGTC, iTCC streamings?

Quote from jensbrix :

Have you never seen the MoE, GTAL, IGTC, iTCC streamings?

Nope - if you can get me a link to some video that would be cool

Just splashed out and bought myself another 2 gigs - should be ok to do high def streaming now.

I had typed out a reply but then Firefox crashed cos it's a jabba. :rolleyes:

Last time I checked there's no player names in real life.

You should download/stream these broadcasts: GTAL, MoE, Apex Cup, iTCC 2009/10, iTCC 2011 with added replays

Commentary is done by people (usually) on the server via Teamspeak
Music is for when you don't want to listen to people on the stream, pity we couldn't have it for Legard, or when you want people to make a decision the moment they hear the great/shit music on whether they will stay and watch.
Cameras, use TV Director, and someone can control it from the remote GUI (we even use it on a VNC for the long races so that multiple people can control it)
Quality, just get the best quality for the suitable fps

Quote from boothy :

Music is for when you don't want to listen to people on the stream, pity we couldn't have it for Legard

Just been installing the GFX and Sound Packs to make it a bit better for the stream.

Yeah I have previously been using TVDirector since the first version arrived from SS. The latest one does do the player names and times every so often (at the bottom), just in our league we can't recognize everyone just from the car skins alone.
So player names are handy. Not so important if you can do commentary I grant you.

(as for Firefox, I'm finding FF4b12 quite stable)

Quote from russraine :

Just been installing the GFX and Sound Packs to make it a bit better for the stream.

Yeah I have previously been using TVDirector since the first version arrived from SS. The latest one does do the player names and times every so often (at the bottom), just in our league we can't recognize everyone just from the car skins alone.
So player names are handy. Not so important if you can do commentary I grant you.

(as for Firefox, I'm finding FF4b12 quite stable)

EDIT

Just been testing out the streaming at low resolutions to start with, making sure I can get a good picture etc. Might arrange a test stream and ask quite a few people to come and watch see how the quality is for everyone.

Watching: http://91.121.163.6/StreamIII/2011/StreamIII_20110219.wmv

It's brilliant, with two commentators

Sol

Actually a third commentator covering pit stops. Race is still going for 2 1/2 hours. Remarkable.

Sol

Ah so it sounds like Solar is volunteering to be a commentator for us this season everyone :-p