Idea for Kcon 08 concerning major events...

[Lit_of_Fey]

Okay so I was reading the OMG thread, and it occurred to me. DOOOO we have a Kcon DVD?? wouldn't it be cool if someone taped all the major events at the con (opening ceremonies, cosplay competition, dating game, concert, closing, etc.) and sold them?! I waited in the cosplay competition line for 2 hours and got so-so seats and I could hardly hear or see, plus you could go back and watch that fanservice over and over again on a DVD 

I don't know if this would be feasable but I think it would be really cool so if you missed an event or got in line too late to see anything you could still experience the awesomeness ^.^

And so there'd be time to compile the DVD you could ask people to order ahead of time and mail them out or something?

umm errrr..... DISCUSS! *fetal position*

[RoamingGnome]

I know as a staff member this would be great so I can see all the things I might have missed.

[EveofAbyss]

I know there is already talk of doing something like this for Kumo '07. You can check it out here: http://www.kumoricon.org/forums/index.php?topic=4572.0. I think it would be a great idea because I inevitably will end up missing stuff, like I did this year, and the DVD would be a great way to make up for it. Not to mention, I would love to just watch it again and again all through the year.

[xxxchihiroxxx]

i would love it! the fan vids on youtube and stuff is always a little on the iffy side so it would be wonderful to get a good one, they did film the skits and sent them to the green room, weather they saved the footage or not i dont know but i know they taped it!

[MichaelEvans]

I think it would actually be pretty awesome to do this for as many events as we can.  Though some events would require an ID check as the contents of the DVD would be... a bit much.  Though not many.

[SachiNoDa]

Last year, my dad was in charge of filming most of the major events.  He only just now finished editing all the videos, so hopefully, we'll be hearing more about it.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to make it this year.  :3  I'll try and update with more information later~ <3

[superjaz]

there were people filming thr con i hope the post there results

[TomtheFanboy]

If you look at the youtube accounts of the cosplay videos you can find videos titled "DVD intro" so I'd say that's a pretty good sign. 

Next year we'll need to get another camera on the scene or do some really tricky schedule juggling because there is a bunch of events on the "please film" list that didn't get filmed.

I'll keep delving into the murky waters of "the staff who don't post on the forums" and see what I can find!

[Lit_of_Fey]

huzzah! we could have a few staff running around with cameras throughout the con so that we don't miss the coolness, and perhaps with good cameras so the sound/video quality isn't missing ^.^;; it would be cool to get it officially organized withing the staff/volunteers so it can be sure to get done.

[Jamiche]

Hey Tom, catch up with Gina or I at the next general meeting... she has a lead on someone who has the experience filming 

[DancingTofu]

I was actually kind of disappointed by how inaccurately some of the gaming competitions were represented on film.

For the DDR competition, I saw the camera twice, and neither of the two times it came by were during actual gameplay, just song selection.  This made me sad, 'cause there really isn't enough videos promoting rhythm games in our community, and the true awesome of Bemani ought to be shared with all.

[TomtheFanboy]

Will do Jaki!
Say... when is the next meeting...? 


Tofu, footage of the DDR competition would be good to get as well, at least the last couple rounds you know? I think it'd be awesome to havesome video capture set up for the final rounds of all the tournaments so that we could actually put the final fight of the Naruto and the SSBM tourneys on the DVD too. Video capture of a TV screen never turns out that good.

Just to be clear to everyone, Kumoricon has never had an OFFICIAL DVD made so there's a lot of events that are going to fall through the cracks in the first couple years. The more support the project has the more footage we'll get though!

[stonemonkthewise]

A DVD would rule... but even a single person would have trouble with getting to all the events and getting good footage in the first place... I myself recently got a camcorder and intended to get lots of footage of the convention space and events. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend to much of the convention... My intention was exactly that, of releasing a DVD of Kumoricon 2007... but I didn't plan it out well enough and ended up with very little footage anyway.

This really should be a group project with each member wielding a camcorder and ultimately throw all footage together. Basically, each member would devote there time to getting something another member couldn't (especially VIPs)... especially when it's coordinated appropriately. Edit, doll it up, organize it, et cetera. I might want to be involved in that kind of project... but for now, nothing is set in stone.

[rictheron]

  This might be beyond my scope to say, since I don't know what position I will have with the staff next year, but I might have a suggestion on this for 2009.
   The Kumoricon staff is pretty busy as are the volunteers so it is unlikely we could do more then a few events with a pre-setup camera.  I might suggest that people with interest in helping to record a K-con 08 DVD should setup a thread on here and arrange to get together at the general meetings.  Said people could then form a sub group similar to the Pocky Club or Maid Squad to work with Kumoricon specifically on this DVD.  I imagine that we could then provide access and interview occasions for the DVD. 
  This is all theoretical, of course.  If you bring it up after the general election we can see what we can do then.

[DancingTofu]

For footage of DDR, I'd want to use 3 stationary video cameras, a program designed to capture high-quality video of the screen (I don't know which one at this point, but I've seen this done with a multitude of screens and systems, so I know it's quite possible), and one mobile camera.  A similar setup should be possible with the other games, although I'm not sure it's as important in games like SC3 (maybe 4 by next year) or other fighters to see what the players are doing.

If I were to bring in my own cabinet (which I may be able to do next year), I could have the cameras set up  inside the cabinet prior to bringing it, then just flip them on for the semifinals and finals of the tourney.

I'll talk to some friends with more experience in recording videos of games and hopefully have this more thought-out in a couple of weeks.  Even if there isn't a con DVD, I think it would be cool to have a DVD of all the premier moments in all the gaming tournaments that all the first and second placing people could have mailed to them and anyone else could order.  That would be a cool keepsake in my opinion, and I've placed in tourneys twice now, so that's from firsthand experience.

I might bring this up in the gaming forum.

K-Con '08 will be made of win.

[TomtheFanboy]

Tofu if you already have that kind of tech available to you then we definitely need to rope you into being part of the Gaming staff! 

I think maybe we need to alot a new staff position to gaming just to record as many of these tournaments as possible. That way the room can have someone with a laptop they can hook up to the TVs and capture each tournament final battle and be in charge of the filming for the DDR game. If we get pictures of the winners that can be in charge of getting the data to the Cosing ceremonies crew so that they can be included in the presentation at the end of the convention.

All sorts of stuff to scheme for.

[DancingTofu]

I actually feel that the game room has been pretty under-staffed the past couple years.  I'm planning on staffing next year, since that will give me a legitimate excuse to hang out in the game room all day every day, and I was asked to staff/mistaken for staff there a few times (well, quite frequently, actually) at K-con '07. 

I unfortunately just have a decent digital camera, a cheap digital camcorder, and a laptop.  However, I know people who I could probably borrow some more video and equipment from.  I think I can probably record the sound and video directly (AKA no colour loss and better sound quality) if I can just find out what software and/or hardware my friends use to do so. 

Do you think it would be okay to try and get some people who are experienced with gaming but not necessarily with Kumoricon for gaming staff?  Because I spend every Saturday at the arcade, so I know a lot of people who know a lot about games, but only a few of them have gone to Kumoricon before.  I think it would be wise to try and grab some of the Sakuracon gaming staff too; I know a bunch of them from some regional gaming boards, and they're certainly experienced with staffing game rooms, although not specifically Kumoricon.

I set up an interest poll in the gaming forum, but it sadly only has one vote right now, and it's mine. xP

[TomtheFanboy]

Tofu, always recruit staff. If these guys you're talking about are used to staffing game rooms then start talking to them about it and once the election is done you can start contacting the programming staff. Time it so they'll come to a meeting in January and they can pay their ten bucks to get in on the gaming staff (and hopefully our Prog director will be there to approve them).

[DancingTofu]

Alright.  I haven't officially staffed a game room before, so, to anyone who HAS staffed the game room at Kumoricon before, what could I tell people to expect other than long hours? (although I would really like to have enough people staffing in '08 that the staff could find some free time and sleep, so I'd mention that too)  My major involvement would be line organisation for DDR and other popular games and running the DDR tourney, but I've noticed that most of the staff in the game room kind of just work with the game checkout and bag check.  I'd be specifically talking to arcade employees and hardcore gamers, so they probably would not have interest working at the bag check or something, but could be valuable in the cases of machine issues and tournament setups.


Also, I checked what would be needed to capture video and audio going into your TV: a "capture card".  I should be able to pick one up in the $50-$150 range at Stuff or Fry's, or the internet, if my age-old sources fail me.  Since I would be putting this to use for tournament video/audio capture for all the tournaments, it would be nice if I could get reimbursed for it from the earnings of the DVD's, but I suppose that would be up to the Programming Director or someone.  If not, I wouldn't mind, 'cause I'm sure I could put it to use.

The one kink I'm seeing with this is the fact that it's a chip that goes into a desktop, so we'd have to have such a desktop right by the area where the tournament is.  For every tournament.  This could be done, but I'd need to borrow a desktop and install an obscure chip and program on it, because I don't have a spare desktop lying around, and I don't think I could make it work with my laptop.  I might be able to find some junker or something for it, or maybe there's an alternate chip that I could use with the laptop instead.

We've got 11 and a half months to figure this out, so I'm sure I can make this happen if I try hard enough, but nobody's responding to the interest poll. :/

[MichaelEvans]

Actually it also depends on the Quality you want to capture at.  A standard SDTV (that is 480i cable / composite) signal is fairly low quality, and interlaced.  Which is just fine for crappy normal CRT TVs, and pretty much little else.  Capture cards for HDTV / Progressive resolutions cost a tiny bit more... http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Category:HDTV_capture_cards is a good resource for that, however all the HDTV capture cards listed there, or on videohelp.com or even during some light (50 results browsed) google searches turned up nothing for a Component Video Capture card.  I think if we wanted to do this we'd either have to buy or rent Very expensive professional equipment. (IE the kind you explicitly securely lock/chain down so exactly ONE person can move it.)

[JeffT]

You can get an external box that has composite and S-video input, and attaches to the computer via Firewire. This buffers the signals so it's less susceptible to frame-dropping. One I found was about $220. I can find the model number if anyone is interested. Possibly I will own one by the con next year.

Don't dismiss normal CRTs--they are best for playing all game consoles up to before the PS2/Gamecube generation (inculding PS1 and N64), because they natively display the 240p resolution that old game consoles output. Most digital TVs don't display 240p quite right (they interpret it wrongly as 480i and attempt to deinterlace it).

HD (or even 480p) capture cards that are not at least $2000, as far as I know, are cable only, not component or HDMI in. So they would not be useful for recording games. I'd recommend just using 480i output for tournament recordings.

[DancingTofu]

I asked a friend who has and uses one (ATi Theater Xtasy 550 pro) about it.
Here's a video of it in use (PS2; game is BeatMania US):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4kji6vx-xM

When I put in on full screen, the image is pretty clear; the only colour loss is probably Youtube's fault, and there's no problems of framerate that I could see.  It's not high-definition, but it's definitely watchable and around the $100 range.  This card installs into a desktop.

A quick search found [http://www.videohelp.com/capturecards/adstech-dvd-xpress/340]this[/url].  Looks like it would do the trick.  I have no real background with quality video recording, so I'm not 100% sure this would be sufficient, but the price is certainly right.

I really don't think an HD capture card is necessary or even practical.  Most of the tournaments are PS2, meaning no HD support, with some XBox 360 and Wii tourneys.  Since only the gaming tourneys would use a video capture card, I think it's quite unnecessary to shell out hundreds of dollars on an HD capture card when most people would just have the video to see the match, not the astounding detail in Cervantes's boot strap.  Even if there are dropped frames here and there, it shouldn't matter to most of the people interested, assuming anyone answers the poll saying that they are interested.

[MichaelEvans]

Actually, the PS2 does have a set of Component video cables.  Games like God of War II can produce some exceptionally stunning output for such an old system.  Additionally, Xbox and Wii also have similar progressive outputs.  (Better for stills and the types of screens that are increasingly prevalent.)  The rest of the 'current' generation systems have either HDMI or VGA style outputs to support native monitor resolutions.

However, if you just want inexpensive 480i capture... http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr150.html is something that I have in my mythtv box.  Support for the more advanced features is growing under linux, and it looks like a very nice capture card for windows.  Though I should note the integrated IR blaster works fairly well, the software required to get it working under linux is a little messy (I recall reading some documentation that complained about various design issues that made writing software for it difficult.).

It also claims better stats then the other linked card and can often be found for ~50-75 dollars.  Depending on various system buses and IO bottlenecks, you could expect to operate two, maybe three cards in one system if you were just spooling to disk.

[DancingTofu]

Looks promising.  Have you tried it?  And if so, would you mind showing me a sample video coming from it?

I'd probably be using Windows if I get anything.  I'd really like to be able to get something I could run through my laptop for this, 'cause desktops really aren't portable at all.  My neighbor owns Stuff (the electronics store), so I might ask him if he knows much about them.  If not, I'll probably go to Fry's and seek advice there.

[MichaelEvans]

Actually desktops can be very portable.  You just bring in a box, two connecting cables (power and monitor), and any I/O you desire (keyboard, mouse, or do it over a network...).  They're easier to literally chain closed and down (without dammaging them), and tend to have FAR better internal IO bandwidth.  Laptops are designed more for portability, weight, and powersavings using whatever means possible.  Hard drives are slower (and fewer in number compared to any other system I own), and they have pathetic transfer rates, at least, my laptop does.

Besides that, I'd argue you don't need any more portability then a projector/screen or big-screen TV.  Which you must move and setup carefully.

[TomtheFanboy]

The Game room this year seemed to have sort of "central square" of tables where some of the more popular games were set up. Scheduling all of the tournaments to take place on consoles within that block would make it much easier to have a tech on the inside of the square with the computer that will be doing the capturing. That way you only have someone moving the cables around rather than the whole machine.

Of course this is just a minor logistical problem compared to the cost of actually buying the components needed. 

I'm very interested in capture technology since I have a bunch of old and deteriorating video tapes that I would very much like to make into DVDs.

[MichaelEvans]

As for videotapes, I reccomend an OK quality (Hey, you're talking TAPES here... you Really don't need professional quality for That) card that takes cable, Composit, and Svideo if possible.  You'll probably get the best quality with decent grade composit connections, even if you do have to use an RCA to 3.5mm adapter right before the card.

Most of the cards these days also perform hardware mpeg capture, so don't expect perfectly lossless colorspace, however if you choose a high bitrate for initial capture, and then convert to something like the lossy version of x264 or xvid/etc you should have some OK archive quality.  However I'd reccomend checking out this page here for a comparison of codecs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_codecs Capture cards were already covered.

PS: Don't forget to use two(I remember also hearing three, but have never used it)-pass re-encoding.  The first pass is used to profile information density from the codec's viewpoint, then the bitrate is re-distributed so that areas with higher need have higher bitrates giving you better quality while keeping the same filesize.

[DancingTofu]

I guess a desktop would be quite feasible if we did a central square sort of deal like we had last year.  However, with that, there's the issue of noise pollution.  DDR and Guitar Hero are both about 50% auditory, 50% visual, so both would have to have the speakers set fairly high, as well as any other rhythm games there.  I play a lot with speaker systems and acoustics so I could probably help set it up so that this wouldn't be a problem, but I'd really need to see the game room to do that.  If I can either get a rough blueprint of the gameroom-to-be or actually go there in person, I could draw up some possible layouts for the room in a CAD program.

[MichaelEvans]

I know it would interrupt the visual aesthetics of the room, but would some kind of baffeling between those two games (and maybe the rest of the room) work?  Or even some kind of headphone system instead?  Thinking about your comment reminded me how obvious a problem it was even just passing through the game room.

[TomtheFanboy]

Well, if you're just talking about the Audio on the DVD.... if everything works out won't we have a recording of the audio feed from the game itself being captured on the computer simultaneously?

The DVD editor could go between the two and leave the audio from the video game running as a master track and maybe put a lower level audio track from the room itself underneath when that footage is shown. I wouldn't know how to do any of this but my roomate does tech support for Adobe Premiere, Audition, and Encore so I've seen him messing with this stuff all the time.

[MichaelEvans]

Actually I was referring to the audio quality that those attending the event would get, both players and observers.  A TV on low volume is probably OK for observers, while players likely need headphones or some kind of strange acoustic layout.  I don't think we really want to bother with strangely grooved foam walls/etc.

[DancingTofu]

I know it would interrupt the visual aesthetics of the room, but would some kind of baffeling between those two games (and maybe the rest of the room) work?  Or even some kind of headphone system instead?  Thinking about your comment reminded me how obvious a problem it was even just passing through the game room.

There should be sound barriers about 4 or 5 feet to either side of both games.  Headphones would NOT work for DDR, 'cause they'd fall off.

Here's the speaker setup I'd use for DDR and GH:


Speakers 1 and 2 cancel out the highs from 5 and 8 right behind the players' heads. (they'd be tilted upwards)
Speakers 3 and 10 would amplify speakers 6 and 7 where the 2 players are, and dull them elsewhere.
Speakers 4 and 9 would amplify each other where the two players are.
Speakers 5 and 8 would amplify 4 and 9 for the players.

I have a decent sub and a really nice 250W mid/hi (guitar) amp.  I have a friend with a really nice bass amp I could probably borrow.  He also has 1 smaller bass amp.  It might not be entirely feasible to have this exact setup full-time, but I'm sure we could get close. 
Speakers 5-8 would all carry out to the audience.

I also have 6 or 8 other speakers I can bring in if necessary.

For sound walls, we could just set up a couple 8'x4' pieces of plywood with some thick carpeting nailed to them, unless someone has some better sound-absorbing barriers they can bring.