Victoria, Australiastreaming on my connection is okay-ish, but uploading takes a really long time. Just as a segway/response/etc. Towards what Hobz was saying about how providers don't enforce a hard cap on upload and how people stream on poor connections and shit like that. Maybe it works that way in America, and maybe it works that way in Australia as well but the infrastructure just isn't set up for good upload speeds, but most if not all Australian connections look something like this: 
There are cases like liquid who have what's called the NBN or whatever else where they have amazing speed, but most Aussies are stuck with something in the range of that link (that's my connection, also note that it says faster than 50% of Au), we don't get good upload speeds here.
That being said, streaming is still fine, it's just a pain in the ass uploading runs. Uploading a 10 minute video to youtube takes me 25 minutes, so uploading a 4-5 hour run of a KH game or.. whatever, would take hours.
I know I'm not really part of this community, but I figure I should throw my 2 cents in.
imo, video proof of some kind should be required for any and all runs of any and all games, even if it's just that a few mods watched the livestream of it and the VoD doesn't exist or something along those lines, because you get people that will make up times to get into ts, you'll get people doing a bunch of other bullshit along those lines, and it just sucks in general for everyone involved, and I wholeheartedly agree that it's easy to stream/upload for proof.
As for the internet situation, noone said the stream had to be good quality. For ps2 gen games, I'm capable of streaming at 600kbps and my quality is definitely watchable, it's not amazing, but games that don't have insane speed look decent, and even games that do, still look okay.
You can stream at 300-400kbps, an upload speed that pretty much literally everyone on the internet has, and it will look more than good enough to prove a run as long as you know how to set up OBS properly. Uploading runs is a Pain647 in the ass, sure, but noone's saying you have to upload or you have to stream, whatever's easier for the person should be more than fine to prove a run to any moderator who isn't a complete moron.
If anyone has a problem with the above statement(s) regarding streaming at low quality, hit me up on twitter or twitch or whatever the fuck else and I'll teach you how to use OBS, having Australian internet that's fairly unstable, I've had to learn how to fuck with the settings to pump the best quality stream out of any given bitrate, and I can easily teach that to someone else.
Edit: I know some people are gunna say kh1.5 isn't ps2 gen, but you can downscale it, or capture it using a ps2 cord, or a whole bunch of other things to combat that, also, the game doesn't have too many fast moving textures, so you can get away with a lot.
@gcah, it's unfair to invalidate a run that happened BEFORE a decision is made, unless that decision clearly makes the run unbeatable, IE. Something in the run itself is banned, this is just something setting up to the run, it's still quite possible to compete with
I mean I may have phrased what I said a little too harshly, I don't really think your run should be disallowed retroactively or whatever, I agree that that's always a bad idea. Similar thing happened in my main game, literally every single run of a category got retroactively banned because they decided to change the rules and ban a skip that was never banned before. Don't wanna bring up an old and long settled debate but it was completely fucking ridiculous. But either way like I said, I definitely think it should be banned from future runs.
I'm always against save-states being used for resetting, regardless of context, I think it gives an unfair advantage even in a game where RNG and cycles aren't involved, purely because you can't do it on a console, and it makes resetting faster. I would agree that the run should be removed, but I understand why it wouldn't be (the runner didn't know that it was disallowed at the time). I'm not a huge part of the community, so of course I understand that my onion isn't exactly an important one.
I just figure I should throw my piece in to say I don't think it should be allowed at all, and at the very least should be banned from future runs.
As I mentioned, I'm not really mad or upset, just maybe a little... disappointed? I mean I was definitely mad at first, I was fuming. But now I'm kinda just like "I'd rather be in the first stream for a number of reasons." I don't think you can really blame me for that?
And since mergy has kindly offered to swap places with me (which I understand may not be possible due to a difference in estimates) I figure I should say my piece and mention that I'd be more than happy with the change should the people making the schedules consider it feasible, if not, so be it, I'm glad to be going to Sweden and meeting all of my European speedfriends regardless, I'd honestly be happy even if my run wasn't in the marathon at all.
Just to add to mergy's message I suppose, the number of jak runners who will be present at ESA is quite high, and last year the second stream room was quite small. There likely wouldn't be enough room for everyone, which I feel like is a very big thing, as half the fun of marathons is sitting down and watching your friends' runs live for the people who attend them physically.
Obviously I intend to make my run the most amazing thing I can regardless, because I take my speedrunning seriously and I'm incredibly passionate about my category, but like Finn, I can't really bring myself to rationalise that the second stream is as good as the first stream to showcase my run, when unfortunately it just isn't.
Originally I was incredibly offended, because I felt like my run was being grouped with "taswork, rhythm games, etc." As like an interesting side thing that wasn't really a speedrun. After looking at the second stream for longer I realised there was a bit of speedrun content, so this is no longer how I feel, but I guess I just felt the need to mention that, as it IS another flaw with the two stream system, that some runners might take it that way and get a bit disheartened by where their run has been placed.
I should also clarify that while I'm in a position where I'm not really upset and will be happy to bring the best run I can either way (originally due to what was said in the previous paragraph I was strongly considering withdrawing my run out of spite, but I no longer feel this way in the slightest) I would definitely appreciate if mergy's offer was considered.
when and where can I sign up/pay the entrance fee?
