top 5 live fly off

[tom creasey]

here is the live link to top five flyers         

[tom creasey]

Sparky wants you guys to view on you tube

[Motorman]

blank

[Fred Quedenfeld jr]

good job Sparky keep it going
FredQ

[Tim Wescott]

The positives:

Great job.  Thanks.  I'm grateful that someone did it.

The negatives:

Very minor: 

• I agree with the tripod comment.  They're cheap on eBay, and you can get a really nifty adapter for a cell phone so that you can mount it -- I make instructional videos for EEs from time to time, and that's what I've used from day 1.
• My preference, if there were room, would be for you to step back enough that you can get the whole circle into the field of view at once, and get right behind the judges.  I understand that's probably impossible, but -- now it's out there

Major:

Would you want to watch a sports program where the announcers are heckling you constantly to "like" their program, telling you to watch their ads, giving you a viewer count and saying "oh look, there's one so-and-so out there who hasn't given us a thumbs-up"?  Would you like it if they started cussing out someone who gave them a thumbs down?  On YouTube, where jerks give thumbs-down just because they can?  No?  Well -- why waste my time, and the time of all he viewers who come to that video after the fact, with the whole "give us lots of thumbs up" bull****?  Your work should stand on its own merit, without you or anyone else begging for attention.  It's not the March of freaking Dimes telethon -- it's the record of an event.  The guy behind the camera isn't the important part of the event; the pilots and the judges are.

So next year, when you (please) repeat your live stream, every time you feel the urge to harangue the crowd about thumbs up or thumbs down, tell us the pilots name, instead.  Or tell us who's judging, or where the pilot is from, or whether the pilot ever competed in the Worlds and how high they got, or what order the pilots were coming out of Top Twenty.  Or just about anything else.  Keep in mind that someone may have stumbled across your video from the outside world, and you want them to take up control line.  Or get some Really Sticky toffee and bite into that.  Consider how many YouTube streams you've watched, and how few of them mention the "thumbs up" button at all (very few, among the ones I've seen), and how practically none of them mention it more than once.

[RC Storick]

It was an impromptu stream done with my phone. Yes, I own a tripod but didn't have it in my back pocket at the time. For all the asking I got 1% thumbs up. Not good for all the arm burn. As far as the view finder and framing the video, Considering it was all a guess because I could not see the screen with the glair it didn't come out too bad.

[Tim Wescott]

It was an impromptu stream done with my phone. Yes, I own a tripod but didn't have it in my back pocket at the time. For all the asking I got 1% thumbs up. Not good for all the arm burn. As far as the view finder and framing the video, Considering it was all a guess because I could not see the screen with the glair it didn't come out too bad.

The video was great, overall, and yes, I suppose it would have been impossible to see in the sun. 

You may have gotten more thumbs up if you never mentioned it at all -- most viewers know how YouTube works, and don't need to be told what to think.

[Dan McEntee]

   I don't know how this all works, but I don't remember you saying anything about doing it before the NATS, so i was assuming that it was something you put together with some of the others once you got there? If that is the case, I think it came out pretty well, what I did get to see of it and not expecting it. With my current life style, I didn't have the time to stop and watch much, that is why I really liked Dave Trible's play by play descriptions.  I could read through them pretty quickly when I had the chance. If that is all you were using was a phone, I am impressed with that. I would still like to have been there but like they say, maybe next year. All in all, I think it was a pretty good NATS from what I saw. I have not seen anything of Junior and Senior results and would like to, unless I have missed them.  You got a year to work out some bugs for next time Maybe stream some stuff from Paducah or our contest just for practice, giggles and grins?
    Type at you later,
    Dan McEntee

[RC Storick]

I put it together 5 min before start.

[Brett Buck]

I put it together 5 min before start.

  I thought it was pretty good, what little of it I could see (it was WAY before my alarm goes off on a normal day). The video was about as useful as it is ever going to be, without multiple cameras and a director selecting the shots. You did pretty good for an impromptu task. I thought it was good that you didn't get into the pits, etc, or really interact with the pilots. It would be tempting but while I would probably be OK talking or dealing with a more close-up thing or interviews during qualifying rounds, but on Top 20 or Top 5 day, I would have a problem with someone getting a camera in my face.

  It was a very creditable effort.  Don't worry about the Youtube "likes" or otherwise, it's what people *here* care about it. Get right down to it, the topic is of interest to maybe 100 people in the world, and 75 of them are already at the contest. Unless you have much better lighting and video quality, tracking and static cameras, etc, and a competent narrator to describe the action, the appeal beyond those 25 people watching is always going to be extremely limited, and frankly, even I find just watching a contest idly with no stake and not as a coach/tactician/engineer, it's about as interesting as watching paint dry.

    Brett

[Tim Wescott]

I think it's more than 25 people, and some narration might bring in more.

I appreciated it greatly, because I can't make it to the Nats, but I do want to keep up.  Since I don't get out to the Nats, more mention of pilot names would have been nice -- on at least one of the first five flights I didn't catch the pilot name (if I re-watch I'll find a score sheet with flight order and keep track that way).  It was way better than watching paint dry (or glue -- I almost got caught in one of those clamping disasters in my shop today, where you stand still for half an hour holding something until the glue dries, because your supposedly well-thought-out clamping scheme wasn't).

I could tell who was flying well, on at least some of the maneuvers.  Getting right behind the judges would have helped (but -- Robert, I understand that it would have been difficult or impossible).  At least in that round, in the vertical eights everyone undershot their transition from inside to outside, and did a little "S" going from outside to inside.  The only variation was in degree, not by type of error.  You could pretty much rank the ultimate placing in the contest by how well they did their vertical eights.  Overheads had similar issues.  Due to camera placing, it was hard to judge the shapes of the square maneuvers (but again -- that's OK, when it's an Olympic sport, they'll get the cameras figured out).

[Brian Gardner]

Thanks for doing this. It was great to watch. Most appreciated.

I do agree with the comments about the likes etc. It was somewhat annoying.