drumcat

I actually had some of the same thoughts, but time has given me a slightly different perspective than George. I could write a dissertation on this, but I think I can keep it short. The similarities with Star 1993 (and really 1991-1993) with Bluecoats 2015 (and really 2014 too) are easy to see. Both expanded the acceptable range of what an attendee might see within the confines of competition. There's no doubt that both groups are pushing the concepts of "what drum corps is" in a competitive setting. That's where this seems to end for me. The differences are much more stark: Star's performance differs because the composition chosen was otherwise deemed unsuitable for the field. If we're honest, the Bluecoats arrangements didn't seem "genre-busting" in any way. Star used the field for spatial stereoscopic effects, sometimes called podding. Pods had been around earlier than that, for sure - it was a "thing" in the mid-80's. You always broke up your drumline for quick pod hits that A/B back and forth, and brought it together as an artificial crescendo for the "drum solo" (remember those?). Star went far beyond simple podding, and did what the Beatles did when you listened to headphones - it gave a true spacial experience. The impetus was moved around the field in a way never seen before. I would argue that while the Bluecoats did a great deal of this, it was not new but using the new tools. The Bluecoats did this with their electronics; for sure a first in how, but not groundbreaking outside of being the first to truly use electronics *to their advantage* and *as an instrument* unto itself. Speaking of, the Bluecoats finally cracked the code of using electronics to augment their instrumentation *as an instrument*. Much as you see those who use electronics in their art, this was no longer reinforcement or running something through a filter. It wasn't a *setting*, rather the sampling and motion were used in a dynamic way to process and then produce. That is art, and for this, the Bluecoats did in fact break new ground. It's been a decade in coming, but here it is. So, in the interest of brevity (because there really is a lot more to this), my view of the Bluecoats-Star associative innovation is simply that they were both under-appreciated at the time they were judged. They broke ground in different areas, but I think the Bluecoats are getting a little too much credit for the things that Star did. Only an organization that was leaving the field would ever do a mic-drop quite like Star. However, the Bluecoats innovations should not be undervalued either. As it relates to electronics on the field, they were innovative. Instead of hamster effects, they are now the torch bearers for how it can work in the favor of your music, and not just in a "what does this button do" reactive mentality.

Won't happen. iTunes nearly requires that each license be a track. I doubt you want 5 tracks / show. Even at 69¢ minimum pricing, that's annoying. Otherwise, tracks are over 10 minutes. iTunes requires that any track over 10 minutes be "Album only". They've played with other options, but drum corps music is definitely not what iTunes is built around. Maybe sell it on Amazon...

Once you put something on YouTube, there are a lot of legal things that happen to that content. None of them are in your favor. Remember, when you are paying, you are the customer. When you get something free, you are the product.

I'll add some insight. I won't call them "corrections" because I am not a NeuLion expert. I would say I know a few things about Brightcove, Limelight, Akamai, and the process, so let me see if I can help a little... As stated above, (again, at least with Brightcove) there is no "second connection". When you connect, you connect two internet connections to Akamai (or Limelight, but they didn't offer DVR at the time I last used them). So, essentially you get a solid upload line at the stadium, connect your encoding laptop machines to teh interwebs, and "push" to the CDN. Brightcove, or in this case, NeuLion, lease this from their CDN and then turn around and charge a small bandwidth premium to the individual customer. They buy bandwidth by the peta from the CDN and charge on that redistribution and storage space. So, in fewer words, there's stadium to internet, internet to CDN servers, and CDN servers to your home. Of course, there's also from your wall/air to your device. There are lots of places where things can go wrong, and they aren't just blanket problems. Thus, when you say "who is messing up", it can be a little more involved. For example, A/V sync could be a loop in an on-site device, or a delay at the soundboard, but because it's only on one feed, it's likely in one of two places - the encoding device, or the CDN ingestion is redistributing it with a delay. Remember that it gets one signal in, but it then "multiplexes" that high-quality stream into (i think?) 4 stream levels. If that process is jacked, the only way to fix it is to redo it from the very beginning, throw everyone off, and use a different ingestion point. Needless to say, it's rather crappy to figure that out night-of-show. In addition, the audio is likely coming from the same source, so it makes timing more likely (but not conclusively) at the multiplex. Whether that's NeuLion or their CDN partner (if they have one?) is indeterminable without some serious digging. No question the DCI team is leaning heavily. You can get away with a little sync issue when you're broadcasting soccer... not DCI stuff. There is some concern that even when everything is going outbound perfectly, you will have issues on your device. The thing is that even the feeds are fundamentally different to your device, even at the same rate. Say for example you stream both hi-cam and multi-cam at 720p. The multicam can use over 50% more bandwidth on average than hi-cam. It can be a lot more, too. Ant-cam, as I call it, is perfectly suited for MPEG encoding. A vast majority of the screen area doesn't change, allowing the codec to take advantage of using fewer keyframes and compressing the small amount of motion into less data transmitted. Multi-cam is the opposite. The amount of motion the codec has to use to keep up with all the change is massive. Ever watch confetti on TV? Everyone's screen pixelates. The more random the movement and color change, the more the codec has to rewrite (and not reuse) when it sends a signal. I mention all of this not as a defense, but rather to be careful in where blame is assigned. I know in my time, I made a few broadcast errors. I also know that a majority of the problems people had at the end-user level were out of my control. I also know that a level of technical problems can and do exist that are out of DCI's control... I can tell you that one of the "better" streams as loosely rated by DCP a few years ago was extraordinarily stressful as it was a backup stream where the primary fault level was something that the CDN couldn't fix for hours. I spent a vast majority of my day on the phone with people around the world eventually sorting it out... and you all had no idea at all. Thus, it goes both ways... this is not an excuse at all, and I'm sure DCI isn't looking for any. I just hope that while things may appear one way, the technical "blame" may not be so easy to point to. I understand from a consumer's point of view that often those things don't matter. But problems can come from geography, bad hops by ISPs, CDN failures... hell, I even had one site that said we were given a direct line, but failed to tell us that the line was shared by a building down the road. Suddenly, upload was poo. These things are 20x more difficult when the location changes, because each place requires you to start from scratch. This can introduce problems anywhere in the "chain". So I'd only ask that from a technical support perspective, use caution when making an absolute assumption. Best of luck to everyone, on both sides of the feeds. :)

I'm just gonna leave this here... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdcp

The benefit of the system will probably be more administrative than anything pixel-specific. Legacy stuff is 640x480. That's because the DVDs are the same, and they're just rips from the collection. In season, probably not much different quality given it'll probably be nearly the same equipment broadcasting it. What you'll probably see is more along the lines of a modern, responsive, mobile friendly site. Maybe even some integration between what's dci.org and what's FN. I can tell you that the back end of their systems is "homebrew"... like, someone sat down and wrote it. The systems in need at the time were just not something you could buy. Today, they are still complex enough that it's either a major purchase, or more commonly, a service. If you want kind of the example everyone envisioned from the beginning, look at your average sports league. League home pages, team pages, integrated highlights... that sort of thing would be out of reach without either a larger web staff, or in this case, a partner platform. What you're going to see in the little black video box won't be much different. It'll be everything else.

Not if it's pro bono. Not to mention, they may be waiting on another outcome or all sorts of things... I'd presume nothing about what may be going on behind the scenes. The outcomes are probably still TBD, so worrying won't help.

Ya, by "homebrew", I *only* meant the content management system - what customers see. Brightcove is A+.

To be extra super clear... there's no reason to say it will be more expensive. It might be less expensive for customers. Those decisions are based on a lot of things, but they are not set in stone this early. Generally, it's what you'd do... the largest total revenue within reason. If they could sell subscriptions at $20 and make more money, that's what they'd do. Same for $120. Don't take pricing personally. No one is trying to "screw" anyone. It's just doing what they can to bring in dollars. But the pricing is likely not even set yet, given all the ongoing licensing and things and new costs and hardware... historically, prices were set in April/May.

Well, this might be one of the last things I can really give perspective on with my prior knowledge, so let me share what I know. Caveat emptor; I haven't been behind the scenes in almost two years. I can at best be general, but it might make some sense and fill in some of the gaps. It's a little more than just a CDN change. First, I think the issue about the rights management has been fully addressed above. It's always a business decision. As had been stated, the main reason you only saw finalists on FN was that the licensing was thought to have covered in good faith based on the Legacy Collection. Anything more was bad ROI and thus unnecessary risk. Now the licensors are trying to triple-dip, and blah blah blah, turning into a public domain activity, etc. etc. /deadhorse As for the technical changeover, the "more than just" is that they are partnering with a company that will do more than just provide the video. This means development, and content management. I don't know if this is for both sites or just FN, but it's a "platform" as opposed to "homebrew" that everyone complained about. The argument for "homebrew" was always what you'd expect; do whatever you want, code and all, and keep all the money. The catch is that the development - especially the ongoing stuff - is expensive. It becomes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Like dci.org... that thing is how old in its current incarnation? There's nothing wrong per se, but it's definitely showing its age. The mobile / responsive stuff is really the hard thing to pull off well with "homebrew". It all takes a lot of money, time, and willpower, and it has to be done seasonally without upsetting the other folks that pay to use the platform. The argument for the CDN/partner is simple; shared development. Live within the confines, and they will keep up with testing all the Android flavors, all the updated Bootstrap installs, javascript... all the crud that goes on behind the scenes to keep things working. On top of that, design, user interface... the works. There are some big players that use these systems... pro sports, college conferences... clearly a good combination. The downside is the CDN/partner takes a large cut. As content owner, that's a scary proposition. Your cash cow is your content, and now you have to agree to give away a percentage of every subscription. From what I'd heard, it was clear that the DCI office wasn't willing to go down the additional employee route, and that there have been champions of the CDN/partner choice for years. It appears the time has finally arrived to give up some control and get some more polished product. I truly, honestly hope that this is the right way forward for them. If there's one thing I'm sure of, they have crunched the numbers many, many times over. However I do know that those involved with creating The Fan Network did so before this kind of thing was even an option. Remember finals in 1999? One of those little web ball cams hanging out the pressbox updated every 10 seconds. Selling APDs within an hour of the performance. Live video. Live HD. This appears to be the next evolution. So yes, there will be a lot of change, and as stated, it'll probably just be there one morning. DNS changeover, and boom. Technology moves on, and things can get more complex than can be handled by a small team, while still giving what fans demand. That's entertainment! I think everyone will be happier in the end, and hopefully it'll be revenue positive for the office and the corps.

Hey guys, Long time no see... Can I make a suggestion? If you want to statistically prove this, you can. Do an analysis such that you take the left and right channel individual -dB root mean square average. If it is "off", you'll see that the channels will vary by more than 4dB in summary. I don't have them, or I'd check. The mastering is subjective to a degree, but this would be an objective deal. It's not an impossibility... I think it was 2002, but one disc many moons ago did in fact average the whole disc 3.5dB lower on RMS Average. Of course, this wasn't a single channel or single performance; it was simply a disc change... you could just turn the volume knob a hair on that one and no big deal. If you want to get super-nerdy, analyze a section where they're parallel in drill, as close to symmetric as possible around mid-field. It would be pretty obvious. Also, you can't go vis a vis with DVD/BR audio because it's intentionally mastered differently. Even if you do find that one channel is lower, take a wave editor, and do a single channel limiter with a gain of about 80% of the "missing" volume, with -0.1db headroom. Piece of cake DIYM. :)

The more salient question is did anyone but a small minority (read: DCP) care either way?

I would have thought that I would have seen the demand of the audience to see the Foley, and require kids perform, and not sample. It seems that at least so far, I've been proven wrong. xandandl is right; there are no more penalties. Think of it this way... what does it say about your judging if the judges can't tell something is illegal? One of my favorite quotes is that "Art is in the resistance of the materials." I used to assume that at its core, DCI was art. Maybe it once was, but it isn't nearly the same. I failed to account for the paying audience, as we often do. We yearn for art, but we pan the unfamiliar... until we familiarize ourselves with it and it is gone, never to be again. It is performance, and the business requires admission fees to continue. A museum can subsist on donors, but a museum can't get "weird" until it doesn't need the door revenue. DCI was starting to trend in that "weird" area, but can't live without the door take. Thus, we are left with a populist form, and the ardent supporters are left wanting more. DCI built its base on popular tunes and memorable performances, and unfortunately electronics is a platform which helps achieve that goal. So while I lament the 20th Century version of sound effects by wobbly metal sheets and homemade marching machines, air raid sirens and mallets too hard for their bars, I have to relent that these unenforceable rules are where we are today. 2004 was more of a change than many of us wanted, and the genre has changed. With it, enforceability has probably left as well. We would all do well to try and let it go, lest we see the half-dragons and dusty parts of Disneyland's back stage.

Just an aside... We're talking about "fudging" performances in a technical sense... it's not like anyone is going to completely fake it. Someone would catch it. What I consider fudging now is good ol' ThunderGoo. It may be performed in real time and on a keyboard, but you can't make me budge off of the idea that this is a synthetic replacement for low brass. Bass patches are, and always will be, pleather.

Deep. So, here's some thought for you... first, integrity will always be an issue, even though we say it isn't. I point this out because I think this line of thought has some merit. Examples include over-aged marchers in the past, and there are probably some that have done it recently. Who's to know? As for concrete rule breakers, the Blue Devils had a pitch-bend in their show during a year where they were explicitly not allowed to add effects. They won by less than 1 point, for the record, and I believe this was 06, or 07. It was the "Jabba the Hutt" laugh. It was a three-octave drop, and it was a pit kid doing the laugh. Anyhow, competitive integrity is going to be an issue... but not a deal-killer. It's the compromise no one talks about with sampling. You can make all the arguments about amplification / sound reinforcement you want to, but in the end, you are left with someone controlling volume and volume envelopes. It's probably better for the activity than not having it, but that leads to the equipment used and the legalization of sampling. A few dials here and there, or an adjustment from the iPad in the press box, and you too can adjust the sounds coming through the PA. Sampling is the true problem, since you don't know what you're going to get. Is it licensed? Is it a dupe? Does it matter that it sounds like an announcer that isn't there? All of that stuff is actually more content-driven. One has difficulty in judging its merits, and you have endless threads on it. If one wants to make an argument about fidelity of the performance, this is a simple thing. Whatever rules you set forth for judging, all you really have to do is to restrict electricity to the pit box. No mic'd solos on the back sideline. If a soloist wants to play into a mic, they should do so within a few yards of the front sideline. No system is perfect, but cheaters cheat when they can get away with it. Someone will know if that's within that distance. Judges won't be able to be fooled by that long term. On the other hand, when you talk about sampling, it is anti-performing by design. Is that a good thing? Are effects a good thing? Should we all go back to 2004 and start over? It's hard to think that... but what I did see this year in the two shows I went to was that 10 years in, corps still have mic problems, amps are still hard to deal with because of their front-line proximity and wide acoustic spread versus belled instruments, and judges still do not penalize corps for technical problems. I'd therefore submit the axiom that "you manage what you measure". The people in charge of rules enforcement are not capable in their capacity as show managers to look for infringement. If a show manager is shuffling on a corps, they aren't checking for whether there are brass patches in a sampler in the same way they don't have birth certificate checks each night. You can't measure this stuff, so it's not manageable. Maybe this means to the corps that maybe someone is driving 56 in a 55mph... does it really matter? Well, if it did, there would have been a title that changed hands... so clearly everyone has chosen that the blind-eye of enforcement is a compromise for the artistic canvas the corps want. In other words, they know they fudge it, and they don't care. (IMO)

I was waiting for someone to say this. Survey says.... #1 answer.

You likely won't see an app. Apps are expensive to write and maintain, and wouldn't give a large benefit in revenue... wouldn't break even. Unless and until they turn over their streaming to a company that also provides an app build, it won't happen. And they probably aren't going to turn that over because they again, probably wouldn't break even. Sure would be nice though.

This won't change because of the amount of work and discourse that would be added if subscriptions ended during the season. Imagine if on top of all the other stuff going on, a large number of subscriptions ended on... say, Semifinals night. Customer service issues through the roof. It *seems* like it makes sense on the surface; buy a year... but in reality, this won't and shouldn't change.

Hello all, Since tonight is a good night for it, here is your challenge. You steal from Brandt the microphone to address the Age-Outs. You get one sentence before being asked to leave... what do you tell them? Here's mine: “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” – Richard Bach What would you tell them?

Maybe you guys can confirm what time it happened? If you can find a time, I can let them know the time of the occurrence, helping them find the source. They DO NOT want it compressed, I can promise.

What I can tell you is that there's no compressor from the audio engineering station. Whether there was something in the chain after that, I'll ask them, but the only thing that it could be is if the audio is getting routed to the streaming module from the stadium press box... this happened in 2011, and there was a compressor put on without anyone being told... maybe it's a situation like that. I will ask.

Do you have a local compressor in your chain? What sound card is pushing those Genelecs?

What makes you say that, precisely? I'd love to know what you'd describe as different in the beginning to the end... maybe I can get that information to people... but I can't describe it; I didn't hear it. Let me know.

Yep - got me.