Since the tables only work on who actually won the fight I'll take it that Phailbot won.

Back on topic: Can someone please video all the fights and can they then please upload them. I don't want to have to wait for a dvd to not come out. I am worried that if I am not there then no one will ever see the videos. Sorry if that sounds egotistical but it seems to be true and posting video on youtube is the best way we have of promoting the sport at the moment.
And if anyone does video the fights PLEASE DON'T ZOOM IN!! You miss a lot of the action that way.
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Get Some!!!

Secretary of the Queensland Robotics Sports Club inc.

I do actually video all the fights in sweet sweet HD.

Unfortunately I have not yet had the time to sit down and capture them all.

I have been working on the last DVD and it is incredibly late. I will have it done in time for Robowars and whether or not I make it I will send down a bunch of copies. Not to mention mail out the ones to people who have already paid!

As much as i love working with video it does take a lot of time, something I have in short supply. Hopefully I can streamline my setup and dedicate some more time to it.


I also do not agree that Youtube is a particulary great way to promote the sport. While it does give people an easy way to watch the fights the quality is low enough that a lot of the action is missed.
Youtube also retains licence to use anything you upload for whatever it wants. While in this case that doesnt mean a lot because they are unlikley to want to use our videos for their own purposes I am against the idea of handing over an unrestricted licence to my work.

A self hosted user friendly video sharing / library would be ideal, but once again it is soemthing that takes time to set up.

Hmmm, I think I need to quit my job and dedicate my time to all the side projects I have going on. I will run that by my wife and see how it goes.

From what I have read it seems that youtube will in a few months support HD.
Flash 9 supports MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 which is one reason that have recently purchased a HD camera that records in the same native format as my quicktime files so I can dump the files into my laptop and edit them in a very quick time. Woohoo to that
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Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

What takes a lot of time with video? You can do something else while capturing. A fight should only take 5 - 10 minutes to edit. You can do something else while you export the completed video.
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So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems

I couldn't mind copies of unedited stuff! Just dump it on a DVD and post away uleh
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

As I recall the lightweight final was between Mega-Tread and Weasel with Weasel wining.

The Feather final was Jolt Reboot with Jolt taking the win.

As far as the Maestro PhailBoat fight as Maestro scored slightly higher wouldn’t that give him the win?
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Satisfaction is proportional to effort and results.

Ok, this how it takes a lot of time

So far the timeline for the Battleshed DVD.

Upgrade computer to suitable handle HD video editing

Find, aquire and become familiar with suitable HD video editing software

Atempt to capture video
Fix problems where it is not wokring / dropping frames / generally crapping out.
Note, two cameras so double the footage

Cut out each individual fight as I reveiw the footage for dropped frames etc.

Review footage, choose angles, sync etc
- now this is the real time killer, I am sure i could do it much faster but I am picky and will tend to review stuff a lot to make sure I have the best shots

Downconvert each finished HD fight file to SD for DVD.

Build DVD menues, extra features, blah blah.

Burn countless copies of DVD's



All fairly straight forward. One major problem for me is that while it is easy to say that I can do something else while the video is capturing, converting, burning etc it is not that simple.

For example, capturing a tape. So you set it up, start the capture. It is doing its thing so I can go do something else. Unfortunately I have very few things to do that involve being around my apartment for an hour. Maybe I could relax and play a game or watch a DVD? Oh wait, i do both those on my PC, so no can do. Most things I do involve being elsewhere for longer periods of time.

So anyway, I set it to capture, go out, work on cars, etc etc. Thats fine, I figure I can at least get one tape a day. Then I come back and find the program froze, it didnt work, workmen turned off power to my building etc.
Eventually I do get the fights on the PC, but it takes time.

If I am home, I am usually sleeping, eating, or spending time with my wife. I am not even home right now!


I am sure it is possible to get videos done far faster, but in my experience these things take plenty of time in large blocks. I don't have it, so things progress slowly.

But, thats what Xmas holidays are for!

I am not worried about the quality of the editing. In many ways I prefer raw footage over fancy camera angles and wipes. I also don't care if it is HD or not.
All I want is to be able know what happened at the competition without relying on event reports where all I see is "wow that was good". A picture slide show from a 640x480 camera phone will do.
In 12 months or so when a dvd is done then I will get that too. I just don't see why it takes so long to stick clips onto youtube. For me: 1hour to transfer a tape (maybe 1 tape per day of the event), 1 minute to cut out a clip, 10 minutes to save and 10 minutes to upload. I save the next clip while previous is uploading and I watch a dvd while all that is happening. Takes maybe 5 to 6 hours total.
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Get Some!!!

Secretary of the Queensland Robotics Sports Club inc.

I dont care about fancy camera angles or wipes either. I do however care about capturing the action from the best angle out of an available two. Some angles will always be better to watch than others in certain situations so it seems a waste not to use it. Same with HD, while I downconvert it for now it is nice to have in good quality.

In terms of uploading to Youtube, thats just not going to happen with my footage. I am happy to put in the time and effort to do it and I enjoy it so i don't mean to whinge, but it will take a while for me to get my setup how I want.

Also I cannot remeber the last time I had 5 hours to sit down at my computer. When I do over Xmas the first thing that will get my attention is my wedding video, need to get that doen before a year passes!

The only time I can really dedicate to robot building is odds and ends too, if I need a solid amount of time then it tends to be instead of sleeping. That sleep, such a watse of time

Gary, thanks for the offer, but right now I just need to make some more time available and get it done. It is part way there and I see no problems completing it before Robowars

Dont you worry lindsay take your time.
You gotta understand that those who battle once a year need to get a battle fix somehow
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Photos - http://community.webshots.com/album/154092733uokpXC
Photos- http://community.webshots.com/album/166819552PDWWqP

Well considering that I traveled well over 45000km and spent over $4000 on travel and accommodation this year while you stay at home and play in your garage your joke doesn't strike me as being funny chris.

I am not pointing a finger at anyone for making dvds. I like dvds. I buy lots of robot dvds from all around the place. I would like to see more Aussie dvds. But until then I just want anyone to take some rough footage and stick it up on the web somewhere so others can see. There is lots of video sitting on peoples shelves that will never get seen because they don't want to spend a few minutes doing something with it.


edit:
Sorry not much sleep last night. Bloody cats!

Yes there are a lot of people who for financial and geographic reasons can't battle as often as they like. This is even more reason to let them see what is going on at other events around the country. If you want to get people interested across Australia then having videos on the web is the best way to do that.
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Get Some!!!

Secretary of the Queensland Robotics Sports Club inc.

Not having a go at anybody, but I suspect there are more minutes of on-line fight footage from Marayong this year than from any other event and we have been pretty good at getting the non-HD fights posted quickly - I still have about 50% of the fights from the last event still to upload, but I have to fix my PC first.

HD video is much more demanding than regular video and Lindsay doesn't want to compromise on quality for his DVD - that's an admirable decision and nobody wants a dodgy production to discredit our sport.
That is also the reason I encode videos at higher res and don't post on Utube - bad production devalues the content.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Rankings are up. I did it yesterday but all my ftp thingys decided to stop working.

I think my brother just wants every fight from this competition to be put on youtube because he'll miss out on being there.
One of my youtube videos has over 18500 views. Beat that HD guys

I was very pleased when Nick got his footage online so quickly.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nick:
HD video is much more demanding than regular video and Lindsay doesn't want to compromise on quality for his DVD

---

In theory HD is the same as SD to capture edit and export, as it is just using higher compression to store more info in the same amount of space.

However, I practice I have not found that true at all. There could be a number of reasons but most likely -

The programs needed.
For example, during my time at Uni at used a 3.2 GHz P4 and Adobe Premier to happily edit SD footage, including the original Battleshed DVD. During that time I upgraded my camera to an HD model and found that my computer struggled to capture and edit the footage properly. In order to manipulate the HD footage I had to upgrade to the latest version of Premier and it ran badly on that PC even with SD footage. It wasnt till after I got married and got a new job that I put some funds into a new PC that handles Premiere fine.

The HD codec itself.
While the footage takes up the same amount of tape and HDD space as SD it uses a different codec to handle the extra compression. That codec does work the PC harder than the codec for SD, as you would expect since it is doing a lot more compression. I suspect part of the problem is once again just the program itself, but the HD codec does need more CPU cycles to get the job done.

Uncompressed footage.
Depending on what you are doing it is often best to work with the uncompressed footage. Obvioulsy this isnt going to be something really worthwhile for Robotwars footage, but for things like adding CG effects you will get best results working with uncompressed footage. As expected HD footage uncompressed is much much bigger and does require more processing power and storage space than uncompressed SD.

Capturing
HD footage recorded to miniDV has a weakness in that if a single frame is dropped from capture the way the compression works causes you to lose 15 frames, over half a second. This is very significaant and can totally ruin a shot. Dropped frames can be managed by using high quality tapes, keeping the tapes dust free and not using them more than once to record and once again to capture. While not as critical for robotwars footage HD is much more time consuming to reveiw and check footage.

Editing.
SD is much more forgiving of bad editing than HD. Minor problems such as shake, focus, framing, etc are that much more noticebale in HD over SD. While my HD footage will be downconverted to SD for the DVD I still keep a saved copy in HD and thats what I edit for. I personally find HD footage much more demanding to edit. For example at Uni some students did some editing at home in HD but only with a SD monitor to reveiw on. When they played the completed footage back on a 1080p projector they found a lot of problems they had not even seen in editing.


On the plus side recording in HD and downconverting to SD results in a much much nicer image than simple recording in SD in the first place. (at least on the cameras I have personally used) Any post processing for levels, colour balance is best done before downconverting. It is also nice to have the HD files for future use.


I know i go on about this a lot, but I enjoy all the various factors with video work. I don't profess to be good at it or to know more than anyone else, but I do try and complete anything I do in a way that I am happy with. I basically consider any footage I record to represent myself and my video work / values and as potentially useful as part of a showreel. I have probably spent at least as much time doing video related stuff for Robotwars as I have actually building and competing.

And I wouldnt have it any other way, but it does mean for now that I have a big backlog of footage. I would love to get it all online and it will happen, but it will take a while and it is not going to be on youtube.
Hopefully in the new year I can get things rolling and won't get beaten up over it by my own state, let alone other ones!


EDIT
Hmm, that was excessivley massive. Started typing before you post Aaron, but I agree, lets get this split into another thread?
I love lazy fridays at work if only I could do my video editing here hehe