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EP 13: eSports Production Value: EG MC TriCaster

Blogs > moge
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moge
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
United States124 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-04-02 00:49:56
April 01 2012 15:44 GMT
#1


This week I discuss Evil Geniuses Masters Cup and their use of the TriCaster! '

What is a TriCaster? How does it work? How much do they cost? I answer all of these questions and more in this week's eSports Production Values video. I take a look at some of the cool stuff coming out of EG MC and their replay reviews series both of which use the TriCaster.

To be blunt; I think that EG has added an important innovation to eSports. While their use of virtual sets toe the line between awesome and star wipe it is undeniable that their split screen and PiP have changed the game.

The use of split screen and PiP has, as of now, become the 'new norm'. They are a new innovation to eSports streaming that every major tournament needs to either incorporate into their own productions, adapt and innovate on top of, or risk falling behind. It's a bold statement, I know, but I stand by it. For those who are using a TriCaster, what EG managed to do represents the new standard to beat.

However, with great power comes...the temptation to star wipe.
[image loading]

I am not speaking to EG. I am speaking to everyone with new toys. Technology is best used to enhance your production value, it should not be used to show off your production capability (compare: Ron Howard and Micheal Bay).

correction:
I point out that the background is generic from the built in virtual set. This is totally wrong. The news caster dude is actually from the single player mode. EG actually does switch out that background 'drop zone' regularly. Meh-bad

*****
gentle lover of esports - Product Manager for http://iHearteSports.com
NyxRose
Profile Blog Joined May 2011
United States105 Posts
April 01 2012 16:23 GMT
#2
Great video as usual. Always enjoy watching your production value videos! Keep them coming
Toboe
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
United States276 Posts
April 01 2012 16:29 GMT
#3
Great show and great series!

To get the community started with how to emulate a tricaster for lower budget productions, I'll theorycraft an idea:

I would suggest looking into using remote desktop software for some basic PiP or split screen use. Since it doesn't have to provide audio or have any real features for controlling the secondary computer, there should be plenty of software options to choose from. If anyone wanted to program their own lightweight desktop streamer, I would suggest looking into the live555 library where most of the work is already done for you.

This gets the video content of two or computers onto one, but then you have to mix them. Since most of the programs simply display the content onto your desktop, you could use xsplit to capture that part of your desktop, but that eats into desktop real estate. You'd need another monitor for each input. It should be possible (and may have already been done) to expose the incoming video is a directshow filter so xsplit can just add it as a camera to your scene without having to display it on your desktop as well.

Of course all this mixing and displaying of incoming video is going to put a lot of pressure on the system resources of your streaming machine, probably to the point that you should actually have a separate machine (that isn't observing in game). So to have 2 screens of SC2 overlapping, you'd ideally want to have 3 machines, 2 of which can play and stream SC2 in HD over VNC (one will have to provide the game audio) and 1 of which can mix and encode the HD streams, web cams, and audio, and send it to your favorite streaming site. You may be looking at $3000 for the computers and monitors, and perhaps some software development time, but that's already a big step down from the $25k from a tricaster. Hopefully you and a co-caster already have 2 of the machines, and if they're really powerful you may not even need the third.
Immortals are your friend, you can tell by the way they waddle at you
Night Eyes
Profile Joined January 2011
433 Posts
April 01 2012 18:25 GMT
#4
Insightful and entertaining as always.
And thanks for that little speech at the end, sometimes its good to hear stuff like that.
excellent!
SirScoots
Profile Joined December 2010
United States138 Posts
April 01 2012 18:50 GMT
#5
Thank you for the kind words about our productions. I will now only be using the star wipe transition in honor of you Jason!
R1CH
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
Netherlands10341 Posts
April 01 2012 19:10 GMT
#6
The thing I really dislike about the TriCaster setup is it doesn't appear to do 1080p output, if you look carefully you can see a lot of interlacing artifacts in the game. It's very noticeable on UI elements and really makes the 1080p stream look quite bad compared to a "real" 1080p stream. The production certainly looks great, but I'm not sure I would make the trade-off for a worse looking game which is the meat and bones of your content.

This is coming from someone who spent hours getting perfect dynamic range and FPS synchronization for our TL streams so I'm a lot more susceptible to seeing issues like this than most people .
AdministratorTwitter: @R1CH_TL
OneMoreGame
Profile Joined April 2011
United States14 Posts
April 01 2012 19:35 GMT
#7
Actually, that probably has more to do with something I am doing wrong setting wise and not the TC itself Rich, but I hear ya. Feel like taking a peek one night as I tweak some things that I think might be causing some of that artifacting?
MVTaylor
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
United Kingdom2893 Posts
April 01 2012 20:20 GMT
#8
Noticed the views and comments in these blogs seem to be dropping but the videos are still great, keep at it!
@followMVT
R1CH
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
Netherlands10341 Posts
April 01 2012 20:24 GMT
#9
On April 02 2012 04:35 OneMoreGame wrote:
Actually, that probably has more to do with something I am doing wrong setting wise and not the TC itself Rich, but I hear ya. Feel like taking a peek one night as I tweak some things that I think might be causing some of that artifacting?

I don't know the slightest thing about TriCasters unfortunately, seems like it would have to be a setting on that (or perhaps whatever method you're using to capture the PCs is not supporting 1080p).
AdministratorTwitter: @R1CH_TL
SirScoots
Profile Joined December 2010
United States138 Posts
April 01 2012 22:23 GMT
#10
I think the issue is 1080i v 1080p, so I shall investigate this further within the TC and my capture devices! I shall get that Rich blessing, oh yes I shall!
R1CH
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
Netherlands10341 Posts
April 01 2012 22:37 GMT
#11
:D
AdministratorTwitter: @R1CH_TL
NonY
Profile Blog Joined June 2007
8748 Posts
April 01 2012 22:58 GMT
#12
Every time I see a new post I want to watch it and then I look at the length and decide not to. Well, I'm really missing out haha. I'm gonna put aside some time to watch all of these!
"Fucking up is part of it. If you can't fail, you have to always win. And I don't think you can always win." Elliott Smith ---------- Yet no sudden rage darkened his face, and his eyes were calm as they studied her. Then he smiled. 'Witness.'
moosez
Profile Joined November 2011
United States5 Posts
April 02 2012 19:49 GMT
#13
Really interesting insight. Thanks for these.
"Go get yourself some toilet paper cos your lyrics is butt" - A Tribe Called Quest
morbvs
Profile Joined June 2011
Germany358 Posts
April 03 2012 01:17 GMT
#14
I love the pip idea. Did EG actually use that in a live match or replay cast?

I assume you would need an extra observer just to provide possible pips of the things that the casters might be missing. I imagine it to be quite difficult in a live cast. The pip-feed-observer and the normal caster would constantly have to be aware of where each other's ingame view is at any given moment in order not to show the same things and react in the blink of an eye with showing/hiding the pip...

Or was the pip permanently there and the pip-observer just tried to avoid looking at the stuff the caster is looking at?

Or is the live stream delayed and the pip-obs is showing stuff he realized the casters had been missing and the pip is actual "real time", so basically brought into a stream picture that is, let's say, 1 min old... Then the timing could be a problem...

About the green screen stuff... I don't like those tricaster studio things at all. You can almost always immediately tell that they are fake, no matter how well they are done. I see them a lot in TV, especially in US productions, a bit less in german ones, and they are always a nuisance to me. I strongly prefer real backgrounds, especially if there is something going on.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
moge
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
United States124 Posts
April 03 2012 02:03 GMT
#15
@Morbvs, from what I understand Scoots uses the casters feeds as the secondary feed so only a single obs is needed. The casters, in essence, act as the second obs.
gentle lover of esports - Product Manager for http://iHearteSports.com
Primadog
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States4411 Posts
April 29 2012 05:37 GMT
#16
Love it when moge gushes all over a minute part of production. We'd never notice the care taken to it otherwise.
Thank God and gunrun.
shell
Profile Joined October 2010
Portugal2722 Posts
April 30 2012 22:11 GMT
#17
i love the EG stuff and i like your videos also!

I believe these are great for our community since it provides like you said 3 times "constructive criticism". This industry is trying to make "real" money and if they want people to pay they have to give us some more.

Players and good casters are easy to come by these days, there's always something on. If you want people to pay you need to earn it..
BENFICA || Besties: idra, Stephano, Nestea, Jaedong, Serral, Jinro, Scarlett || Zerg <3
Lobo2me
Profile Joined May 2010
Norway1213 Posts
May 06 2012 16:19 GMT
#18
Good job on the episodes, I've watched most of them and I like them
Bad manners are better than no manners at all.
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