Hugo Night

[kevin_standlee]

An amazingly busy evening and night around the Hugo Awards. I really don't have the time or energy to write the full story. I'm pleased at how well the CoverItLive coverage of the ceremony went — over 200 people were in there — but I'm disappointed at how difficult the video live-streaming was. The problem was that we didn't really have any way that I know of to stress-test a broadcast where more than 100 people wanted to watch, as opposed to the 3 or 4 people watching our "test" broadcasts of the Business Meetings. There was no apparent problem with the signal here at the convention centre, which was consistently strong, but every time we got beyond about 40 people watching, the software started complaining and eventually the server would stop responding. I don't know if this is a function of a not-particularly-whiz-bang computer driving the video or what.

While despairing over how the live video would come and go, I could at least look forward to being able to put out the separate recording of the ceremony. Except that somewhere along the line, the Sony shut off recording. I think there must be something about that camera that inists on stopping after a while. I'm probably going to need to deliberately introduce a brief stop-and-start at least once an hour to be safe.

But I'm told I shouldn't be too hard on myself. The ceremony itself went quite smoothly, and I'm very happy with the results. Congratulations to everyone who won, especially Cheryl, who collects her third Hugo Award, this time as one of the editors of Clarkesworld. And I'm also quite happy that Phil & Kaja Foglio were here to collect their Hugo Award for Girl Genius.

Comments

[petrea-mitchell.livejournal.com]

All I want to say is WOOHOO MOON!

I eagerly await the detailed results to show just how unjustified the fears of Avatar winning were.

[julesjones]

I didn't even try to get into the video link since it was already reported to be flaky by the time I arrived at the text coverage, but thanks for your efforts, and better luck next time. I'm grateful for the text coverage.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Honestly, we were thrilled just to be getting live info from there at *all*! Sitting here in Seattle, it felt like living in the future, chatting with people in California and the East coast and England and being able to find out what was happening in Australia. :)

And the video did work well enough that I got to see that it was really real, I got to see my friend actually up on the stage, and I got to hear her voice actually making an acceptance speech! <3 <3 <3

So, at least in my corner of the world, we're all terribly grateful for everything that you and the other folks did to bring us close to the event. Thank you!

Is there any chance you'll be posting the video that you *do* have, up to the point where it stopped? I'm sure people would be grateful to see what there is. (I know I would be!)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I will eventually post the ceremony video to Vimeo. Fortunately, I only ended up losing about a minute or two, but that minute was the announcement of the result of Best Novel. There's a gap between Kim Stanley Robinson reading the nominees and China Miéville giving his acceptance speech.

[corwynofamber.livejournal.com]

I will want to chat with you about the setup you tried.

We are currently looking into streaming the PK Dick Awards this year and I was planning on streaming the Hugo at Reno, so building on your experiences will be helpful.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest a backup plan in the future of a separate camera/computer (well, two cameras), where it's done on "five or so minute tape delay"; one camera does five minutes of taping. It's then stopped, and the other camera's turned on to do the next five minutes. Meanwhile, the first five minutes gets uploaded to YouTube. Not live, but close and it lets YouTube's many, many, servers deal with the tiny to them load.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, had we actually planned this whole thing way out in advance, we probably would have done something like that; however, the entire idea of even doing the streaming was something that came up very nearly on the last minute, so it was very hastily assembled. I was doing things with no prep and no backup, which I detest. I'll write more about this when I get a chance to slow down, I think.

Meanwhile, this is more of a case in which I'm told I should not complain about the quality of the bear's dancing. Also, there's some hope that future Worldcons will actively take a hand in causing such 'casts to happen, rather than as in this year's case not doing anything to block it (and in the case of the Hugo Ceremony director and Hugo Administrator, being very cooperative to the extent they were allowed to do so, such as getting the ConReporter/TheHugoAwards reporting team reserved seats in one of the places where there was access to one of the floor plates under which there were power outlets.