pro pool video

8

8baller

Registered
hello all

im from uk and only get to play the small table pool but after finding propoolvideo.com it inspired me to do some of my own

the problem i have is the quality

does ne one know what cameras they are using to film the videos on that web site?

my web site is www.blackballvideo.com only a few on there now and im only been filming local small money matches set up for filming

all the vids alos only have one angle (my hand is not very steady and didnt fancy given viewers sea sickness)

ne tips on cameras, editing would be great thanks
 
I watched the guy from propoolvideo film the World 10 Ball semi's and finals. I know nothing about video cameras or editing so I cant help you there, but he did have a pretty cool mobile tripod rig set up.

It was a LARGE tripod mounted on wheels with the center post of the tripod extended up to about 7 feet off the ground. The camera was mounted on top and he controlled it by moving the tilt/pan head or by moving the whole contraption around the table.

Pretty slick way to get interesting angles with just one camera. I guess it is no more intrusive than the monster boom cameras ESPN and Accu-Stats uses.
 
One of the big problems people have with making internet videos is the software that they use. The footage from almost any digital video camera (unless it's very very old) will be fine quality, very crisp and clear. But that video isn't compressed so the filesize is huge, and the software's job is to both transfer it to the computer and then encode it to something that is compressed decently.

Sometimes the compression choices and presets in the software just suck... they either 'overbake' the video so that it's a good filesize but loses tons of quality, or their video encoder sucks and makes giant file sizes no matter what.

If you suspect this is what's happening to you, I'd be glad to help, I do digital video editing all the time and know how to a lot of quality packed into a decent filesize.

Also, you can email them using the contact info on their website: info@propoolvideo.com
 
ok thanks

do you know of a good encoder to use then? that prob would help alot

and is there any good editing software (for free if poss)

cheers
 
to just encode without doing much editing (except basic cutting and some filters to fix minor problems), Virtualdub is great and it's free. To actually edit properly I am used to using Adobe Premiere, which costs boatloads and you'll basically have to steal it for a small project like this... or go with Apple's Final Cut Pro, which I know nothing about except it might be mac-only for the latest version and it's probably also expensive.

I think you can get the job done with virtualdub alone. I rarely have to use premiere anymore except for nice transitions.

There are 4 major codecs to consider when encoding:

1. divx (avi) - common as dirt and pretty good encoding, everything can play it by now (almost any computer video player can, and a few standalone dvd players can too), not perfect compression but quite good. There's a 3rd party take on this called xvid that has some nice tweaks but it's essentially the same.

2. h264 (avi, mp4) - the best possible compression right now, with x264 being a freeware open source encoder you can use. Apple has started using this. You can get the most bang for your buck with this, the downside is that it's not as well known and widespread as xvid, people who download h264-encoded videos will probably end up having to download the codec. The mp4 format is not playable by every computer video player in the world also tho most major ones now handle it.

3. windows media (wmv, asf): very strong codec, at least as good as divx in terms of compression, but for the most part you must use windows movie maker or some other microsoft software to encode with it. They don't like 3rd party programs being able to open or create wmv's, tho a few exist. Also the ms software often suffers from the overbaking issue, it's usually run with presets and you can't fine tune the compression, and often you'll end up with something that's got a tiny filesize but is also way too blurry (I have a 1 hour 52 min DCC match that got squished to 95 mb, and it's a miracle but you can barely tell the color of the balls). A lot of people think this is a low quality codec because of the tendency of people to use it incorrectly (which is mostly the fault of the crappy software) but it's actually very good. It also can be streamed so that people can watch while they download, which the other formats can't (tho they can sorta fake it).

4. mpeg-2: this doesn't compress the video nearly as much as the other guys, but it's the standard used in all DVDs. So if you wanted to make a DVD later, there wouldn't need to be any special conversion. I don't think that's a good enough reason to use it though, filesizes will be huge.

My advice: Go with divx. Virtualdub plays well with it, it's free to encode and many computer media players decode it without requiring an additional download. It's well established and does the job pretty well. h264 is not well known and most people will almost certainly have to download the codec. WMV is too limited by the encoding software. mpeg2 is too big.

Hope that helped, and let me know if you need instructions on virtualdub or settings or anything else that comes to mind =)
 
wow thanks
i have been doing it in windows movie maker, but then translating it to divx so i can upload on the tnet (the site i used only liked divx files)

ill get hold of vitural dub tonight and play around with it,

next thing i would like to do is get the scores imposed over the video and show whihc colour the players are ie yellow or reds so the viewer dont have to try and figured it out them selves and not have to wiat for end of frame to see the score

would adobe premire do this? cheers
 
CreeDo said:
to just encode without doing much editing (except basic cutting and some filters to fix minor problems), Virtualdub is great and it's free. To actually edit properly I am used to using Adobe Premiere, which costs boatloads and you'll basically have to steal it for a small project like this... or go with Apple's Final Cut Pro, which I know nothing about except it might be mac-only for the latest version and it's probably also expensive.

I think you can get the job done with virtualdub alone. I rarely have to use premiere anymore except for nice transitions.

There are 4 major codecs to consider when encoding:

1. divx (avi) - common as dirt and pretty good encoding, everything can play it by now (almost any computer video player can, and a few standalone dvd players can too), not perfect compression but quite good. There's a 3rd party take on this called xvid that has some nice tweaks but it's essentially the same.

2. h264 (avi, mp4) - the best possible compression right now, with x264 being a freeware open source encoder you can use. Apple has started using this. You can get the most bang for your buck with this, the downside is that it's not as well known and widespread as xvid, people who download h264-encoded videos will probably end up having to download the codec. The mp4 format is not playable by every computer video player in the world also tho most major ones now handle it.

3. windows media (wmv, asf): very strong codec, at least as good as divx in terms of compression, but for the most part you must use windows movie maker or some other microsoft software to encode with it. They don't like 3rd party programs being able to open or create wmv's, tho a few exist. Also the ms software often suffers from the overbaking issue, it's usually run with presets and you can't fine tune the compression, and often you'll end up with something that's got a tiny filesize but is also way too blurry (I have a 1 hour 52 min DCC match that got squished to 95 mb, and it's a miracle but you can barely tell the color of the balls). A lot of people think this is a low quality codec because of the tendency of people to use it incorrectly (which is mostly the fault of the crappy software) but it's actually very good. It also can be streamed so that people can watch while they download, which the other formats can't (tho they can sorta fake it).

4. mpeg-2: this doesn't compress the video nearly as much as the other guys, but it's the standard used in all DVDs. So if you wanted to make a DVD later, there wouldn't need to be any special conversion. I don't think that's a good enough reason to use it though, filesizes will be huge.

My advice: Go with divx. Virtualdub plays well with it, it's free to encode and many computer media players decode it without requiring an additional download. It's well established and does the job pretty well. h264 is not well known and most people will almost certainly have to download the codec. WMV is too limited by the encoding software. mpeg2 is too big.

Hope that helped, and let me know if you need instructions on virtualdub or settings or anything else that comes to mind =)
Click to expand...

Good information here, although it's only 1/2 of the ideal answer. The trend in the online media industry is towards Flash as a delivery platform, which is what propoolvideo.com based their delivery on - and what we did w/ the IPT months ago.

All major content providers - Disney, ABC, NBC, Youtube all use Flash because the users do not need to download codecs. In addition, Flash 7 and later is already installed on 98% of the world's browsers, versus mid/upper 60%'s for the players required to view the above formats. It can also be embedded to fit the web page beautifully, without a player to mess up the design (propoolvideo did a good job w/ this, I think).

What you want to do is encode your video using MPEG2 (don't worry about the file size issue - it soon becomes a non-issue). While in this format, you can do whatever editing you want--- transitions, graphic bugs, etc. Once you have finished product you're happy with, you want to convert the video file to Flash - there are a few options here. This can take a couple of hours per match, even on a very high end system. There are a few options in conversion, but essentially you want to convert using a double (sometimes called dual) pass encode. This will eliminate most pixelation in transitions and provide the best possible stream for the bitrate. Typical bitrates for Flash delivery are around 250k for medium quality up to 500 for higher quality.

Finally, hosting...

If you're going to do something, make sure you do it right. I'm assuming whatever you're going to do will be popular, and you'll probably have a bunch of people watching your videos at the same time. Host it well - meaning, don't do it yourself (trust me, from a LOT of experience over the last decade). Choose a good-rated Flash video hosting provider... PM me if you need some recommendations. That way, when someone views your content, it doesn't chop-up and look like crap. Or, if 100 people are watching your videos, your line won't hit capacity.

Hope that helps, and good luck :)
 
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the owner of propoolvideo is a member on here u might send him a pm and ask, didn't wretch work for some pool video site out of australia? u may try and talk to him about it, have u heard any news from pco the last i heard they were going to "make it right" and pay the money they owe


http://forums.azbilliards.com/member.php?u=9341
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i have sent emails to propoolvideo.com but not had any replys :(

poolcomps is running again but i heard hes not develpoing it ne more

wretch did do some videos in aus so yes he might be a good person to contact
 
8baller said:
i have sent emails to propoolvideo.com but not had any replys :(

poolcomps is running again but i heard hes not develpoing it ne more

wretch did do some videos in aus so yes he might be a good person to contact
Click to expand...
Yeah...thanks for answering my question...
 
lol just after i said it was back it its gone offline :)

oh well maybe one day it will be going proper

set up like a poker room it would work well

back on topic....
 
I love PPV! The way he films his matches it is like you are right there in the room watching the match up close and personal. Much better than the sterile stuff they show on ESPN2.
 
good call from spider... I forgot about that end of things. I don't know much about flv and how the compression is, but it streams and presumably deletes itself later since it's considered a temporary internet file.

re: putting up numbers, colors, etc... yeah, premiere can definitely do that. But it'd be nicer to do it for less money. There's a list of free programs here. Since I own premiere I haven't explored any of them and I'm lazy to figure out which can get the job done for you. But I'm sure one of them can :)
http://tv.isg.si/site/?q=node/873
 
8baller said:
i have sent emails to propoolvideo.com but not had any replys :(

poolcomps is running again but i heard hes not develpoing it ne more

wretch did do some videos in aus so yes he might be a good person to contact
Click to expand...

Hi 8Baller,

I haven't gotten any emails from you at my propoolvideo address, although I just noticed a PM from you on here. I try to answer all of my email promptly, but I only check in here a few times a week and sometimes I forget to check my PM's. So please contact me through my site in the future for a quicker response.

As others have already mentioned I use Flash to encode my videos. It is the simply the best and has quickly become the web standard for delivering videos. There's even a free encoder now available from Riva, so you don't even need to own flash to create .flv videos.
 
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