[jillybean]

Wow, listening to Larry Cohen & Roland Wald, VG Voice is fabulous. Thanks BBO!

[inquiry]

jillybean, on 2011-July-31, 09:11, said:

Wow, listening to Larry Cohen & Roland Wald, VG Voice is fabulous. Thanks BBO!

To listen to voice commentary,
1. You have to use the FLASH version to watch
2. To get to flash, go to www.bridgebase.com and click on Play Bridge Now link
3. The commentary is only in the Open room... of the spingold KO teams
4. Kibitz the open table... look for the names lc and walddk to the right of the chat area... click on the play arrow by the name(s) you want to listen too. Make sure your volume is turned up.

[hotShot]

It's great!

[barmar]

I only caught the last few boards of the 2nd quarter, but it was great.

However, it seems silly to have to click on each name to hear their voices. Larry and Roland were conversing, so only turning on one would have been weird.

I suppose this could be useful in the future if you have different groups of commentators, perhaps each group in a different language. It would be better if you clicked on the name of a group to enable them all at once.

[semeai]

barmar, on 2011-July-31, 15:29, said:

However, it seems silly to have to click on each name to hear their voices. Larry and Roland were conversing, so only turning on one would have been weird.

On the contrary, I was pleased to have the control. I did listen to both, but I adjusted the volume of Larry up because his microphone was quieter than Roland's.

[jjbrr]

Really great job Roland et al responsible for this. Such a great idea and executed wonderfully.

[tony222]

i've tried this earlier and again now. each time i can hear only one of the voices.... earlier was larry, now roland. i have all voices turned on and volume up. what am i doing wrong??

[sharon j]

i'm having problems hearing everyone too. I've adjusted the volumne on the controls as high as possible and on my pc but some of the
commentary is to low and muffled to hear while others are quite clear

[jillybean]

How Roland has his system set is perfect, I have his volume control mid way and hear him clearly.
I had my PC volume control set to maximum and had some trouble hearing Larry Cohen this morning.
I hear John Swanson fine, David Greenwood and Dave Burns are ok with their volume control set to maximum.
Everyone except Roland fade in and out at times.

[barmar]

semeai, on 2011-July-31, 15:44, said:

On the contrary, I was pleased to have the control. I did listen to both, but I adjusted the volume of Larry up because his microphone was quieter than Roland's.

I wasn't talking about volume control, just the on/off buttons.

I didn't have trouble hearing most of the commentators most of the time. It's strange that different kibbitzers had different experiences.

[Walddk]

Thanks for the kind words. It was great fun, and given that it was our debut I think it went pretty well. Sure there is room for improvement, technically as well as how to get around this when you are a commentator, but there is a first time for everything. Number of commentators is also an issue. I think 2-3 would be ideal, 4 perhaps too many as this runs the risk that too many talk at the same time. We experienced that in the evening session, whereas it rarely happened in the afternoon when Larry Cohen and I were alone.

Any views?

I am convinced that voice commentary is here to stay and that it will be 'routine' in the not too distant future. Certainly when the Bermuda Bowl, etc., is due in October.

Roland

[Cascade]

When is the next voice commentary?

[Walddk]

Cascade, on 2011-August-01, 15:12, said:

When is the next voice commentary?

Undecided. We need the nod from uday first.

[markleon]

I listened to a lot of the audio commentary. It was great and I am really looking forward to more of it. Big thank you to all who made it possible. I agree that four commentators borders on too many. I would suggest a set up like most sports broadcast with a "play by play" announcer and a "color" commentator.

[A2003]

I could not listen the voice clearly. I moved to ten still was not enough.
Is there a system test for this prior to the next event?
So, I could test and listen to the voice.
Thanks.

[BunnyGo]

The weirdest error for me was that sometimes one of the voices would stop working (and I was able to confirm that it was still working for other people) and the only way I could get it back would be to log out and log on again. Other than that, the voice, setup, and commentary were wonderful.

[G_R__E_G]

I would agree that 2 commentators is the perfect number. It's not a coincidence that this is how many people commentate on TV for most every televised sport.

[G_R__E_G]

PS I loved it!! Great job once again BBO!!

[wyman]

I also have nothing but good things to say about the commentary. Fantastic job. [The panel still says "commentatary," though, which sounds very incorrect (though very British ) ]

In another thread, I was mentioning that I recently discovered how to kib only one of the 4 players on vugraph. This actually requires me to work through hands, which is great. It's very easy to be lazy when you can see all 4, and many things are missed I'm sure. Semeai suggested that it would be very cool to see -- at some point -- a player giving audio commentary looking at only one of the hands. Obviously this is something for down the road; we're all super happy that any audio commentary is given! But just something to roll around in the back of your minds.

The discussion:

semeai, on 2011-August-02, 13:15, said:

I've often wondered whether there would be value in commentators who only looked at one hand.

Maybe there could occasionally be the decision to have all commentators commenting from the perspective of, say, the South hand (to have a definite choice) in one of the rooms.

If they ever implement channels for the chat (like voice: you can turn on or off some commentators) you could instead have a "south's perspective" channel. You could even already do this by making the other commentators enemies, but that's a bit less elegant.

The downside is that there would be some dull South hands occasionally (though even then there's usually something in a dull hand). Maybe on such hands the commentators could say "okay, the hand is dull, let's switch to full view for this one."

wyman, on 2011-August-03, 07:28, said:

Along the line of Kit's articles and Gavin's videos (both excellent, imo) on BW, I think this would be incredible. Of course, it would require a commentator who was a world class player, willing to work through the hands for one or more sessions, a good speaker, and honest -- in the sense that it would really be difficult to do this well if the commentator ever "peeked."

I think this would be extraordinarily interesting and educational, and if it's ever done, it should be archived.

One thing I don't know is how damaging this sort of thing might be to a WC player -- that is, would seeing the player's thought process be useful to opponents?

I am going to cross-post this to one of the VG Voice discussions.

[barmar]

If we ever get to the point where players in a tournament sit at computers in separate rooms, rather than together at a table, we could conceivably get commentary from the players themselves, describing their thoughts as they play the hands (similar to the movie that Fred did a few months ago, although totally extemporaneous). If you kib South, you'll get to hear his houghts.

Although I doubt a player in a major tournament would want to be burdened with this extra task when he's busy trying to play the hand. So we'd probably have to go with wyman's idea, where a commentator kibs that player's hand, and then imagines what the player is thinking.