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(Message started by: Fritzlein on Nov 17th, 2012, 2:38pm)
Title: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 17th, 2012, 2:38pm
The past few Arimaa World Championships have seen a rapid evolution towards more and better live audio commentary.  This has happened entirely through volunteer effort.  I am tickled pink that strong players are willing to donate their time and expertise to make games easier to follow and more enjoyable for less-experienced players.  The Arimaa community rocks!

The reach of all this volunteer commentary is multiplied by having a radio relay.  There are plenty of folks who don't want to be bothered to download TeamSpeak and/or to log in every game, but who enjoy listening to the feed that automatically plays if they have the game open.

The joy can be spread yet further if commentary is recorded either as pure audio or (much better) synchronized audio and video with (best of all) someone using the client expert mode to play out lines the commentators are discussing.  Recordings of past World Championship games are a resource for new players and a tool for gaining new coverts to Arimaa.

The relaying and recording haven't attracted as many volunteers as providing the commentary per se.  I guess for starters relaying/recording isn't as fun as hearing yourself talk, but I suspect the hurdle is more technical.  To commentate, you only have to do one thing; get Teamspeak working.  Relaying also is easy to do, although it is fussy to get set up the first time.  From my own experience, there were times in past years when I would have been willing to record video except that I didn't know how.  I am optimistic that if there were organized support for these duties, volunteers would indeed emerge to do them.  Such is the awesomeness of the Arimaa Community.

Is there anyone with a bit of technical know-how who is willing to figure out how to do these things and then turn around to help others do them?  If so, it would greatly extend the reach of the great commentary we get.

My experience is that when you make it easy to pitch in, lots of folks pitch in.  Among those of us who are watching the tournament games, there will be some who think, "As long as I'm here, I might as well commentate/relay/record in order to increase the general enjoyment."  But this thought only makes it to action if the path is easy.  What is necessary is a broader spreading of technical expertise.

Therefore I am seeking a Commentary Czar.  No, not in order to lay down the law and settle disputes of who is permitted to hold the microphone when six commentators show up.  The community already handles this well by letting the highest-rated commentator lead the show.  Rather I am looking for someone who is a believer in commentary, who will be logged in for a lot of the tournament anyway, and who will help would-be volunteers do as many of the jobs as possible.

Yes, there will be games with no commentary.  There will be games with commentary and no relay.  There will be games with commentary and relay but no recording.  But a dedicated Commentary Czar could do a great deal to push us further along the chain than if we simply asked for volunteers to sign up in a Google document, as has been our plan in the past.

If you are interested in being the Commentary Czar but don't already have all the expertise, Omar and I will help get you up to speed on everything you need to know, and if you like, arrange for dry runs in December to make sure everything is working.  Indeed, some of the expertise-spreading that I am envisioning has already happened in the past couple of years, so you might already know more that I do.

Any takers?
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by 99of9 on Nov 18th, 2012, 5:20am
Are there written instructions somewhere for best practice relaying and recording?
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 18th, 2012, 12:01pm

on 11/18/12 at 05:20:14, 99of9 wrote:
Are there written instructions somewhere for best practice relaying and recording?

Good question!  I only know of Omar's instructions for TeamSpeak.  http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/teamSpeak.html

For the radio relay, I'm not sure who Omar got up and running besides me; he got me configured via a couple of e-mails and a phone call.

For the video recording, I vaguely recall that several people tried a hand at it in 2011, with varying qualities of output, but that Omar took the job entirely on himself in 2012.  The attitude "If you wan't it done right, do it yourself" might have been feasible when the $100 entry fee cut the field to 11, but of course it doesn't scale to a low entry fee and 32-64 players.  With a tournament format that is open to the community, we have to find a way to open the doors for community participation.

(Another thing that doesn't scale: in the past the radio relay would periodically get garbled and Omar would have to go reboot something.  I have talked to him about setting up a way for someone else to be able to reboot the radio.  We probably don't want that procedure to be completely public, so that no goofball reboots the radio every ten seconds for fun, but there could be a broader dissemination than relying entirely on one person.)

Maybe the Commentary Czar's first act could be to get some written instructions put together, in the service of making it easier to volunteer.  Or maybe someone else has other ideas of how to promote commentary, relay and recording?  If anyone has a vision, feel free to step up.  I know for sure that some members of the community are strongly in favor of the audio commentary  and would pitch in at some level to support it, even if they are too shy to want to be "in charge" of anything.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by omar on Nov 25th, 2012, 9:20am
For best practice on recording, I made a document showing the settings that I use when I record videos. It generates pretty compact videos with good quality. The document is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/video/ZDSoftSettings.pdf

For relaying, there are some instructions that I have in emails, but since it requires passwords to do the relaying, I'll share those only with a few people who have stepped up to help with the relaying.

I've been experimenting with Mumble lately and it has come a long way since I tried it out a few years ago. I am considering using that instead of TeamSpeak this year. Especially if I can find a headless relay program for it that can run under linux. You can try it out from mumble.com. If anyone knows of a linux program that can act as a Mumble (or Teamspeak) client and relay to an Icecast server, please let me know.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 1st, 2012, 10:37am
Do people have thoughts about how well the commentary signup sheet has worked in past years?  There were a fair number of cases in which people showed up to commentate without having signed up; should this be discouraged and/or banned?  Should there be a formal process for designating official commentators, and if so should it be based on rating, taking turns, or something else?  I have my own ideas about how to run things, but I definitely want to hear from past commentators and potential future commentators about what works for them.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by chessandgo on Dec 17th, 2012, 2:23pm
I will almost surely not have time to commentate this year :(
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Arimabuff on Dec 21st, 2012, 4:00pm

on 12/01/12 at 10:37:13, Fritzlein wrote:
Do people have thoughts about how well the commentary signup sheet has worked in past years?  There were a fair number of cases in which people showed up to commentate without having signed up; should this be discouraged and/or banned?  Should there be a formal process for designating official commentators, and if so should it be based on rating, taking turns, or something else?  I have my own ideas about how to run things, but I definitely want to hear from past commentators and potential future commentators about what works for them.

Commentating an entire game alone can be exhausting, I believe that the more people show up the more likely things will work out, without much dead air that is. The only thing to discourage should be rude behavior and inability to control oneself. Has that happened already? Has someone crossed the line of commentating decorum? Not as far as I know.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 5th, 2013, 6:08pm
If we have the problem of too many commentators stepping on each other's toes in the finals, we can work out a system then.  For the preliminaries I believe we should make it as easy as possible to commentate, including allowing people to show up and commentate on the spot, whether or not they have signed up, although we can still have a sign-up sheet to help coordinate things.

Adanac expressed some interest in helping commentary run smoothly, so as his just punishment reward, I hereby designate him the Commentary Czar.  Please help him out however you can.  Remember that it was the commentary/relay/recording that caused Omar to burn out in 2011, with the result that we had only a small tournament in 2012.  This year commentary is on a free-will, best-effort, as-much-as-we-have-volunteers-for basis, precisely to prevent anyone from burning out.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Adanac on Jan 5th, 2013, 9:16pm
Here are the guidelines I'll propose for the World Championship commentary as the new "Commentary Czar".  I've never been a Czar before :D

Preliminary Rounds
There will be 20 games/round in the preliminaries so there will likely be far more games than commentators. Feel free to commentate frequently in the early rounds, because there have never been more opportunities to practice than this!

The guidelines for the preliminary rounds will be:
- If a game in progress has no commentary, log into TeamSpeak and do it. Don't be shy.
- If the game already has a commentator, usually that person will welcome a co-commentator if you decide to join in.  But...
- If someone signs up as the Main Commentator on the spreadsheet then that person will get to decide upon the format, including the option to go solo, split duties 50/50 with a co-commentator, or any other arrangement.
- You may only sign up as the Main Commentator for 2 games per round.  The role is assigned to the first person to sign up. You may sign up as co-commentator as often as you wish (unless the Main Commentator wants to go solo).  And you can commentate as often as you like for the games that don't have official commentators -- that should occur frequently during the preliminaries.  
- If the Main Commentator (as per the spreadsheet) is late, then others can fill the void.  The Main Commentator automatically re-claims the duties once logged into TeamSpeak.

Elimination Finals
After 6 weeks, the number of games per round will be drastically reduced.  There will eventually be more volunteer commentators than games available.  During all games of the Elimination Finals:

- Up to 4 people may sign up to commentate for each game.  If more than 4 people sign up then the following priority system will be used to determine the four commentators.  The person with the highest priority will be the Main Commentator:
(1) Omar Syed
(2) The tournament director, Fritz Juhnke
(3) By highest WHRH rating, for players with more than 5 Human vs. Human games
(4) By highest Gameroom rating for players with fewer than 5 Human vs. Human games.

- The Main Commentator gets to decide upon the structure of the broadcast (i.e. freestyle where anyone can jump in, a structured broadcast with an anchor, etc.).  This is the same privilege as during the Preliminary rounds except that the Main Commentator cannot choose to provide a solo broadcast (unless you're the only person in TeamSpeak, in which case we'll make an exception).  Remember that the time controls get longer as the tournament progresses so you'll definitely be glad to have those co-commentators!
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Arimabuff on Jan 6th, 2013, 12:59pm
I don't think I'll sign up at all this year. I just can't plan that long ahead. I have people coming unexpectedly that as a good host I have to entertain, I have last minutes things that take priority etc... I am guessing that you'd rather I didn't sign up and then show up than the reverse. Also it's most likely that I'll only commentate on part of a game when I am available, so I'd advise you to make room for that possibility in your czar edict or whatever you call it.

I mean just because you are a czar doesn't mean that you have to be Ivan The Terrible now, does it?
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Adanac on Jan 6th, 2013, 3:57pm
Anyone can sign up as a co-commentator for every single game in the tournament.  And the limit of 4 commentators per game is just a formality.  I don’t think we’ve ever had more than 4 people sign up for the same game in the three years we’ve been doing commentary.  And if you’d prefer to just show up and do spontaneous commentary, I’m sure there will be at least 10 open games per preliminary round that will need a commentator, maybe more.  Not very many people signed up for commentary last year and there are 20 games per round this year.  The formal rules are just proposals and nothing is official yet.  The basic intent of the first 6 rounds is to give everyone at least 2 games per round as Main Commentator, with the freedom to choose whichever format they like, including the option to do a solo broadcast (and not many people like to do those).  And solo broadcasts shouldn’t be used in the finals when multiple people will want to volunteer for each game.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 7th, 2013, 7:25pm

on 01/06/13 at 12:59:43, Arimabuff wrote:
I don't think I'll sign up at all this year. I just can't plan that long ahead.

There is one good reason to sign up in those cases that you are able to plan ahead, and that is to ensure that the radio relay is turned on.  If the relay isn't turned on, people can only listen to the commentary by joining Teamspeak.  The nifty feature whereby anyone who opens a game automatically gets an audio stream is something that has to be enabled by a TC, but they can't know that it should be enabled if nobody signs up to relay, and folks won't know that they should relay if nobody signs up to commentate.  If you show up unannounced, your commentary will still be very welcome and appreciated, but your audience will likely be smaller.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Adanac on Jan 7th, 2013, 8:53pm
I was completely wrong about the number of commentated games.  We already have commentators for all 20 first round games.

Remember that each game can have 1 commentator + 3 co-commentators so it's not too late to sign up for the games.  If you'd like to co-commentate any of the games, just add your name after the other co-commentators, separated by a comma.  If you'd like to be the Main Commentator, virtually all games are still open for that role.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 8th, 2013, 7:38am

on 01/07/13 at 20:53:21, Adanac wrote:
We already have commentators for all 20 first round games.

Actually, the two games with Asian players (alien1020hk and 99of9) still have neither a main commentator nor a co-commentator.  Most of North America will be asleep!
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by novacat on Jan 8th, 2013, 8:30am
Where does one find the spreadsheet?

Edit: I found it, thanks Odin73.  Here is the link for anyone else who doesn't see it in the announcements. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjRBdMN4hsLQdG5GNlY3aThUU0JuSW12TTYtMDZyLWc#gid=0
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Arimabuff on Jan 8th, 2013, 9:33am

on 01/08/13 at 07:38:08, Fritzlein wrote:
Actually, the two games with Asian players (alien1020hk and 99of9) still have neither a main commentator nor a co-commentator.  Most of North America will be asleep!

Except New York, the city that never sleeps.  ;D
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by clyring on Jan 8th, 2013, 3:29pm
It looks like I just misread the time for the alien1020-Thiagor game and should easily be able to make it, but I can't so easily commentate the 99of9-Skrypt game because I would have to stay up late the previous night already commentating the browni3141-herima game. But having one uncommentated game makes me unhappy; if anyone is able and willing to cover either of these games, I can cover the other and be satisfied with having ensured that every round 1 game had live commentary.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 9th, 2013, 11:20am
It appears supersamu has signed up to co-commentate 99of9 vs. Skrypt, so every first-round game has some coverage.  Thanks for your heroic commentary efforts, clyring!
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Arimabuff on Jan 9th, 2013, 4:00pm

on 01/09/13 at 11:20:05, Fritzlein wrote:
It appears supersamu has signed up to co-commentate 99of9 vs. Skrypt, so every first-round game has some coverage.  Thanks for your heroic commentary efforts, clyring!

Yes, very commendable, indeed! I'll try to be there whenever I can to offer a helping hand.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 13th, 2013, 5:26pm
It seemed to work out well when I accidentally left the relay running on my desktop computer.  I don't often need to use the desktop, which raises the possibility of my leaving the relay on 24/7.  Is this a good idea?

Pro: We don't have to recruit volunteers and divvy up the games.

Con: If something goes wrong, I will likely be unavailable to fix it, whereas an active volunteer could restart the relay, as Omar often had to do in past years.  I suppose that if a relay volunteer could be found on the spot, everyone could simply move to Studio 2 and relay from there, ignoring my relay, although I don't know what happens to the radio if two people relay simultaneously.

So, is it worth the convenience in exchange for magnifying a failure?
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Boo on Jan 14th, 2013, 5:14am

Quote:
If something goes wrong, I will likely be unavailable to fix it, whereas an active volunteer could restart the relay


You could consider starting a teamviewer.exe on your PC and granting access to trustworthy persons.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 14th, 2013, 9:20am

on 01/13/13 at 17:26:41, Fritzlein wrote:
although I don't know what happens to the radio if two people relay simultaneously.

Clyring suggested in chat that if a second person starts a relay, the first person is booted off, which greatly minimizes the downside of my leaving the relay running all week.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Arimabuff on Jan 15th, 2013, 4:14am
I can't be more precise than that but I promise I'll help to do the commentating as often as I can.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 15th, 2013, 9:43am
Your commentary is welcome regardless of your ability to know when you can give it.  I will have the relay running the whole time.  Note, however, that when no commentators have signed up, I won't enable the embedding of the radio widget in advance, as that also advertises the games as "with live commentary", which may not come true.  I don't want to mislead and disappoint the potential audience.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Arimabuff on Jan 15th, 2013, 1:10pm
I put my name as co-commentator when there is a great chance that I'll be able to make it even if it's part of the time. That's the best I can do.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 15th, 2013, 1:51pm

on 01/15/13 at 13:10:11, Arimabuff wrote:
I put my name as co-commentator when there is a great chance that I'll be able to make it even if it's part of the time. That's the best I can do.

Cool, I have added the embedded radio player for the first two games of the round.  Thanks!
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by mistre on Jan 16th, 2013, 9:32am
For any commentator who is wondering, I would prefer the following pronunciation for my in-game name (mistray).
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by ocmiente on Jan 16th, 2013, 12:50pm

on 01/16/13 at 09:32:25, mistre wrote:
For any commentator who is wondering, I would prefer the following pronunciation for my in-game name (mistray).


This would be a good addition to the player info page in the game room.  

For 'ocmiente': ,oakmi'ente.  Did not find a pronunciation key in ASCII quickly enough to use it, and forum doesn't appear to support non-ascii characters very well, but basically say it as someone speaking Spanish would.  Long 'o' to start (as in 'boat'), second syllable with long 'e' as in 'feet', major emphasis on third syllable and minor emphasis on first, penultimate and last syllables' vowels sound like 'e' in 'met'.  
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Janzert on Jan 27th, 2013, 2:23pm
Thanks to all the commentators for the great coverage and commentary we have been getting. Unfortunately I haven't been able to listen to all of it myself.

Just one thing, especially as we're getting into a stage of the tournament where many new players will be playing against each other now. The commentary on the lower level games can be a great help for both of the players to improve, showing them where they missed things over the board. Please remember though to be respectful of the players and their feelings no matter how they are playing.

Thanks again and I look forward to listening to you all for the rest of the tournament.

Janzert
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by Arimabuff on Feb 4th, 2013, 3:38pm
Unfortunately, I have been plagued by a bad connection lately. Hopefully, I'll do better next time.
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by crazyharry on Feb 17th, 2013, 4:50pm
If one wished to listen to the commentary for one of one's games, where might one find it?
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by clyring on Feb 17th, 2013, 5:31pm
Most of the commentary that has been uploaded can be found at this page (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/ftp/filemanager/filemanager.php).

(Note: Not all of the commentary has been recorded and some games' recorded commentary has, for various reasons, not been uploaded yet, but will probably be eventually when I have time and motivation to review them and edit out whatever the problem was.)
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by crazyharry on Feb 17th, 2013, 6:57pm
Thank you clyring!
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by chessandgo on Mar 7th, 2013, 5:05pm
Maybe editing the OP with
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/video/ZDSoftSettings.pdf
and
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/ftp/filemanager/filemanager.php
would be handy?
Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Commentary
Post by chessandgo on Mar 8th, 2013, 4:03am
Ok, I'm sorry, I eneded up uploading a file too big yesterday. I don't seem to have permission to delete it, Omar could you do that for me? The game to delete is Boo-Browni-2013WC-Round-8.avi, over 400 MB. I've uploaded Boo-Browni-2013WC-Round-8.mp4 which is a lot smaller. Somehow I didn't find how to get a reasonably small .avi file with camtasia, I hope mp4 is a reasonable format?

Also, Boo and I don't seem to be able to download files from the ftp this morning.


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