Debrief of AV 2011 - From the web user's point of view

[Jim Heffelfinger]

Great to have the cams. They were so much better than last year. Having a live cam - great ..... BUT you need to have a director on the head set to keep the camera person [pc] focused. It appeared a bit ADD on may of the days. Frustrating that the commentary is calling out some activity and we see long pauses of runway or empty sky. Zooming in and out too fast and .... you get the drift. I know you are working with volunteers.

[Adam Smith]

Thanks for the feedback Jim. We don't have the resources to run it like a true live TV broadcast but saw an opportunity to make the tower camera accessible, and I'd like to thank everyone who made this happen particularly Paul Hayden and Discovery World in Milwaukee who donated almost 10 TB of streaming data. This was Year 3 of video live streaming, and each year we have made a significant advance over the previous year. I think that's how it will continue in the future.

[sphealey]

Strongly suggest that webcams (and all of oshkosh365.org and eaa.org) be tested for, and operable in, non-Microsoft environments. That is, Firefox, Opera, Safari,and Chrome browsers and also Macintosh, Linux, and mobile desktops. They should also operate without the need for plug-ins, which many environments do not support and security practice often forbids anyway. EAA seems to be going more Microsoft-centric just when the rest of the world is moving in the other direction.

sPh

[DBurr]

I use Gentoo Linux and Firefox, and I didn't have any issues with the live video other than being unable to control the camera. I suspect that's because I have flash cookies turned off. Wasn't an issue for me. I do agree with sphealey that using web standards and avoiding proprietary lock-in is always good.

I have four 'web debrief' comments:
1) I'd rather be there :-)
2) Overall, I think the airventure and oshkosh365 website administrators do a great job. It helped me stay in touch with what was happening, even though I couldn't be there.
3) It would be nice if the airventure website had an inclusive site map. There are certain pages/sections (e.g. http://www.airventure.org/atc/) that have a lot of interesting information and links, but don't seem to be accessible from any link available on the main page. I only find out about them by running across links in these forums.
4) There are lots of great pictures in the multimedia/photos section, but hardly any of homebuilts. For example, perhaps I didn't look hard enough, but I didn't see any photos that I could correlate to the just-announced award winners. Am I the only one that goes to Experimental Aircraft shows to take pictures of beautifully-crafted experimental aircraft? :-)

Anyway, don't take this as whining. I appreciate the effort that went into the EAA websites, and the right fix for point 4 is just to go there and do it myself. Perhaps next year this dang plane will finally be finished...

[Ken Finney]

I had big problems with EAA Radio this year (which I detailed in the "EAA Radio" thread), and after doing some more analysis over the weekend, appear to be 90% at the EAA end. I feel cheated, because in the past I was able to listen to many, many hours (last year I had at least 0ne day of 20 hours of listening), and this year I couldn't. I'd like to work with someone at EAA Radio to make sure these issues don't re-occur next year. I know how GREAT the content is, and I'm not slamming EAA Radio, I just want to make it as widely available as possible. My comments only apply to EAA Radio, not the Justin IV feed or the webcams.

[Paul Hayden]

I had looked into switching over to IIS7 and the media services to use Silverlight, but there just wasn't enough time or money to go that route this year. Based on last year's feedback it seemed more important that we move the cameras to stable locations and put the majority of the resources to adding infrastructure in the FAA tower to bring the airshows online. Todd and I will work to reduce the browser and plug in related issues for next year in the meantime, please remember this stuff isn’t cheap, we are lucky enough to have assistance from Discovery World who has donated/loaned a significant amount of encoders, servers, staff time and about 10TB of bandwidth to make these cameras possible this year. There are always things we would all like to see improved, things we want to add, support ect, but it all comes down to time and sponsorship, so let me know if you have the ability to assist with either and let’s see what we can pull off next year.

[Ken Finney]

Paul - so you are the contact person I should be dealing with? I'm pretty sure there is/was a javascript error that was causing me some problems, the configuration file for shockwave was changed from last year, and I have another suggestion or two that will help make the coverage more available, without increasing the total bandwidth. If so, I'll contact you directly, rather than through the forum.

[Paul Hayden]

It depends. I do the video streaming, Hal is the web guy for EAA, and Fareed is the EAA guy who oversees streaming media and EAA radio.

[Fareed Guyot]

Ken et Al,

Feel free to write or call me about your EAA Radio or web streaming issues. We welcome your suggestions. We do ask that you all keep in mind that we have to make our services available to the widest range of users and therefore we often go with tried and tested software and hardware that may be closer to obsolete than cutting edge.

EAA of course wants to provide the best web streaming experience possible without having to charge a separate fee to watch. Our expenditures are driven by this goal. The web service you have seen so far has been driven by the creativity and generosity of many volunteers and as much budget as we could scrape together. We welcome any additional resources to help make this better while keeping it a part of the "Member value" you receive with your membership.



fguyot@eaa.org 920-426-6555

Fareed Guyot
Electronic Publications

[Jim Heffelfinger]

Thanks for the service. I was not trying to kick the dog. Just noting the challenges I witnessed. The bar keeps moving in video services. wobbly stuck cameras last year, this year wandering camera crew, next year we will complain there should be at least 720 resolution. ( actually it really would be nice) . BTW what would it take to have key video archived so we could watch it either later in the day (v. live) or a future date?
There I go moving the bar again..... never satisfied.
Neanderthals were satisfied people.

[Fareed Guyot]

Jim...we appreciate your understanding...we want those things too. We already have some ideas of how to improve this for next year. We have done so well we can't hid behind the R&D screen anymore. :D