Sons' sorrow

[squeezebox-son]

That was possibly a bigger win today than we realise in terms of stopping the rot before our potential huge banana skin. If we can grab ourselves a routine and comfortable win next week it might just get us back on track.

[jaggyness]

Is the Sauchie game PPV, presumably? Not included in the ST?

Can only speak for what I know but clydebank weren't able to stream their first round tie. I think the agreement to stream is maybe with the spfl rather than the sfa

[FifeSons]

Right, who put Stevie Aitken under our “favoured personnel” on the new football manager? 

[FifeSons]

The game also reckons we’re paying Paul Paton £450/week?! 
 

 

[Jan Vojáček]

On 20/11/2021 at 21:04, jaggyness said:

On 20/11/2021 at 19:42, FifeSons said:

Is the Sauchie game PPV, presumably? Not included in the ST?

Can only speak for what I know but clydebank weren't able to stream their first round tie. I think the agreement to stream is maybe with the spfl rather than the sfa

Not sure what Clydebank's issue was, unless they planned to stream it on YouTube as they have done with their home league games, or if things are different in the earlier rounds. I checked this morning and we'll be streaming the Sauchie game. Which is a relief given my notes are almost done for it!

[microdave]

Prices announced for Saturday.

[the snudge]

14 hours ago, microdave said:

Prices announced for Saturday.

Decent pricing to be fair. Hopefully a decent crowd. 

[O'Kelly Isley III]

Very sad news about the passing of Ronnie Curran.  Anyone who watched Sons thro the 1960's will remember his no holds-barred commitment to the cause, and he was certainly one of the hardest players ever to pull on a black and gold shirt.  There are so many stories about Ronnie - too many to repeat here - but I had the pleasure of meeting him in person on Boghead's last day and he was the complete antithesis of his on-field persona. 

[Bring Back Paddy Flannery]

On 22/11/2021 at 20:52, microdave said:

Prices announced for Saturday.

Slightly disappointed we haven’t reduced the price of the live stream as well. 

[microdave]

Slightly disappointed we haven’t reduced the price of the live stream as well. 

I'd agree there. Imo, the stream should always be a wee bit cheaper than the entrance fee. I would've charged £8 for it tomorrow.

[Jan Vojáček]

I know there were a few issues with the stream yesterday (although I never really know until people tell me for obvious reasons!). Thought it might be a good time to post this up again.

Basically Sarti is the only volunteer we have to cover the technical side of the stream. We put out an appeal in June but I don't think anyone came forward - so if we have issues and he can't make a game then we're effectively humped. 

It's similar with the Goal Cam. My brother isn't about at as many games this season (with his Bankies involvement) so we don't have anyone to run it. Hence it's not a thing - despite us having two perfectly good GoPros sitting about. We're obviously one of the few clubs left who don't do highlights anymore either.

Volunteering on the media side at DFC is time consuming. I won't deny that. And you can expect complaints from our fans about anything and everything they don't instantly love (especially after a defeat...). There are also plenty of SPFL rules to learn about what you can and can't do, and when you can post things. And there are a few clubs who love to be awkward about things. But if anyone has the skills (or fancies learning them on the job) then fire the club an email and offer to help out.

https://www.dumbartonfootballclub.com/news/?mode=view&id=4947

I know from speaking to other clubs (namely East Fife and Airdrie) that they have cracking wee teams of media volunteers for highlights, streaming, post-match interviews with players and the manager and so on. It would be fantastic to have something similar to that at DFC. 

[Bring Back Paddy Flannery]

3 hours ago, Jan Vojáček said:

I know there were a few issues with the stream yesterday (although I never really know until people tell me for obvious reasons!). Thought it might be a good time to post this up again.

Basically Sarti is the only volunteer we have to cover the technical side of the stream. We put out an appeal in June but I don't think anyone came forward - so if we have issues and he can't make a game then we're effectively humped. 

It's similar with the Goal Cam. My brother isn't about at as many games this season (with his Bankies involvement) so we don't have anyone to run it. Hence it's not a thing - despite us having two perfectly good GoPros sitting about. We're obviously one of the few clubs left who don't do highlights anymore either.

Volunteering on the media side at DFC is time consuming. I won't deny that. And you can expect complaints from our fans about anything and everything they don't instantly love (especially after a defeat...). There are also plenty of SPFL rules to learn about what you can and can't do, and when you can post things. And there are a few clubs who love to be awkward about things. But if anyone has the skills (or fancies learning them on the job) then fire the club an email and offer to help out.

https://www.dumbartonfootballclub.com/news/?mode=view&id=4947

I know from speaking to other clubs (namely East Fife and Airdrie) that they have cracking wee teams of media volunteers for highlights, streaming, post-match interviews with players and the manager and so on. It would be fantastic to have something similar to that at DFC. 

Is it maybe worth the club reaching out to Clydebank College? There may even be some pupils at one of the local schools who have an interest in a media career and something like that would look good on their CV at such a young age.

[the snudge]

12 hours ago, Bring Back Paddy Flannery said:

Is it maybe worth the club reaching out to Clydebank College? There may even be some pupils at one of the local schools who have an interest in a media career and something like that would look good on their CV at such a young 

Great shout! We need to blood some successors to our comme tary team before they're snapped up into the big leagues. 

[LeodhasXD]

On 28/11/2021 at 17:38, Jan Vojáček said:

 

I too am in the situation of solo-carrying a stream (and our social media, website, probably a few other things that aren't as succinct.) It's helped me to try to make everything super-efficient - one of those efficiency savings was setting up a stream and streaming service independent of Pixellot. I know that's not helpful and probably viable for you guys but every stream I think of the relief that I'm not worrying about how it'll function.

 

[Jan Vojáček]

8 minutes ago, LeodhasXD said:

I too am in the situation of solo-carrying a stream (and our social media, website, probably a few other things that aren't as succinct.) It's helped me to try to make everything super-efficient - one of those efficiency savings was setting up a stream and streaming service independent of Pixellot. I know that's not helpful and probably viable for you guys but every stream I think of the relief that I'm not worrying about how it'll function.

I think that possibly would've been a better option for us looking back on it. Obviously I've not watched your stream, but the Alloa highlights are first class. A similar quality of the stream is considerably better looking than the best Pixellot can produce.

The external issues are a pest. I'm not actually sure if we've had a problem yet that's been directly our fault (e.g not setting a stream up correctly, connectivity issues at the stadium, hardware problems with mics and so on). They've almost all been at Pixellot's end. If it was in house we'd have issues too I'm sure. But we might be better placed to sort them. 

I say all that as someone with a degree in journalism and absolutely no talent whatsoever at livestreaming. I can film an interview, I can cut highlights. Anything beyond that brings me out in a sweat

On the college shouts I think that's something that was/is being looked into. I remember it being mentioned a few months back - but I'm not sure if it ever came to anything. It would be really useful though. At UWS we had a tie up with St Mirren that got quite a few folk hands on experience covering games. Something similar at DFC would be really helpful - and might even attract some more fans.

[O'Kelly Isley III]

For anyone nostalgic for Boghead, from Page 220 onwards of 'Lifted Over The Turnstiles Volume 2' there are some cracking pictures of the grand old place.  One in particular taken from the Silverton End during a game in the late 1950's with the Crags as a towering backdrop is hugely evocative.

A proper four-sided old school Scottish football ground.

[Sons FC]

18 minutes ago, Jan Vojáček said:

I think that possibly would've been a better option for us looking back on it. Obviously I've not watched your stream, but the Alloa highlights are first class. A similar quality of the stream is considerably better looking than the best Pixellot can produce.

The external issues are a pest. I'm not actually sure if we've had a problem yet that's been directly our fault (e.g not setting a stream up correctly, connectivity issues at the stadium, hardware problems with mics and so on). They've almost all been at Pixellot's end. If it was in house we'd have issues too I'm sure. But we might be better placed to sort them. 

I say all that as someone with a degree in journalism and absolutely no talent whatsoever at livestreaming. I can film an interview, I can cut highlights. Anything beyond that brings me out in a sweat

On the college shouts I think that's something that was/is being looked into. I remember it being mentioned a few months back - but I'm not sure if it ever came to anything. It would be really useful though. At UWS we had a tie up with St Mirren that got quite a few folk hands on experience covering games. Something similar at DFC would be really helpful - and might even attract some more fans.

Glasgow College media school would also be a good start as the head of the school is a Dumbarton supporter.

[LeodhasXD]

22 minutes ago, Jan Vojáček said:

 

Yeah I understand. Saturday against Bonnyrigg  is an excellent showcase of how our stream looks because that footage literally was what was streamed.

On any solo issues -

Spoiler

- the worst things I've done this season are having a stretched usb cable cut off our audio interface, momentarily, but the software didn't like the interruption and I didn't notice that for the last 25 minutes of the game we had only as much commentary as the camera microphone picked up.

When we've done away streams we're using a 4G dongle, although the media guidelines advise we should get access to the internet, I don't know if we reciprocate that at Alloa to a level it would support streaming so I've never asked away. Falkirk away was rough because we didn't get enough bitrate for about 10 minutes of the 90. Unfortunately, that was the period of time that both goals were scored.

I made a comment in the "Scottish cup 4th round draw - who do you want?" thread that I'm a bit off a submarine captain in that I don't know at which point I need to upgrade the website to facilitate the numbers for streaming. The amazon product/channel I use will handle 15,000 which is overkill. It's so far seemed to work efficiently with our regular numbers but there is a limit somewhere....

This is turning into a ridiculous ramble but this is where my process is on a Saturday at the moment.

Spoiler

I tend to set everything equipment-wise up way in advance as it helps my matchday anxiety. I've just bought a toolbox to store everything so I know if I have the toolbox I have all the equipment I will need.

Our matchday starts with getting the teams 75 minutes from kick-off.  We use a cloud-based spreadsheet to make the official teamlines and the referee's teamline. I download the sheet and use it generate the stream graphic for the team lineups. I like to leave the camera running on the warmup and if I'm super organised I'll play the highlights of our last game and my interview with the manager from midweek. 5/10 minutes to kick-off we start commentary and talk about our team and the away team/anything interesting from the guest.

I have on most matchdays a team of three - Paula does the support chat, Kieren carries the main commentary, I do the camera, producing and (if we can't get a special guest co-commentator) I chip in with the co-comms. Away streams have been done with two of us and it's technically feasible to do everything on my own.  

I've got a bunch of scenes in our encoding software - pre-match, camera only, game, replay, half-time highlight reel and, recently, second camera.

With the way we do streams - I have a hotkey that saves the last 12 seconds of video - I have a hotkey to replay the highlight - These clips are on a loop of highlights  at half time.

When it comes to editing highlights I sync the original footage with the highlights (this is done in software, It' takes about 30 seconds)- adjust the cuts for the actual start of the play/coherent start to commentary. 

After the game I like to render a the full game for sharing with the SPFL partners and the manager - I take off the commentary tracks.

I render a high quality full game with the commentary the full match playlist.

While I do these two and upload them, I edit the highlights, do the match report, and keep an eye on social media.

Last steps are uploading the highlights - sharing the midnight release and, ideally, at between 8-10pm I head home and don't work the rest of the weekend.

I wanted our website to run everything and not have a separate website like every other streaming system. People have already developed membership systems so I used one of them in our shop. 

I set up our video service with Amazon and cut out any middle men - in pixellot's case that's univtec.

Complaints dropped exponentially, from memory I've had three emails with any issues in the last 4 months and we're into the thousands in unique viewers.

 

[Frank Quitely]

Dundee at home.

[microdave]

Mon the DFC.













Oh.