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Zero-K live streaming

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From now on we have a live Zero-K stream on TwitchTV!
http://www.twitch.tv/florisxiv

I plan to cover some (maybe all) of the current 1v1 tournament and some regular games from a first-person perspective.

The first video posted is a recap of IvoryKing´s games vs Godde with Goddes own commentary. (games start at 4:20)
http://www.twitch.tv/florisxiv/b/328283496

It would be nice to have a talk with the other players as well about their games and watch some replays together. (Sprang, Ivoryking, GoogleFrog, Saktoth, Anarchid and all the other participants) Please tell me if you are interested :-)

(p.s. quality of the video will improve slightly in future videos, i happened to have some down/uploads running while broadcasting. Stupid mistake :/ )
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12 years ago
interesting
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12 years ago
Nice! we need this!
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12 years ago
Great idea!
But wouldn't it be better to use this perspective which normal players use? I mean if someone watch it he will be maybe disappointed when you have ingame other perspective than shown in the livevid.

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12 years ago
yes, definitely. It is nice to turn on the player-perspective here and there during a replay.
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12 years ago
the quality is too low imo, it is very hard to see what is going on - compare it to the crisp appearances of even the lower quality starcraft videos and it comes off unfavorably.

My tourney game vs Anarchid on Trojan Hills is a pretty good watch too
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Your commented replays are always great to see. This is an incredible thing for Zero-K to have, and I look forward to seeing more of them. I think that tournament games are especially good to cover. I think that having two people provide commentary - you plus one of the players from the game - is much better than you doing the commentary alone; a conversation is more interesting and more informative than a monologue.

I have two suggestions.

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First: do whatever you can to improve the video quality. The first two videos (Godde v IK, Sprang v Knorke) had very low quality. It was essentially impossible to see what was going on. The second two (Sprang v Antelope pt 1 and 2) were much better, but I'd still say their video quality was just barely good enough.

Whatever you did between the first two and the last two, make sure you do that every time. And if your computer or internet connection means that you can't get any better quality than that, consider lowering your resolution before streaming - losing some details due to lower resolution will still look better than having a high-resolution picture that's completely smeared over with compression artifacts and lost packets.

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Second: Work on your visual presentation. You're manipulating the camera as if you're a player - constantly shifting the map around, zooming in and out, selecting and deselecting units. But as a presenter you need to use the camera very differently.

It's easy for you to keep track of what you're looking at even while you move the camera around because the camera follows the focus of your attention. But for the viewer it's the other way around - the viewer's focus of attention follows the camera. But because you are moving the camera quickly and constantly, the viewer can't keep track of where his focus should be shifting to, because the viewer doesn't know in advance where the camera is going to move.

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You can make your videos much more pleasant for the viewers simply by thinking like a presenter instead of a player. In particular, try to deliberately minimize your APM. It's great that you zoom out to show the big view, and zoom in to show the action, and move from place to place to show what's happening the different locations. I actually think you're doing a really good job with that. But it seems like you're doing it as many times as possible; try to do it as few times as possible - specifically, as few times as is absolutely necessary to show all the action that you really want to show.

In addition to slowing down your APM, stop fidgeting. You have a habit of constantly selecting and deselecting units, or moving the map around by a little bit, or zooming in or out a small amount, or moving the pointer around. Stop doing that. Please. It makes it very hard to watch the video.

Instead, you need to treat your mouse pointer as the center of your viewer's attention, and then you need to treat that as sacred. You should be thinking at all times about what you want the viewer to notice (i.e. what you think is the most interesting part of the game), and then use the pointer to draw our attention to that and nothing else. Every extraneous movement of the mouse or camera only throws our attention away from what's interesting and leaves us trying to figure out what we should be looking at instead.

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You can also use the mouse pointer to make the camera movements more friendly to the viewer. When you're zoomed out and you want to zoom in to something, use the pointer to call attention to the area you're going to zoom in on before you zoom. Move it around the area of interest or select the units of interest, and then zoom in. That way the viewer is primed to understand what they're about to be looking at. You can do the same thing when scrolling - move the pointer over the area or units that you want to shift the view towards, and then scroll the map.

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And, of course, don't randomly select and deselect units just because you are looking at them - only do it if you want us to look at them. And if so, do it for a good reason, and keep them selected long enough for us to understand what the reason is that you selected them. Again, keep your APM low. Don't fidget. Do everything with a purpose.

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I want to stress how great it is that you're doing these and how much I'm enjoying them. Please keep it up!
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12 years ago
ah, thanks a lot for your extensive feedback crazyeddie!

Silly thing is i am really trying to keep myself on a leash when it comes to zooming and selecting/deselecting units all the time, people mentioned this before in the past >.> (you do not want to watch me play from a first person view) But ill try to restrain myself even more. I might even try to not use the mouse at all during some cast. (i often watch replays with my left hand only to give my right wrist some rest <.< )

About video quality. I spend a lot of time figuring out how to set up a optimal quality for my bandwidth. (tried many different encoders and capture software) It seems my connection speed is just barely big enough to stream at all.

If you are interested in the details...
I use Adobe Media Flash Encoder and VhScrCap.
My machine has a PhenomII Quadcore at 2.6 GHz. with 8GB 1033Hz DDR3 RAM Running Windows 7.
Spring runs at 1920x1080 and gets broadcasted at 960x540 12fps using the h.264 codec level 3.1 , which is the minimum for this resolution.
FMLE aims at 650 kbs average upload speed using a 5 second buffer and a 5 second key-frame frequency.

I also am dependent on the bandwidth use of my fellow housemates since we are living with 9 ppl here. I just can't claim all of it all the time.

After re-watching the video's i might go back to YouTube until i get a better upstream and CPU (=lots of money's = a steady job) The quality IS really sub-par.

So as you can see it is pretty difficult to get something good going, fortunately i am having tons fun figuring these things out and making them. ;-)
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12 years ago
I watched a broadcast of yours and want to thank you for doing it. Casted replays are much more helpful to us n00bz then just plain replays.

Also this poped into my head, If you are limited by upload speed, you can make videos and put them on youtube.
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12 years ago
My boss is glad i don't work at the advertisement department.

http://www.youtube.com/xtareplay
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yay, more videos.

watched "Godde vs IvoryKing" and "Sprang vs Knorke"
will watch the others later.
interesting seeing your own playing commentated.
will not comment on that as not to spoiler :)
though 1st game i should have used the same trick.

maybe add the links to the replays so viewers can watch the replay in parallel if they want.
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12 years ago
Stream up of Floris and I doing my games vs det, and then casting the upset of the first round, YurGa vs Licho.

Sorry I talk a lot and probably talk over Floris, I was only getting him intermittently on mumble and was trying to fill in any dead air, but I couldn't actually tell if he was talking or not.
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12 years ago
Watching that stream now.

I don't think you talk too much - I'm glad for the commentary. For example, I liked the discussion at around 16:00 about taking half the map vs. sitting in your base.

1:27:05 is too long for a single stream. It would be best to break it up into different segments each with their own set of stuff being covered. Doesn't have to be just one game per segment, but some kind of split would be good.
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12 years ago
indeed, thought of that too late.
Should have split after Saktoths own tournament games and cut out the set up of the games of yurga vs Licho.
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12 years ago
I will say that while discussion is good, you should try to keep it focused on the game at hand.

It's easy to get sidetracked into talking about Zero-K in general (strategy, tactics, balance, player skills, etc). Those are good topics for a discussion, but it will always be even more effective if you keep relating your points back to what you see happening in the game in front of you.
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12 years ago
These are nice, I just watched one of the Sprang vs Antelope.

Would really be cool if a recording could be made of a high elo player ingame to see how they manage their stuff; this may help newbies. I sort-of forgot until recently that you can move the camera around quickly by middle-clicking on the mini-map. Although perhaps I should make a new thread requesting this :)

+1 to @knorke "maybe add the links to the replays so viewers can watch the replay in parallel if they want."
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12 years ago
I plan to do these as well. Actually, there already were some games recorded from my first person's view but those got accidentally deleted.

IF you are interested my YouTube channel has some fps recordings as well. The games aren't particularly great though.


<-- Bot stomp
<-- vs Emblis. Lots of stall and porc.
<-- vs R2D2 just as showcase of camera movement
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12 years ago
Because there is nowhere to comment on Twitch.tv:

I realized after playing my games vs. Godde that my 1v1 com was set up wrong. Right before I played my first game vs. sprang, I made the standard Strike Com + Beam Laser + Energy Cell. Unfortunately, it didn't save, and I ended up with an empty strike com. I wondered why I was e-stalling so bad at start of every tourney game....

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The Zero-K stream is alive and kicking again!

I have some new hard and software that have made the stream quality about 9001 times better. You can actually see what is happening now.

I'd like to continue where i left last time. That is commenting on tourney games with the players themselves. So, if you play in the tournament, have mumble/Skype/Teamspeak and don't mind if your voice gets broadcasted worldwide :P we can arrange a commented replay session.

I'll also stream at random times with random (mostly 1v1) games.

Streamlink:
http://www.twitch.tv/florisxiv
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