Understood.
Thanks for the answer. 
Regarding the bolded part, being that this is the first time for you to prepare to stream such a huge event, and you didn’t have enough experience in doing something like this, why didn’t you ask help from someone experienced (IGN, Gamespot, Gametrailers)?
I don’t mean paying them to do the job, but at least ask for suggestions, and informations on how to prevent possible problems that could arise.
Also, if I’m not wrong, G4tv has also participated in the planning of the event. And they should have people experienced in streaming. Couldn’t you ask them suggestions free of charge?
Usually, when a company is created, you fuckin need to invest your own money for it. Don’t act like you’re doing some charity…(B-BBB-BBBut we have used our own money to buy equipment, now please blow me)…Shit like that ain’t right.
I still think you guys underestimated viewer count and were not prepared to handle the amounts. All you guys say is, “our computer crashed”, there is usually a reason for that. Was the reason for crash in the computer or did the computer crash because of something else? You can’t really blame any of the stream sites like Ustream if they can’t handle, let’s say 20k viewers cuz it’s your job to take care of these kinds of limits beforehand. It’s not like Ustream can handle massive/unlimited amount of viewers on one stream without special precautions. Or maybe it was your computers fault, you know if you were using some old 386’s to handle the stream I dare to say problems are to be expected.
One thing you managed to do was putting people not in your crew doing the apologies. What a Wally thing to do…
i’m not sure of the specifics as to what g4 was and was not involved in. i do know that they were the ones that made the recommendation for stickam. the decision to stream to ustream to alleviate some of their traffic was made after seeing what happened on Friday.
man…so much hate on level|up. so sad.
i for one am thankful for the stream that they provided. i had full intentions of going to evo (had my room reserved and tickets bought), but something came up that I had to spend my savings on to replace and wasn’t able to go. if it wasn’t for this stream…i would have been even more pissed about not going.
did it suck that the stream died at the worst possible moments…yes. is there anything they can do about it now…yes. they can learn from their mistakes and move on. while everyone might be pissed at them for this happening, trust me when I say this, they are just as mad about it as well. their reputation was 100% on the line during evo and now look at what it has brought them. they have apologized deeply for the mishap and I am sure that they are already thinking of ways to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
i personally bought equipment so that I could stream local and smaller-scaled tournaments. i know that when the stream is running, my only concern for the entire event is how the stream is doing, frame drops, etc etc. it doesn’t ruin my experience, but it does take a toll on me over time and can leave you mentally drained after a full day of streaming. I can only imagine what 3 days of streaming the world finals and countless days of planning/rehearsals did to the whole crew mentally. much props for the dedication there.
cicada and the rest of the level|up crew…thank you for spending all weekend ensuring that the people that could not make evo, had a chance to catch some action. it was much appreciated.
Trust me guys, I am just as much disappointed in the unfortunate blackout in the grand finals as you are. For that mishap I truly apologize. When I started streaming and joined Level | Up not too long ago all I wanted to do was find someway I can give back to the community with my expertise. To the people here who still support us I can’t thank you enough as I was expecting much worse. I have been a bit heartbroken about this to say the least and to have people still support us has been a bit uplifting. For that I thank you guys!
However, I am not a naive person. The second the streaming PC crashed, I knew what kind of fallout would entail. Despite all the hardwork work Level | Up did throughout this year in bringing great fighting game streams and the hardwork we put into EVO providing a stream 98% of the time, to some we would be remembered for that 2%; we would be remembered as the guys who fucked up the grand finals during EVO. To those guys I say this: despite what happened, Myself personally and Level | Up is still committed to trying to bring quality streams the best way we can. If this one unfortunate occurrence is the deal breaker for you guys and causes you to never watch our streams again then thats unfortunate; hopefully we can win you back someday. To the guys that give us another shot, rest assured that EVO has been the ultimate learning experience for us. This mishap is only going to help us get better at what we do and hopefully that will show in our future streams.
level|up has no reason to apologize to the community. yes, in the world of techonology, stuff happens. what can you do?? not much if it catches you with your pants down.
what many don’t realize is that you were probably pushing your hardware to its limits for 3 straight days. (DUR DUR isn’t technology supposed to be perfect)
if you really have beef with the level up crew, then shut up and put up. tell evo that you want to provide the stream. it’s so easy to bitch, moan, and sit in the corner, than to actually do something about it.
plus, why are we all bitching about it, we knew the outcome before the tourney even started, it wasn’t going to be a total surprise.
but hey, every poster in this forum is perfect and flawless. :looney:
I agree with you here cicada, Allthough greatly pissed and mad about what happened( i also posted my anger) i can commend you for standing up for yourself. Im the same way and to be quiet honest,most people in the fight community are friggin weenies(yes,weenies)and i ve been told by many of new fight fans that thats the reason they stay off these boards, grammatical errors and reposts can send every thread to hell now!! . Srk has grown huge in the last couple years and with that has spawned a whole new demographic of snot nosed entitled brat elitist posters. I think its fair to say that in a whole this community needs to embrace anything that can benefit some exposure. Like i said i have my opinion on the crash and thread but its leaps and bounds ahead of the 1990 scene that i joined (yes im old ,31) so thanks yo…keep rollin and put ya quarters up fuckers i got next.
You do understand, right, that if you get exclusive rights to stream the next evo even the people who don’t trust you anymore will be forced to follow you?
This is enough for me.
Keep going and good luck.
I’m really eager to see how will your next stream be. 
Exactly because shit happens that there needs to be always a backup. Always.
Only then you can say shit happens. But if shit happens and you didn’t have a backup then the fault is yours.
level|up did great. Good shit to you guys.
Just make sure to get Seb up in there working the stream too. he knows about this kind of shit just as much as you do (maybe more, I’ve seen him pull amazing stream fixes out of nowhere)
i’ve been in IT forever and know all about this. have a backup, and a backup for the backup, and an offsite backup and and and and and…
live production is something that’s still very new to this community – things are still being figured out. Yes we could have solicited help or advice from communities more mature in this arena than we are, but, given the time constraints, limited resources and limited contacts, it made this very difficult to do.
like i said, im unsure of when exactly the failure occurred because i was on stage at the time, but if it happened during the final match, final round, it’s highly unlikely that even a backup rig ready to go would have provided uninterrupted service to you guys.
It’s entirely possible that another crew would have had the stream up for those 5 minutes… it’s also possible that another crew would have been down for the entire finals day… using hindsight like that is dangerous. You can’t replace people like you replace your toothbrush.
Obviously the interruption was bad, but in the grand scheme of things, it was one of the smallest problems that could have happened. If you’ve followed the FGC, you’ve seen events not streamed at all, events with half a stream, events with no sound, too high sound, providers cutting off the stream, limiting the number of viewers, etc… etc… Practically speaking, it’s impossible to move from "not being able to run streams with 1k viewers without problems, directly to a stream that runs for 50k viewers for 3 days straight… but level up made it happen, and with evo staff, made the streaming providers make it happen on their end as much as possible.
In hindsight it’s easy to focus on the one problem that did happen, in foresight you have to somehow prepare for every possible problem. Thats what levelup had already been doing when I got there thursday night and all day every day during evo. You might have noticed the 1 thing that went wrong, but you didn’t notice the 200 things that could have went wrong or almost went wrong.
So you say ask another crew? Ok here is a transcript of such a conversation:
“So hey i need help streaming this fighting game”
“Whats a fighting game? Why would you want to do that?”
<5 hours later>
“Ok, so there are these 100 possible things that could go wrong”
“Oh, simple, you just buy X equipment and hire Y team to run that part of it”
“Ok, well that costs more than the entire rest of the event”
“Oh well then don’t stream it”
“We have to stream it”
“Then charge X”
“So your saying to charge X to solve 1 problem that we don’t even know will happen, what if Y problem happens instead, then it’s even more useless than the free stream”
“So yeah, thats why we wouldn’t do it, cya suckers, enjoy getting trolled by kache”
…So Kache what happened to these posts you made before evo, weird that you weren’t even posting about stream improvements, but the offline videos, as seen here:
Re IGN: “they took too much time doing it (a few weeks, if I’m not wrong). But that was the first time. I really hope this time to take a lot less time”
"From my point of view the best thing would be:
- 720p@30hz videos on youtube 10 minutes after the match.
- (1080p/720p)@60hz videos on IGN 4-5 hours after the match.
- 1080p@60hz+DTS HD audio Blu Rays 2 weeks after the matches, for collecting purposes. "
So you got matches uploaded to yt right after the event, ign wasn’t recording, and not enough people wanted blu-rays. So where is the love for the immediate HD yt vids? Why are you complaining about the thing you didn’t even care about until it was live? You made several posts about MBAA, what about the love for those finals?
Oh btw, Where is the "thanks srk mods for not banning me for talking about nocd cracks"
Where is the "thanks for not banning me for talking about p2p movie sites"
Where is the “thanks for not banning me for talking about evading yt bans by posting evo vids on underground sites”
…seriously, you should be in some corner watching HD yt vids and shutting the fuck up hoping that noone remembers who you are, not trolling the people who actually did work as if you deserve the account you use to troll with.
If you have a suggestion, feel free to suggest it and move on with your life, don’t post over and over about the same problem as if you even cared about it last friday.
…anyway, for those who want to actually help, the solution is just to grow the streaming side of the community, to get the rest of the streamed majors to 30-50k viewers, to help create more and bigger events for people to stream, and if you can, create more types of streaming setups and blog about it…
can this be stickied, nominated for an article, made into a separate thread, ANYTHING TO GET THE STREAM-MONSTERS TO STOP COMPLAINING.
FMJ for president.
FMJ – well said.
yes, other things DID go wrong during the weekend; but of course no one watching the stream was the wiser – we had various other pieces of equipment go out and need to be replaced [luckily these incidents were largely during downtime or before the stream started when “pre-flight” was carried out].
it’s easy to remember the one thing that goes badly, and so easy to forget everything else that went well.
Lol @ the stream monsters thinking they’re entitled to anything.
LoL at folks who use petty terms like “stream monster” to front like they’re any better. You don’t watch streams? Is your way more pretentious than how others do it, thus not making you a stream monster? You and a lot of other folks seem to confuse “having an opinion that may not be kosher with well-known folks in the community” with a “sense of entitlement”. Think about it this way, and try to comprehend…people can be disappointed at things that are free AND things that haven’t always been around. If you like sports, I’m sure you’ve felt disappointment towards a team or athlete while watching a game on tv. You’ve probably said something about it too. How is that any different? You didn’t pay them directly to play (don’t say tv and electricity because a stream runs on Internet and electricity). They perform for you and there are times they shine and times they stumble. When they do a great job, they get props and conversely, when they fail, they will get some negative feedback. It’s not all one way and it’s not all superlative. Think before you say anything ignorant. The matter is done and it’s at a point where everyone’s appeased, but this fool’s gotta come in with the cliche stream monster quip just to make it clear he isn’t one…try again, son.
Btw, I’m not trying to perpetuate this whole thing. I’m over it and by Level Up folks actually posting on this thread, it showed a lot of character and restraint to answer and respond to some of the things being asked.
Hi guys! Kikin kiks!
over a free stream.
free.
as in you didn’t pay for it.
as in the level|up crew probably sacrificed their hard earned money and time to bring to you the stream in the first place.
had you payed for the 60 bucks for access to the stream, well, that would’ve been a different question.
but it was FREE.
people these days, ungrateful for everything.
on a side note, it’d be really cool if the guys at level|up would give us a run-down or a basic faq in regards to running streams.
something for us who suck at the game to actually help out local scenes.
I’m not going to get into the “it was free, so stop crying” aspect of this debate, but I will say this:
Mr. Valle came in here, owned it like a man and said that he and the rest of his company would work hard to improve their work in the future.
Good enough for me. I can respect that he owned it and didn’t try to make excuses or argue with the kids.
Now, these other folks who seem to work for or represent Level Up, on the other hand… not a good look.
Stop making excuses and stop arguing with little kids. Own what happened, strive to do better in the future, keep your head up, and move forward.
You’re just pissing against the wind. You’re wasting your time and your energy, and making yourself and your company look foolish. It happened.
Deal with it.
Congratulations on saying nothing at all.