Did you purchase the 2013 Finals Broadcast?

[CrownStarr]

The Buffalo fiasco really made me appreciate how good Tom Blair & Co. have gotten at multicam videos. Usually they are right on the money in terms of choosing which shots to show to capture the performance. So put me in the multicam camp.

There's video somewhere on Facebook or YouTube from 2007 of Crown's show with audio overlaid of him calling the camera shots. I was always impressed by their work, but hearing the behind the scenes aspect boggled my mind. As much as we complain when our favorite moments don't make the cut, they are really busting their butts to pull that off live.

[CrownStarr]

After seeing the stream quality today, I will buy the Finals package to add to my FN streaming subscription.

I was also really impressed by the quality of the stream of Quarters today. It really pushed me a lot closer to making the finals purchase.

[Suviduvi]

I am sure that the equipment available for the next 3 days will be far superior. LOS probably has state of the art everything.

[drumcat]

Until just the last few years, Flash has been the only reliable way to embed video streams in web pages. Nowadays lots of browsers support certain formats (generally h.264) of video natively (in fact, that's the only way you can get video to iPads and iPhones), but according to drumcat last year, live streaming in h.264 was still not a reliable option, at least with the infrastructure they had available to them. One of the regionals, Atlanta I think, had a "beta mobile stream" which would have been the non-Flash h.264 version. Not sure if that'll be available for this week's events or not.

I think I just rambled and didn't really clarify anything there. Sorry.

I heard my name... :)

Streaming to h.264 in the past had been not very reliable in the sense that there was heavy fragmentation and it wasn't cost effective. Pretty much now anything 2 years or less Android and many other devices will play h.264 because decoding it is a lot easier on the device CPU/GPU. This is good; the technical hurdles are ending with Flash's massive reign over video. As h.265 starts rolling out en masse in 2015, you'll see more options because bandwidth drops in half for the same video, but I digress.

Clearly if the guys are testing a stream in Atlanta, there's a decent chance they'll try it again *assuming* it went ok technically on their end. I don't know if it did or didn't, so I would venture a less-than-even chance they deploy that again for Finals. If they do, it'll probably read BETA or EXPERIMENTAL or DON'T GIVE US CRAP IF IT DOESN'T WORK on the link. OK, the third one was what I always wanted to put up but never did. :)

Buffalo was not the TB camera crew & truck, and Buffalo had never done a stream before. I'm guessing that they won't do another stream in Buffalo unless they address that network. But LOS has been rather well-vetted. It isn't impossible to have technical issues, but the likelihood is definitely a lot smaller compared with Buffalo.

I'll throw this out there... every time you cringe when you see $99/$119 for a dvd or blu-ray, just remember that most of that cost is tied up in two things... licensing and partial offset of that video crew. If someone says "that disc should be $50", show them Buffalo. :)

Good luck RT/JH/TB/JC/JF/CB/CC and everyone else in that compound, not that you need it. It was always an honor to work with you guys on this week. Ravioli TV FTW.

[drumcat]

Heh... just looked. I guess they put a sniffer on the stream. Clever.

[Cleveland1]

I selected yes because i would if i were not going to finals.

[perc2100]

I haven't decided yet. This is something I've been campaigning for DCI to do for YEARS, and I feel like I should/want to do it to be supportive of them taking the chance to bring live streaming Finals to us. The price doesn't bother me; I've pointed out a few times how it favorably compares to the average price of one ticket. After some of the issues I've read about FN this season I've been a little worried about dropping a significant amount of money only to have a lot of headaches Saturday night. Buffalo debacle didn't calm my fears.

After reading drumcat's technical info, I think I'll very likely get it. I'm in the middle of a busy week of teaching a music camp (NOT band camp - that's next week), I'll wait until tomorrow night or Saturday morning to decide. But right now I'd say it's highly likely I'll get it. The wrench in the gear is that my wife is out of town this weekend, so if I get the one-time stream she'll miss it: but I'll probably get it

OR....

I might be FN + the DVD or Blu-ray option so she can see Finals run when she returns Sunday evening (it's not too much more expensive to the FN + live stream).

Decisions decisions...