Urgent help required

R

rocketradio

Member
We are attempting our first live broadcast from a football match today, but for some reason, BUTT will not connect to the server.

Why is life so hard for me?

It works every other time we do it, but for whatever reason, whenever we need something important to happen, life kicks me in the balls.

Help me support, why wont it connect today of all days!
 
what equipment and connection were you using? a wifi connection in somewhere more public like a football stadium may have harder security procedures, some hackers like the beautiful game as well as other less beautiful ones they get up to. Also your own equipment might have firewalls etc set to sense a wifi connection and add other security procedures.

easy to overlook in the heat of the moment and the excitement of getting the opportunity to do a live remote from a sports event, but things like these really need to be tested in advance. at least you got the recording and upload to the listeners..

I'm no expert on football (friends and work colleagues are far bigger fans) but vaguely remember that any decent size stadium often gets used for midweek friendlies/youth leagues, and the offices/canteens/boardrooms for other corporate events.perhaps next time (or even next week) arrange with the ICT staff there to do a test? (they would need to have some knowledge of what ports/protocols the streaming software uses).

even if there are security concerns, your laptop or other networking equipment should have a unique MAC number - if needed most routers / firewalls can be set up to identify it and allow yours slightly greater privileges than other pieces of equipment. or if its your software causing the block you can set it to sense that it is on the football stadiums wifi and allow the correct network traffic.

BTW this advice is valid for any kind of remote (outside broadcast) - whether its sports, a DJ playing live in a club, basically anywhere that is not your normal studio and via a unfamiliar network..
 
General Lighting said:
what equipment and connection were you using? a wifi connection in somewhere more public like a football stadium may have harder security procedures, some hackers like the beautiful game as well as other less beautiful ones they get up to. Also your own equipment might have firewalls etc set to sense a wifi connection and add other security procedures.

easy to overlook in the heat of the moment and the excitement of getting the opportunity to do a live remote from a sports event, but things like these really need to be tested in advance. at least you got the recording and upload to the listeners..

I'm no expert on football (friends and work colleagues are far bigger fans) but vaguely remember that any decent size stadium often gets used for midweek friendlies/youth leagues, and the offices/canteens/boardrooms for other corporate events.perhaps next time (or even next week) arrange with the ICT staff there to do a test? (they would need to have some knowledge of what ports/protocols the streaming software uses).

even if there are security concerns, your laptop or other networking equipment should have a unique MAC number - if needed most routers / firewalls can be set up to identify it and allow yours slightly greater privileges than other pieces of equipment. or if its your software causing the block you can set it to sense that it is on the football stadiums wifi and allow the correct network traffic.

BTW this advice is valid for any kind of remote (outside broadcast) - whether its sports, a DJ playing live in a club, basically anywhere that is not your normal studio and via a unfamiliar network..
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That's great mate thanks.

I came into my office today plugged in and turned BUTT on and hey presto an immediate connection!

At Anfield yesterday I was able to use the WIFI to connect to the internet and do everything else that I needed to do, except connect to BUTT.

I have done other live broadcasts using BUTT and it worked no problem, so I am sure you are right and that it was just something specific to a major sports event.

I will take your advice and try to get back to Anfield and get some testing done in the meantime.
 
firstly its impressive to hear of a small independent media outlet getting a prestigious opportunity like this in the days of the huge mediacorps normally taking over everything. and clearly you must have the blessings of Anfield to get all this kit into the stadium in the first place.

I can guess what is going on here - you've probably got an agreement with a PR/marketing person for the reporting.

They may even think you are a traditional radio station, and that remote audio is being sent the old way using a high power VHF or UHF analogue transmitter like a big radio microphone, or even just a GSM mobile telephone circuit or other point to point link and therefore your techies handle all the provision of this, whilst the laptop is used for basic web based comms without audio streaming.

This is still one way of doing it but more resource intensive, the kit and JFMG/Ofcom fees are not cheap, and someone has to sit at the office instead of Anfield and operate the mixer unless you've got automation on that as well (even then I wouldn't chance it for a footy match as the timings vary).

The Anfield ICT folk might be paranoid that if everything was left too loose, that hackers would get into the players' / managers private comms and perhaps understandably so, its already been proven the meedja will use illegal tactics if these are not mitigated against. Football players may be security-aware against "hard" physical threats but not always the "soft" risks..

all this can be sorted out with a bit of prior testing and maybe having a contact on hand at anfield who can deal with last minute tech issues. I would expect at least one of the ICT techs at a football stadium would be not just curious but supportive of what you are doing...
 
General Lighting said:
firstly its impressive to hear of a small independent media outlet getting a prestigious opportunity like this in the days of the huge mediacorps normally taking over everything. and clearly you must have the blessings of Anfield to get all this kit into the stadium in the first place.

I can guess what is going on here - you've probably got an agreement with a PR/marketing person for the reporting.

They may even think you are a traditional radio station, and that remote audio is being sent the old way using a high power VHF or UHF analogue transmitter like a big radio microphone, or even just a GSM mobile telephone circuit or other point to point link and therefore your techies handle all the provision of this, whilst the laptop is used for basic web based comms without audio streaming.

This is still one way of doing it but more resource intensive, the kit and JFMG/Ofcom fees are not cheap, and someone has to sit at the office instead of Anfield and operate the mixer unless you've got automation on that as well (even then I wouldn't chance it for a footy match as the timings vary).

The Anfield ICT folk might be paranoid that if everything was left too loose, that hackers would get into the players' / managers private comms and perhaps understandably so, its already been proven the meedja will use illegal tactics if these are not mitigated against. Football players may be security-aware against "hard" physical threats but not always the "soft" risks..

all this can be sorted out with a bit of prior testing and maybe having a contact on hand at anfield who can deal with last minute tech issues. I would expect at least one of the ICT techs at a football stadium would be not just curious but supportive of what you are doing...
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No mate, Liverpool FC are fully aware of who we are and what we do and have granted us "club level" media accreditation, which basically means that anything that they do themselves outside the auspices of the Premier League or UEFA (such as yesterday's friendly) they will let us into, this includes selective press conferences and big announcements and a monthly group interview with Brendan Rodgers the club manager.

Yesterday, we had full media accreditation at Anfield, including the press room before and after the match, a seat in the press box for the match itself and 2 "press conferences" with both team managers after the game (translation: inane questions from the fella from Sky for 10 minutes).

Myself and other people who I have brought into the station are longstanding supporters who have been round the world and back watching Liverpool, hence the idea behind the station, so although the club have tried to ignore us, we kept turning up in all kinds of places and getting surreptitious interviews with the players and latterly the new manager, until finally they got back to us and agreed to let us in the door!

Good eh?

Meantime, I am the techie, the presenter, the interviewer, the announcer and everything else and I'm not very good at any of it!!
 
I'm not a massive football enthusiast but used to do a bit of tech work on kit for sports OB's and what you have achieved really is amazing but a lot of these clubs really aren't used to the technical side of new media.

A lot of the traditional media put a mic in the press box too but its feed will be going via a dedicated circuit of some kind rather than anfield's normal Wi fi - there are various sorts but all are expensive in comparison unless you used the bog standard phone network and even then phone hybrids aren't that cheap and can be tricky to set up...

(make sure you put your station URL either in your profile or on a post here as a few of the lads on Party Vibe are football crazy and may tune in even if its not their team).
 
General Lighting said:
I'm not a massive football enthusiast but used to do a bit of tech work on kit for sports OB's and what you have achieved really is amazing but a lot of these clubs really aren't used to the technical side of new media.

A lot of the traditional media put a mic in the press box too but its feed will be going via a dedicated circuit of some kind rather than anfield's normal Wi fi - there are various sorts but all are expensive in comparison unless you used the bog standard phone network and even then phone hybrids aren't that cheap and can be tricky to set up...

(make sure you put your station URL either in your profile or on a post here as a few of the lads on Party Vibe are football crazy and may tune in even if its not their team).
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Your right mate, although we have been totally up-front with LFC, they don't really understand what or how we are doing it, they referred to us as Bloggers for a while, so I complained and now we get our proper title.:)

And yes you are right again, yesterday we were sat next to Radio Merseyside who just had like an in-built box thing, and the commentator just pressed a button to broadcast, meanwhile I was recording, uploading, file transferring, uploading, creating a playlist and scheduling - phew!

Thanks for your interest and information mate, it's been very helpful. If you can think of anything else I could or should be doing feel free to put me straight.
 
rocketradio said:
And yes you are right again, yesterday we were sat next to Radio Merseyside who just had like an in-built box thing, and the commentator just pressed a button to broadcast, meanwhile I was recording, uploading, file transferring, uploading, creating a playlist and scheduling - phew!
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At least you got the broadcast out which is the main thing. the cheapest one of those boxes is around £2000 + VAT- and its another two grands worth of kit at the other end + the staff resources, and fees to British Telecom / Arqiva/or Ofcom/JFMG depending how you are getting the audio out of Anfield.

Auntie are probably lucky enough to have had a circuit out of Anfield since the days of Post Office Telephones - other broadcasters have similar arrangements. On the BBC website somewhere they do share training videos for sports commentators/presenters. To be fair they do contribute a lot to community stations across Britain as well as their own stuff. I have not watched these videos yet so have no idea if they are any good, they might be worth a look.

I shall post details about your station in the football thread on PV forum..
 
General Lighting said:
At least you got the broadcast out which is the main thing. the cheapest one of those boxes is around £2000 + VAT- and its another two grands worth of kit at the other end + the staff resources, and fees to British Telecom / Arqiva/or Ofcom/JFMG depending how you are getting the audio out of Anfield.

Auntie are probably lucky enough to have had a circuit out of Anfield since the days of Post Office Telephones - other broadcasters have similar arrangements. On the BBC website somewhere they do share training videos for sports commentators/presenters. To be fair they do contribute a lot to community stations across Britain as well as their own stuff. I have not watched these videos yet so have no idea if they are any good, they might be worth a look.

I shall post details about your station in the football thread on PV forum..
Click to expand...

Thanks mate.

Are you based anywhere remotely near Liverpool?

I want to set up a studio at my office and you sound like the type of chap who could do just that. Nothing too fancy, just somewhere for our DJ's to come in and do thier stuff professionally.
 
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