Mess with the Best, Die like the Rest

I’ve been wanting to write a blog for a while, so a good place to start is explaining how VoD works here at MLG. I’ll try to keep it short. ☺

Let me give you a little diagram of the VoD Process. Say, it’s the championship match from MLG Meadowlands: Final Boss vs Classic – Ogre2’s POV(Point of View)

Championship Match played → Match(es) saved to memory card → Memory card is then catalogued with match info (eg. Memory Card S-A1 holds Final Boss vs Classic match with POVs: Ogre 2 and Walshy)→ Game recorded → Game cut → Game uploaded → Game officially added to the website through VoD(Video on Demand)

Now imagine that one match split into five separate games through a Best of five series. We now have to get all the other seven POV’s that were in the game. That’s 40 separate files right there. And that’s only for one round, the championship round. WB1 thru LB Finals, there are 13 rounds; 13 x 40 = 520 matches that have to get uploaded to the site. THEN, it’s not only two teams playing in some of those brackets. Up to 32 teams play in one bracket, making the total possible matches played up to 8,320!!! That’s 8,230 matches to record, cut and add to the website! And that doesn’t even count the other games that have to get added to VoD, whether it may be Gears of War, Rainbow Six Vegas: 2 or both.

Ideally, that’s how many matches will be added after each event but of course, there are some things that go wrong. We try to get all matches played during the championship bracket but sometimes, viewpoints can’t be found, some games weren’t saved to memory cards properly or a number of other things could have happened preventing some games from being gotten.

Who does all this work? It’s split down between me and J0kr. We are the ones who have to organize all the memory cards that we have into what game was played on which memory card and who played in that game. We then have to, starting from Finals, LBF and WBF, record all the games and viewpoints going backwards. This way, you get the more important matches to watch first. We then record the games, “cut” the games, which is us making it so the start of the game starts at the 15:00 countdown and ends when it says “Game over”. Then after we cut of bunch of games, we send it over to synide, who uploads it and when that’s done, we add the games uploaded to the site thru VoD..

So you see, a lot of work has to get done before you even see that one game where neighbor got sick snipe on ogre 2 from mid air. We try our hardest to get these games to you as fast as possible after each event. This year, it takes more to do since we’re not adding just one viewpoint playing five matches in one file but one viewpoint playing five matches through five separate files.

VoD will be getting a makeover soon, so it’ll be easier to navigate through all those matches. The way we have it now is outdated and hard to sort through and when you see the new way to navigate, you’ll like it a lot. Guaranteed.

Hopefully, you gained a little insight to what we do here in the MLG offices after events and appreciate all the hard work that goes into the VoD service.

And, we know a lot of people are having problems with some of the VoD on the website. The problem is being looked at and will hopefully be resolved soon.

We will be coming 1st place in the MLG Online Tournies. Go to #MLG for details.

I beg of you, not to watch this anime on tv when it comes on cartoon network and such. You will be doing yourself a great dishonor if you good. Seriously. Go to www.youtube.com and watch the bleach anime that is subtitled. The voice dubs that those networks do are so bad. Look at naruto. It's so much better in its original language and subbed. Plus, you don't have to wait another week to see the next episode. It's just a click away. Search for Bleach 1 then Bleach 2 Bleach 3 and so on at youtube. It is so much more enjoyable watching them one after another and it sounds better.

Starting at episode 200, the naruto fillers will end and they will starting telling the story of how kakashi got his sharingan and after that, the regular storyline invovling sasuke and such will continue. www.narutofan.com for some info. Can't wait till the bleach fillers end also.

Just a few I found on the site so far.

NJ Halo was fun. About 16 people did the FFA and I think they were like three teams there. Everyone went to web2zone, so thats why I think no one really showed. K4 won it, beating Pain x Rochy, Whoo Kidd, Pain x Robbie and Hanz, 4 - nothing. K4 was IK4I DooMzDaY, IK4I Carnage, Deathreaper12 and Sadistic(SelectxFlamez). Flamez won the FFA portion of it and treated me and K4 to some MCDonalds. They used the name XGC as it is their current sponser.

Team Slayer god
http://www.bungie.net/Stats/PlayerStats.aspx?player=softpurplehaze

Rumble Pit god
http://www.bungie.net/Stats/PlayerStats.aspx?player=STNG2000