Producing a Quiz Show from Multiple Locations?

Bloke in a box asks: "One of the pubs I help manage is putting on a quiz show. The landlady's two sisters also run pubs, so we have decided to do this quiz for charity (for the Tsunami disaster). At the moment I have: three pubs, three webcams, two laptops, a desktop, three microphones, three sets of 512kb broadband, three big screens, three projectors and one willing quizmaster. I'm aware of various remote admin software which will aid with this, but I'm wondering if there is conferencing software that might be a better fit for this, since I'd need the ability to control the communications between the pubs (like when questions need to be repeated, and so forth)." What other pieces of software would you recommend for such a production?

Comments

Mac's, broadband, iChat, iSight, AOL or dot Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Your done...

You just have to wait a few months until Mac OS X 10.4 is released. Or have a hot copy, just watch out for lawyers. :)

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/

List

[tonsofpcs]

1. Production staff at each location
2. bidirectional communications to 'control' areas at each location (so they aren't seen/heard on camera)
3. Ear piece for 1-directional communication from 'control' to the host, may also be just a feed from the control communications feed.
4. The talent should only do what they are told to do. The production teams should worry about getting it right.
5. Maybe output all 3 feeds to analog video lines at the main production area, switch them live, run them back into a webserver.

take the time factor out

[superpixel2000]

Due to technology concerns (stated by others) I would suggest you take the time factor out of the equation. Then you can do round-robin questioning... Using a point system, you can tally scores in a fair manner. It's all about the game's design, and working around the limitations.

Once you've done that, just use iChat, MSN Messenger, or something similar.

Addendum: List

[tonsofpcs]

Also, If possible, run a timecode run from the host location somehow, that way all the timecodes match up with the video from the host location. Add delay lines on the returns AND on the main/host line so that they all match up back at the host/main, then judge timing based upon that.

Use GPS for timing

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Many GPS receivers have a "pulse per second" output. The timing on these is accurate to way better than 1 millisecond - no matter where you are.

Re:Lots of ways to skin this cat

[tgrigsby]

The only valid responses above (Webex and Flash Comm Sevrer) were modded to 1

I don't know about Flash Comm Server, but Webex has serious issues. I'm just speaking from recent experience (as late as yesterday), but I have yet to have a Webex conference go smoothly.

Webex uses a browser plug-in. It claims to work with Netscape and IE, but I've only managed to get it to work with IE. There doesn't seem to be support for Firefox, Mozilla, etc.

Conferences are assigned a number. This meeting number, in theory, provides access to a groupware-style sharing of a single computer screen and access to a teleconference phone session. Participants are sent an invitation email. Unfortunately, the only way to join the meeting is via the link in the emails you receive "inviting" you to the conference. If you go to the Webex site and plug in the number, you get "Meeting number is invalid" or some such. The same with calling the teleconference phone number provided. If you click on the email link, you can access the meeting with the same number that was reported as "invalid" elsewhere in their system.

Last gripe: the teleconference phone number used to be an 800 number. Now it's a toll call. Not sure if that has to do with the agreement we have with them or not.

The parts that work look great, but they've got some work to do if it's going to all work seamlessly.

It's a UK pub-quiz, not a game show

[YuppieScum]

Most of the posts I've seen to far have presumed that this is going to be a 3-site TV gameshow style event, with 2-way video streams and buzzer-sync issues. This is almost certainly not the case, and the below is based on the usual style of UK pub quiz... which means each team writing answers on a piece of paper, and marking each others answers when read out at the end. So...

Also, I'm not going to mention specific software, rather the infrastructure approach to doing this successfully...

First, each site has a technician. At the remote sites, they're responsible for feeding the video and audio to the projector, and for using some sort of low-bandwidth instant messenger or dedicated IRC to chat with the host site technician for things like question repeat requests and so forth. At the host end, the tech feeds messages to the quizmaster and runs the outbound video/audio feed.

Second, remember that the 512kb link is downstream only - the upstream is going to be half that for basic UK ADSL, which means much less bandwidth for the video/audio as most ISPs don't support multicast. It'd probably be worth contacting the ISP - if all three venues us the same one - to try and get some dedicated/increased bandwidth for the event, or at least some "preferred" routing for the video.

Next, the host site server needs to be the most powerful you have, in order to compress the video as much as possible in as close to real-time as possible. Hardware encoding is a big plus at this point. Also, forget about webcams for the video source - beg/borrow/whatever a decent video camera, capture card and lighting.

Also, have a backup plan. For example, feed the ear-piece output of a cellphone to the remote site PA, and have the host-site microphone also feed the mic input of two cellphones as an alternate feed. Return feeds would come from/go to the techs.

Finally, test everything off-site well before the event to make sure it all works, then test it all extensively on the day. It might sound obvious, but you'd be surprised how often it doesn't happen.

Oh, and if you're running this somewhere in the south-east of England, drop me a line if you want a tech for one of the sites...