I’ve seen various discussions about recording yourself for anti cheating reasons in online live tournaments. There is a thread about the rights and wrongs of it here:
But my question is, in practical terms how do you do it? What is the set up you need? And how do you send the resulting video?
I’m not incompetent but I’m not that technical. I can’t see how I would make a 2-hour uncut video and transmit it to someone. How is it done?
Say I use a desktop to play on. Is it a matter of enabling the webcam to record? I have a camera but it will only record for about 20 mins before stopping. I have a phone but I doubt I could record for that long with it without it stopping (memory is a constant struggle).
I must be missing something obvious as this recording yourself business is generally made to sound quite easy but I’m baffled! Thank you
I ended up buying a mini tripod for my phone. It was a struggle the whole time, the battery doesn’t last for a whole game so that killed the recording in endgame (byo-yomi too) the first time. Space is a struggle on the phone also, and even setting to a lower resolution didn’t help that much.
Even more of a struggle to get the video off of the phone quickly either with cloud storage or otherwise in between rounds.
It probably would be better to use something like an external webcam that you could place behind, and some screen recording, either Skype or zoom or something was supposed to have a feature like that, or obs I suppose.
The optimal solution should use a not expensive phone and as less as possible more material so that most people can make it.
Besides i hope that tournaments management and federations who prone the use of video recording give us the cheapest and efficient way to do it afterall.
Well i remember a recent topic on DIY stones and that south American go player couldn’t afford a set.
I mean today much more people own a phone as a computer.
I’m not sure I’d be able to buy a webcam for 10€ locally, and if we include shipping it wouldn’t be that close to 10€, eyeballing amazon.
Still though it isn’t like buying the webcam solves the problem, one still needs some software to record it with, storage ~2hr film if a game lasts that long (and it has for me). Then one also needs a method of sharing a ~10-15GB file, likely some kind of cloud storage solution, if asked to share the footage.
I think saying “you can afford a 10€ webcam if you have a computer” is a little bit reductive.
It’s just a thing we have to do while we wait for other methods to take over I guess, in order to play online.
Well we could have a debate on tournaments costs too which can vary a lot according to the spirit and inspiration of organizers.
I did a lot of tournaments when i stayed in Germany and many cared you don’t burn your money. Sleeping on martial art tatami or free in the locals houses , eating good self made Sandwich… And sharing a car to go there.
Quite a contrast with some luxuous others.
Thank you everyone! I think this is basically the answer:
External webcam,
Some kind of tripod or support for the cam,
OBS,
WeTransfer,
I’m going to assume that if the tourney is serious enough to merit recording then it’ll not be played on a phone. I realise this might not be true for everyone but I think that in the main assuming a pc or laptop is available should be fairly sound these days (at least in the UK)
So a bit more research to do:
Is screen capturing necessary? Does OBS do this and record via webcam? (You can tell I’m not a streamer)
Do you end up with two files (screen capturing and recording of self etc.)?
OBS can capture one or several windows. Webcam capture is just one of the windows, so you can capture webcam alone, or screen+webcam, or screen alone. Each of the windows can be resized and moved as you wish, and you only get one file.
And I suppose TDs give guidance on what Res and combination of window sizes are needed.
I’m not technical enough to have an AI on my computer but suppose there is some minimum requirement of quality/size in order for these kinds of recordings to be useful.
Anyway, thank you very much everyone. I might try investigate this. The recording business is a significant hurdle to tourney participation for me just in terms of feeling that the practicalities are manageable. So this is very useful.
The last thing will be setting up the angles to avoid too many passing children being in shot…
and will produce a video of 150 MB/hour. The quality is poor but should be enough to show that you are not using AI in another window. But you have to try out by yourself to check and increase video bitrate if necessary.
In the privacy policy page I see a mention to the use of email, results and a photo being taken. Video footage of a person is a big deal, it doesn’t feel right that there’s no mention of concerns about it.
I’m sure you know we are somewhat serious about GDPR here.
How are players supposed to share them, if asked? Who will have access? Where will they be stored? For how long? Are there size restrictions? File type restrictions? Platform restrictions?
Since it seems the throwaway “record yourselves” is what we’re going with moving forward, someone should at least address these points.
