YSTV Does Hunted - Live

YSTV Does Hunted - Live
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Genre:	Entertainment
Broadcast:	Saturday 3rd December 2022
Executive Producer(s):	Dom Hall
Producer(s):	Meg Maguire, Alexianne Charlery-Warner, Sarah Maguire, Cameron Fox

Hunted Live was the fourth installment in the YSTV Does Hunted series and the first to be restricted to the university campus. This allowed us to broadcast the entire event live.

Background

Doing a Hunted episode live had been mentioned several times, mostly as a joke, and the general consensus was that it would not really be possible. YSTV Does Hunted - Live's final form began to emerge in June 2022 after a discussion between Will Stirk and Dom Hall who thought it might actually be technically possible. The date was almost immediately set and ideas slowly progressed over the months. Proper planing started towards the end of October 2022, with a larger production and technical team brought on-board to try and make this a reality.

Pre-Prod Team

Role	Name
Executive Producer	Dom Hall
Health, Safety & Welfare Lead	Rhys Milling
Campus Producer	Alexianne Charlery-Warner
Hunter HQ Producer	Meg Maguire
Studio Producer	Sarah Maguire
VT Producer	Cameron Fox
Director	Max Roach
Campus Tech Lead	Dan Wade
Gallery Tech Lead	Jamie Parker-East
Studio/HQ Tech Lead	Beth Marsch
Graphics Lead	Marks Polakovs

Setup

Due to how distributed the production was across campus, there were a lot of technical challenges. The studio, which linked the different parts of the game together and kept viewers updated on what was going on, was based in Central Hall. Hunter HQ, which was where the hunters worked on tracking down contestants and interrogating them when caught, was based in the YSTV Studio. Static cameras, which acted as CCTV cameras, were placed at strategic points around campus, including on Central Hall balcony for an overview of campus. A number of roaming cameras (people's phones) went around campus with the teams to capture the action. All the static and roaming camera feeds and the outputs from the studio and HQ were sent to the gallery in the YSTV Control Room which mixed the final output.

We faced several technical challenges on the day, including difficulties getting power and internet to the static cameras resulting in the scrapping of two static locations last-minute. We had several communications issues, including our walkie-talkies not working as intended and issues with the built-in talkback feature of our remote video tool, meaning that static and roaming cameras had almost no communication with the gallery. We also had issues with the studio -> control room feed which was using SRT, this was likely because we were saturating the YSTV -> ITS network and the SRT packets were not prioritised over other traffic. This meant the video feed from the studio was very unreliable and kept dropping out, which was not ideal. This was ultimately fixed by reverting to RTMP.

Another large issue we had was lack of techies. Due to illness and no-shows, we had a lot fewer techies than planned which meant that the techies that were there were very stretched.

We were also incredibly lucky that it didn't rain on the day, otherwise we would have been completely screwed.

Remote video feeds

In order to get reasonably low-latency video feeds from static cameras and roaming camera operators who were spread out across campus, we used a remote video tool called vdo.ninja. This allowed people to send their camera feed over the internet to the gallery using just their phone and a web browser.

This tool had previously been used in productions during Covid-19, however not on the scale of this production and certainly not when we had people running around campus.

To help get the video feed from people's phones back to the gallery, people were connected to the university's eduroam WiFi network. This did mean that due to inevitable eduroam blind spots, video feeds were at time patchy or were lost altogether. However, due to large scale of the production and people moving around campus very quicky, this was unavoidable. Fortunately, vision mixers were able to cut to other video feeds or go back to the studio or Hunter HQ when this happened. We also designed the boundaries of the game to have as few eduroam blind spots as possible.

Another issue we had with vdo.ninja was communications. Whilst this tool did have an option for talkback, for reasons unknown this didn't work. This meant that roaming and static camera ops had almost no communication with the gallery; we had to resort to Facebook messenger group chats to enable at least some basic communication. This was very much not ideal.

Despite these technical issues, we were able to capture some really good content and get some really good video footage of the game. Although vdo.ninja is a free tool, it worked really well for us, especially considering how many camera feeds were going through this service.

Static CCTV Cameras

To help provide an alternate viewing angle and a more reliable feed where eduroam would have been patchy, we planned to place five cameras around campus. These would be wired to the university network, therefore allowing a more reliable feed. These static cameras were made up using 3x AC90s and 2x C100s, along with a PC at each camera to take in the video feed using a capture card. Video feeds were sent back to the gallery using vdo.ninja.

In the weeks before the production, Dan Wade spent many hours digging out old equipment and piecing together PCs and testing DeckLinks to allow us to send the camera feeds back to the gallery. Fortunately, a few weeks before the production we were donated a load of old PCs from the Computer Science department which meant that we had enough equipment to have all five static cameras.

Planned static camera locations

• 2x AC90s on Central Hall Balcony, covering Greg's Place and the area by Physics and James College
• 1x AC90 outside the old Unity Health building, covering the path towards the Quiet Place
• 1x C100 near URY/V-Bar, covering Vanbrugh Bowl
• 1x C100 covering the Quiet Place

The last two cameras had to be scrapped last-minute due to issues getting power and networking, and lack of techies to be able to figure something else out. The camera outside Unity Health almost didn't happen because we couldn't get a network connection from the Unity Health building; all network ports were dead and the wireless access point was also dead. Due to access to the old Unity Health building being awkward, we only had tested getting a wireless connection from standing outside, and assuming the network ports were working (big mistake). We had supposedly got a strong internet connection from standing outside, but on the day we found there was literally no eduroam signal available outside the building, and inside no working network ports. In hindsight, when testing, we were probably recieving an eduroam signal from elsewhere although the fact that we couldn't get a signal at all on the day suggests otherwise. However, to solve this problem, we moved the static camera closer to the Physics building, which had working networking. We did have to wait for the Vanbrugh mobile receptionist to come open P/L/006, which is where we ran our power and ethernet from, however we were lucky that they unlocked the room for us given that we didn't have a booking. For future reference, do not rely on the Unity Health building for OBs. Also, why did we decide on using Unity Health instead of Physics in the first place? Who knows.

Because of the issues with the Unity Health static camera, we were unable to focus on the other static cameras which were ultimately scrapped. In an ideal world with more time and crew, these may have been possible. In hindsight, we should've placed the camera outside Physics in the first place, which would have saved us lots of hassle and stress. Oh well, too late now.