not that I know anything about it . . .
Over in the snooker section, a poster commented on the harsh lighting of the video stream of the Canadian Snooker Championship.
The camera placement was much different than used for pool streams.
So, let's have your tips on getting the best quality video.
Not that I know anything about video but as a former fairly serious photographer I can tell you that you need a lens, lighting, positioning, and planning. Few video cameras and locations don't need extra lighting for decent video. The extra lighting is often unpleasant for pool players who aren't used to it so this is seemingly an issue without a solution. Additional lighting needs to be positioned as high as possible and further out from the table than the typical pool table lighting so players can actually be seen. It also has to be balanced to the pool table lighting to avoid having the harsh appearing lighting mentioned in the snooker video. I suspect that the lens settings needed to get any image in the darker areas made the lighting on the tables appear very harsh, the typical problem with pool type video.
For cameras you will need multiple fixed position remote controlled cameras to do things right if you don't want a cameraman sharking players nonstop that aren't used to such things.
The final issue is that streamers are at the mercy of the uplink provider. The way around that is your own uplink. That can be had for about $40-$60K and a thousand or two a month. Remote cameras and a control system to run them will set you back over a hundred thousand to do it right. All in all I figured a little ingenuity and $200 to $250K would let a person have a main "TV" table and decent entertainment coverage of a table on either side of it when action wasn't happening on the main table.
It would take a two to four man crew the entire time broadcasting was taking place and probably a couple of roadie types to handle the amount of equipment needed. At this point pool video can't begin to cover the cost of the enterprise so a person would have to become a videographer that shot pool events as a sideline. With the current state of streaming it is doubtful that anyone could do anything but lose a ton trying to bring top quality unobtrusive video to the pool world. The same set-up would be super sweet to video large weddings, indoor corporate events and such. There are major duckies to be made there that could cover the overhead and a nice profit if you got your toe in the door but you might find that you no longer had time to video pool which was the original idea!
For equipment ideas for this and more modest set-ups request B&H's video catalog. I seem to remember a lighting catalog too and understanding lighting makes or breaks video or still photography.
For starters I would be looking for an expandable multi-camera set-up that can shoot HD in low light. Two for starters but I would think that six would cover a pool table pretty good. The set-up I looked at a few years ago handled blocks of four cameras so the goal would have been to eventually have eight cameras. These were small units that were remote controlled and unobtrusive. I don't remember dollars but they were in the multi-thousand range each I believe, seem to remember around ten or twenty.
It has been years since I checked into what it would take to bring a top quality video production of pool to reality, hard to say how much of this is accurate anymore other than that you have to have the basics mentioned to begin with covered.
Hu
