https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2146769485
Last night’s league stream. Thoughts on how to improve the broadcast before a tournament on Saturday?
This looks and sounds fantastic. Only couple things I’d recommend is this:
Maybe try and get a bit more game/rig sound to come through? Maybe point the mic at the speaker if you can?
Then maybe see if there’s a way to make darker games be a bit brighter on stream (monster bash) and other games a bit less washed out (Deadpool)
But really great I think! Follow incoming.
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Thanks for the suggestions and the follow! I’ll see what I can do. Main issue with lighting is lack of battery power at the moment. I have an LED light that works well but will crush a 7800mAh battery in no time.
Game sound has been somewhat of a mystery for me. I bought an external mic to pair with the Canon HF R60/R500 I’m using on the game screen, but I get no sound as soon as it’s plugged in. Maybe a hardware limitation that the camera can’t output external mic sound over HDMI? Perhaps @kdeangelo has some insight on this because I know he’s used these cameras before. Maybe it must be a battery powered external mic? I’m just not sure.
If using a mixer, these are fantastic and not too expensive.
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Interesting. I’m currently using an Audiobox USB but I do have a mixer I could use. Any issues going through walls with those?
D82 uses them and haven’t had an issue yet. I haven’t tested through walls per se, but o don’t not have line of sight in my basement and they are great.
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Slides from the talk are available and I did a pre-recorded version of the talk and posted to YouTube.
Slides: GSPF 2024: Start Streaming Pinball! - Google Slides
Pre-recorded: https://youtu.be/AUOamxsqLo8
I’ll add a CC notice on the slides later but they’ll be free to derive work from as long as you mention author and source.
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My Canon is an XA11 that I really only use at INDISC and have always had someone else help setup the interview mic for it, so unfortunately I’m no help here.
This may have been asked before, but how big of disks do you folks that run the all day streams have? And do you record to disk in addition to the Twitch/YouTube stream?
I have a 3TB hard drive. I local record to that as well as highlighting the VOD so it doesn’t delete from Twitch. Have to do that after the stream is done.
Then if the HD is getting full I delete stuff or store it on another external HD I have.
My playfield camera completely borked itself RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR LEAGUE FINALS STREAM on Saturday. $235 to send to Canon for a repair, but at least that’s better than having to buy a new one I suppose. Back to the camcorders for now.
I might just invest in a new camera altogether. What’s the going suggestion for a playfield cam?
I have zero complaints with the Sony ZV1
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We love our Sony ZV-1F (basically a ZV-1 without optical zoom).
The Sony CX-405 is still a popular, and cheap, camera that does a fine job, especially in low light. Last time I checked, FoxCities was using a 405 for the playfield, even though they own a ZV-1.
Also, I meant to reply to your post a couple weeks ago about lighting/battery. We use these batteries. They’re inexpensive (usually between $25-30) and you see an actual % left instead of 4-5 bars. 6 of them can power our rig, with the LEDs on, for about 12 hours.
Thank you for posting and doing this! I picked up the playfield light suggested, but I’m having a bear of a time positioning it on the rig to lay light on the playfield without a large reflective rectangle being present on the playfield. Any tips for where you are positioning the light on your rig?
I use the long magic arms (12"?) for placing the lights on the top of the frame. If you place the light just above the playfield it can come closer. It also depends on how tall your players are. I’m 6’ and these mount positions work great for me.
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Here’s an old photo of our rig (much has changed, but the light is in the same place). From the player’s view, the glare is just off the machine, and the light is just outside of the player camera’s frame. We don’t put one on the right side because we couldn’t find a place where the glare isn’t picked up by the backglass camera.
Not pertinent to on-the-rig light placement, but…we use portable stadium light strips whenever we aren’t moving the rig all the time, including the playoffs of most tourneys. The streams look much better with that lighting.
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Thanks so much both for the ideas! I will try both these placements out.
Just to make a comment on your rig setup.
The way you have the TX mounted on the rig is giving you a polarisation issue and also an interference issue. I suppose it works and I am a gold subscriber to the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it brigade so don’t change it unless you have issues but if you do:
I find in extreme situations is where these issues crop up and I don’t know that system you are using but my strong advice to everyone is to keep the devices both transmitting and receiving atleast 10" apart. Now you still get interference between them but at a point where the radiation form is more created rather than at the early stage of form creation and thus potentially likely to interfere more (its not as simple as that but I don’t want to bore you all :D)
On my rig I have one TX on the far left, one in the middle and one on the far right. On the recieving end we have them almost 50cm apart - this does make a difference even more so when we used dual rigs. For the device you are using it might be worth to ask them what their expected radiation pattern is so you can optimise for it.
Also having opened up many of these devices the antenna design from the board to the cable to the antenna is pretty crap (cheap) and I strongly recommend keeping the device itself in clear air with nothing blocking it. But as I said, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it 
Those looking for the 4 port thunderbolt device from Acassis - its currently on offer at $500 but with the code SU15 it knocks another $75 off. I’ve used this extensively for streaming at home on Mac its superb, on Windows I still can’t get it to sync to a Stern HDMI convertor resolution. I’ve not followed up with acassis owing to lack of time but will do over the next few months,
Neil.
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That’s an old photo and our rig looks very different today.
Having said that, we streamed over 50 tourneys in many different locations with that setup, at least one with machines that were 40 yards away through walls & floors, and never had any issues. I’m sure you’re right from a theoretical point of view, but practically, as you say, it’s never been broke.
I’m planning on doing a write-up on our current setup, including software, since I don’t think there’s a full “how to get started” guide available to new streamers. I’ll include your advice - for most streamers, especially on the receiving end, it’s easy advice to follow, and less variables is always better.
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