Ontario, CanadaI went fancy and decided to rent an RTMP server. It will just makes things much easier in the end. I will make sure a streamer's doc will be written up before the marathon starts.
I'm gonna leave this discussion to the pros here. Not myself who is god awful at the games in comparison to everybody else here. I do just want to point out the versus channel in the discord is actually meant for all forms of vs. It just happens most of the community does speedrun races as there really isn't a good way to do online PPL yet, Nowhere does it say that channel is specifically for one form of gameplay. This however does tie in with previous mentions to what the community is leaning towards. That is all.
Would people be open to an online merch store to buy t-shirts, toques etc before the event, and then let's say if you order a month before the event you can have it picked up at the venue GDQ style? This would allow for some fund raising before the event and also give people some cool merch to rep the event.
Alright. We all knew this would happen. Again I prefer transparency when dealing with feedback. You can't improve or get proper constructive feedback if you aren't trying to be transparent. My feedback will most be of the tech, other staff members have or will cover the other aspects.
Now I want to start this off right off the bat, we get zero funding from anybody for these events. We have zero sponsors or anything of the like. This means everything is provided for by us. Dreamhack was a massive help in regards to this. They always asked what we would need and what they could provide to help. They were to provide CRTs but they went towards the smash event. They did provide the lav mics, the alienware computers, benq monitors and elgato capture cards stream tech wise. They also provided the tables, chairs, projector and speaker. That goes for anything physical anyways.
Due to a change in tech plans we had 5 weeks to plan and buy all the needed equipment. Going off of what we learned at NASA, we needed proper splitters to get the image from console to tv and capture solution. We needed this for multiple consoles and also have to deal with the image from HD consoles or PCs. I ended up buying the biggest piece of equipment which was an extron RGB Matrix. This by itself cost me 100 cad and I had to travel over the border to pick it up as if I shipped it directly to my house in Canada, it would of cost way more. On top of this BNC to RCA adapters had to be bought, and audio connectors as well that had to be soldered together. Time line wise me and ThoseCrazyGuys picked up the matrix the weekend before the main event. I had Monday and Tuesday off to play around with it. I had to pay around another 1-150 cad for all the adapters etc needed to have this matrix in working order. I didn't have the luxury of buying cheaper and then waiting as again, small time frames. Ordering anything from China has been taking a month or longer to reach homes in Canada. I can't send everything over to a mailbox in the states as I don't have time to take multiple trips to bring gear back and not get dinged duties.
So on top of this how were we to do HD consoles with HDMI. We bought HDMI splitters that even have confirmed HDCP stripping abilities. I bought a two pack of hdmi cables, and literally pulled a bunch from things around my house. I also pulled many component cable, rca cables, svideo cables etc. We even bought extra Nintendo svideo cables that are of confirmed good quality that do not have a checkerboard pattern. We bought RCA to 1/4” adapters, 3.5mm to rca cables, 3.5mm splitters, the list goes on. Our combined efforts meant we at least spent a couple hundred CAD combined. I bought most of the tech stuff as it would be useful in my own personal setup and have some use instead of staying in storage somewhere. We had to rent an audio mixer for the event, which only cost about $30 considering the price of the mixer was close to $1000.
As for how things went at the event, it was a mixed bag. We didn't even have the stream pc all set up and ready to go till about an hour or two before the event due to computer and internet issues that we needed to wait on Dreamhack to fix. Speaking of the stream pc, we didn't have our own. We used the alienware provided by dreamhack since they were about as good as our personal PCs, and we didn’t have the room to bring our own up. We didn't have the option of using internal capture cards however. Dreamhack graciously got us Elgato HD captures. I spent a few days googling them, everything pointed to showing it's possible to have multiple cards in junction together. Turns out it wasn't. If I didn't bring my Live Gamer Portable, we would have been screwed. The elgato software was prone to crashing whenever we wanted to do a change of some sort. The headphone splitters we had somehow were causing digital noise when we put it in the mixer. Luckily the BenQ monitors had a headphone jack, and the LGP also had a headphone audio out. This was our work around for PC audio. I still have yet to figure out a true way to have audio to runner and mixer. HDMI audio extractors exist and will be something I'll look into. Again cost is a factor. This led to the half hour delay for starting the stream. We also had issues with audio near the start. We couldn't push the audio on the mics all that much because the one speaker they provided to do local audio was to close and we were getting massive feedback. We later got extensions that let us move it much farther away but feedback was still an issue as we couldn't push things too high.
The rest of the first day was going at whatever pace. It came to the point where I needed sleep. I woke up 9am on Thursday to buy needed extra items. My plan was get sleep, wake up early enough because I still had to solder audio connectors for the matrix, then make it over. My sleep was interrupted my 911 calls from ThoseCrazyGuys because something as simple as moving the cable from SNES to n64 broke video. I later found it to be an issue with sync not passing through properly from matrix to the component convertor box and scaler. Probably my SCART to BNC adapter died. Changing the video layout to instead of splitting at RGB, and instead splitting at component resolved this issue. This however isn't something anybody but me could have figured out unfortunately. I couldn't/didn't have a chance to train anybody on the setup due to time constraints. Also with me just literally grabbing all available cables I had, it was a rat's nest. I had multiple 3-12 feet component cords dealing with everything. The consoles and equipment were max 3 feet away. This didn't help the issue. I ended up getting everything fixed and we finally got Space Station Silicon Valley going. We then had issues with the blue channel disappearing. The VGA to component out cable for my scaler was at fault as moving it fixed it, I feel I need to invest in a new one. I switched main cap cards again as the LGP doesn't like the HDMI from the scaler and things were back to good.
We also had issues with the cap cards on us just freezing. Actually it was literally any video device plugged in via USB. We realized we had some unnecessary items plugged in We finally got that resolved and we didn't have the cards freezing on us. I had to redo the setup to be composite for the triathlon (also because my RGB modded n64 got switched accidentally with pixel's but that's been resolved). Reminder I only got to sleep for maybe 3-5 hours max, and it was on the floor or a beanbag chair as I couldn't really leave in case crap hit the fan again. We ended with a bang on the triathlon and I got some good poutine and headed home.
If the event does happen again, we are going to be using a real stream pc, with internal capture cards. The Matrix will be properly labeled, the tech will be much neater and better explained. People will hopefully have the chance to learn the actual setup. Or maybe everything will be a train wreck again. I dunno. At least the stream quality itself was top notch when things worked.
I have somebody's Wii Component Cables. I believe it's one of the SMS runner's.
Well the difference between the two is really if you want east or west coast. As they are basically on opposite ends of the country. There was a lot of people wanting Toronto during the last NASA event which is why it was chosen for this year's location.
Well the consoles should already be uber available as how else will the controllers be ran. I don't forsee that being a problem. I'll bring some electrical tape in the big box of tech shit I'm planning on packing. If not I'm sure dollar stores exist. If you guys can though, bring your own n64. This actually goes for any console runner, We will have our own but please bring your own for practice purposes and as backups as well for the stream. Controllers as well.
Edit : Totally meant to say "If not I'm pretty sure dollar stores exist", this will teach me to respond half asleep...>_>
Noted, I'll make sure the n64 we somehow acquire a jumper pak. I should have mine somewhere in the house so we'll be good. We'll also notate it to make sure it's known to who ever is doing tech at the time as well.
So AFAIK all available vods are up. I'm working on fixing the audio for DKC3. I've gotten some good results but still haven't managed to remove as much of the distortion/noise or snaps,crackle and pops that I want. It may or may not be up tonight if I'm up for some mindight vod work. If not I'll get it done during the week. Thanks again to everybody for your patience with the vods. We will be working to make sure this isn't a thing for future events and we get them to your much more promptly.
"Since I have the only X360 run in there, do you need me to bring my console for the event ? (will still prolly bring it for practice anyways)"
That would be greatly appreciated
"Also, will we have a CRT with Component input ? If not I can prolly downscale to SD or use a good PC monitor. Just need to know so I can practice on the right hardware."
We will for sure have one tv with component inputs, I'm not sure how practicing will go, we will have 2 practice monitors but I can't say if they'll be the same as the stream tvs.
"And about capture cards, linked to that other question, if I run on HD (720p - Component/HDMI), do we have an HD cap card ? (if not, I can bring mine)"
If you feel like running on HD that will also be fine. We are going to be equipped to handle both setups.
"Are there gonna be any practice PCs? I'm local to the area so its not a huge deal but just getting a quick warm up run before I go live would be really nice"
There will be two practice pcs. If you want to bring your own go for it, if it could be used the whole event that would be cool too.
Alright , so thoughts. Obviously there will be some overlap. This might be quite a long ramble as I literally just woke up, these are the ideas still fresh in my mind.
Obviously shout out to everybody who did tech, whom I all believe were mentioned by others so I don't have to repeat it. It was awesome that we had people to work together without knowing each other. In the future I wish we could have a tech meetup the day before. This would allow everybody who is doing tech to help with the setup, in turn learn the setup and know how everything works. The whiteboard was a great resource, I kept adding onto it as need be. I wish more people looked at it but even then, it's not a replacement for explaining how to change things for the stream etc. In the future a tech setup I feel is 100% needed.
Before I forget, shoutouts to everybody who was there during the second graveyard shifts for the run. I can't remember all your names but the fact you guys gave a shit and kept asking what you could do for me while I was trying to set up and fix everything was awesome. I know I didn't take up on anybody offering to grab me a coffee or something but you guys actually caring was amazing. Also coming out with a pc run out of the blue so I could fix things during the setup buffer was amazing. This just jumps back to everybody who was there being an amazing person.
Tech wise, there are a few things that need/should get fixed. As already mentioned the mixer was passive, meaning there is only so much output one could achieve. Second or third day I had OBS set to 150% for the mixer volume, then bumped to 200%. One should already be able to see what issues then can bring. There is no reason an audio mixer should be at 200% volume as boosting audio just introduces more audio artifacts. It ended up being that we had two ways to fix this. Either Lanayru should of brought his active mixer and sound card with it ignoring the equipment thread, or darkfox also mentioned he could of broughten a preamp. The preamp would not be needed if Lanayru's mixer is brought next time.
So now that we have the reason why the audio level itself was quiet, this brings to the next situation. The actual microphones. At first we had a nice usb mic just capturing the room. This while I'm sure the viewers liked since you could hear everyhing. That in itself was the problem. You could literally hear everything. People talking at the tech pc, in the hallway, in the casual room. It picked up to much to be useful which is just how omnidirectional mics works. Now we did have some nice lavalier mics but we couldn't use them because they use some RODE proprietery connector and NOBODY had the adapters in stock. I think we called literally every store in the general area and nothing. We ended up renting a handheld mic and buying a lav mic which refused to work. I believe the mic was meant to use with wireless setups and instead of 3.5 to 1/4 we should of done 3.5 to xlr and maybe phantom power would of got it working or something. I'm not sure. Next year I'm sure we will actually have the adapters and maybe get some extra spare lav mics. This will be discussed later down.
The second audio issue was the pc audio. Nobody had thought how the audio would actually be captured. Shoutouts to zastbat who happened to bring an hdmi audio extractor and allowed us to capture audio and allow the runner to listen through headphones. How could this be fixed for future runs? Instead of using hdmi audio capture, you split the line out coming from the computer. One goes into the mixer, other to headphones. This would allow us to actually be able to mix/balance the audio properly instead of being blind/deaf and relying on the vu meters in obs-studio, then listening to the actual stream to see if it's acceptable. That's actually how most audio balancing was done till based pykn came out with the 1/4" jack headphones. Based sennhesier for making headphones like that.
The third, which leads more into the actual tech set up, is the actual placement of the mixer. During graveyard shifts or when somebody was alone, doing the tech was a massive pain. As you had to set up the stream layout, then move away to the other table to listen to the mix. If it ended up something had to be tweaked you had to walk up and move over to it again. In the future if the mixer could be on the same table as the stream pc, this would allow whoever is on tech to always have headphones on, or within reaching distance to then mix the levels without wasting time moving back and forth.
I think the last audio issue I can remember right now is the delay during console runs. The reason this happened was because the video was going through a scaler, and then the capture card. Now I know people like to say capture cards have zero lag, no, that's not 100% correct. There is always a slght lag, even if it's only a few frames. This compounded with the delay from the scaler caused a half second delay. This was eventually fixed by setting a half second delay in OBS-Studio, but it had to be put back to zero delay when PC runs happened and I'm sure many runs either have delayed audio console or pc. I wanted to set up an exact delay by running the manual lag test from the 240p test suite but there was literally zero time to do that between runs. If the event happens again, this would be a perfect thing to have done on the tech setup day.
So I think this is a good segway into the video aspect of the stream. First thing I'm going to mention is the lack of component video capture. The reason for this was because while there was a component splitter/distribution amp , the power supply was forgotten. The power supplys from the composite/svid amps/splitters didn't have enough amperage to properly power it. The video quality could of been much better if we had component capture. The composite svid splitters also their own set of issues which had some positive and negatives. What the amp did was actually combine svideo into composite. This has the positive that it allowed me to set up a second crt to have a mirror image of the game and people on the couch or in the room had an easier time viewing the game. On the downside it caused the scalers that naegleria brought to go fucking HAYWIRE. The first instance of this being visible was the genesis RPG run first day, where you see wavyness in the image. The reason for this was actually the scaler couldn't decide if it was seeing svid or composite. The signals being tied together was causing the issues. The way I fixed this was because I packed my own scaler, the DVDO Iscan HD. This fixed so many issues. It could auto detect the input so nothing special needed by people at the tech station, just turn the console on and the scaler will output video. It also doesn't didn't get confused by the svid/composite cross talk. It's also of higher quality and handles 240p video better. At points during the stream I was actually pretty pleased with the way svid looked on the stream. You can see yourself on the local recording vods that will eventually be uploaded. A tiny sharpness filter in obs studio made all the difference. In the future having component capture options, to also allow for RGB capture from the consoles will be ideal.
Small thing that I want to also seperate. We had a PAL console run, in the future if we could get a PAL capable CRT somehow. I'm also looking into a scaler that is lag free and cheap (Gonbes 8220 with custom firmware), if I get get that working, we are going to have a much better time handling PAL consoles.
I think that's all my expanded thoughts on the tech setup for the moment. Feel free to ask me questions about it all. I generally spend most of my time researching tech shit like this.
One last thing that I want to mention to put beside everything else that has been said, radio silence is a bitch and don't do it. There is an active twitter and forum, post what is happening actively in it. I'm a firm believer transparency in situations like this is key and there is less to get upst about if you are flat out told what is going on.
Again shoutouts to basically everybody who attended. Made a lot of new friends, hung out with really cool people and hope to see everybody next time.
I am with ThoseCrazyGuys and Lanayru so I would also be down to help. I also have some tech coming with me as well , mainly to deal with RGB video.
Geurge I'm actually bringing Scart To Component equipment along with my other scart accessories so you'll be covered that way. I gotcha back bro. If you're curious I own a csy clone and it has a headphone jack modded for audio output. :D
I'd prefer to work on video but would really work on whichever is required.
I'll also be paying in cash at the event.
Alright since I'm basically figured out I can go I looked into the tech spreadsheet a little better. One thing I forgot to mention is I can also bring my DVDO Iscan HD Scaler to the marathon as well. This could save the budget a bit on purchasing another one for now. It handles anything you throw at it. Also if any dreamcast games are happening a vga box would be a good investment along with a vga to component converter. I can bring mine which has the switch for 240p/480. It might be time to start making a diagram of the hardware that we do/will have and plan it out visually so as to see what could be missing and plan it properly as well. Just posting random thoughts about it all really.
You could use a service such as this to have it streamed to both at the same time, while only having bandwidth for one. Something to consider.
I'm willing to help with all things tech related. While not in broadcasting like my younger brother I do have experience dealing with sound for large things, high school was all setting up concerts and masses in our gym with our own equipment, mics, soundboards etc. Also I spend way to much time investing to stream quality and set up and different ways to do thing to not be at least somewhat knowledgeable in how to do things so I'm willing to help out any way that I can.
This could actually be done with some VirtualAudioCables and a few USB sound cards if need be. Since your soundboard has multiple inputs Skype/Discord can be routed to a VAC which is then routed to a soundcard, or even just nix VAC all together and send it to the USB soundcard. The sound would then be mixed through the soundboard into the headphones and onto stream.
So I'm kind of maybe switching jobs. No idea how this might impact me showing up but I really want to help with the tech portion. One thing I can help out with is I do own many of the SCART RGB cords needed for a lot of the retro systems, along with gamecube component cords. Also I own a NESRGB modded NES Toaster and probably a regular fami soon. I mean I could go on more but I'm still figuring out how to show up.
