I’m Bad, I’m Planetwide: Guerilla Crew Todocasts Disc Golf Championship

Mark Fritz

While Peter Palm may not look much like Che Guevara, he is nonetheless a revolutionary. He’s using satellite technology to do live remote internet broadcasting and thus covering never-before-covered events and bringing them to people all over the world who never before dreamed they could have such experiences live. And, best of all, he’s making money for his clients (content owners) who never dreamed they could make money from their specialized niche content.

Palm, who is director of internet broadcasting for E-Planet Media, did his bit to contribute to the revolution with a triumphant webcast this fall (October 2009). He and his crew went to Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., to broadcast the 2009 United States Disc Golf Championship. If you’re not familiar with disc golf, you’re not alone. Perhaps better known as Frisbee golf (or “frolf”), its players toss Frisbees in golf course-like settings (often public parks), aiming them into wire basket targets called “holes,” and observing rules similar to those of regular golf. It’s a cool sport and growing in popularity, but (no offense to its fans) it’s not quite ready for primetime. You’ll not see disc golf on par (excuse the pun) with the World Series or the Super Bowl any time soon.

Find more videos like this on www.DiscGolfersR.Us

Nevertheless, disc golf could draw a potentially profitable audience if only its geographically dispersed fans could somehow all be brought together at the same time. Well, nothing brings scattered communities together better and cheaper than the internet. If only there were an easy way to get live remote video to disc golf fans over the internet. Disc golf fans are devoted and clamoring for live video, says Palm, and they’re willing to pay to see live disc golf events—if only there were a mechanism that made it easy for event sponsors to collect fees from viewers over the internet.

Well, the company that solved these “if only” problems and made E-Planet’s disc golf broadcast a reality was Todocast. Based in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. (the place to which the swallows return), the company modestly calls itself revolutionary, and Palm, for one, agrees. Todocast provided E-Planet with its satellite-to-internet hardware system and provided the disc golf content owners with access to the backend pay-per-view engine on their website (www.todocast.tv).

The disc golf webcast was actually a partnership among four organizations, including technology-provider Todocast. Instigating and sponsoring the whole thing was the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA), and the driving force for them was their director of marketing and communications John G. Duesler, Jr., who put the weight of his company, Terra Firma Media Group, behind the project. He served as executive director of the broadcast, and he hired Palm and E-Planet to provide the technical expertise.

E-Planet Media is a live internet broadcasting company based in Las Vegas, and Palm is in charge of video systems engineering and compression. The company “was formed in 2003 using Polycoms and video phones, H.323 protocol as well as a Windows Media 8 encoder loaded on a single Pentium 4 laptop,” says Palm. “Our very first webcast was for Cirque du Soleil.” Since then the company has webcast live events for “Mountain Dew, Casino Guys On-line, TBS broadcasting, and even a giant kelp reef dedication,” says Palm, referring to the ceremony dedicating the Wheeler North reef, nation’s largest artificial giant kelp reef, which was webcast live from the pier in San Clemente, Calif., in November 2008.

The Cable Guys

This past October when Palm and his E-Planet crew rolled into Rock Hill, they were just coming off of another shoot. They hadn’t been able to get there ahead of time to carefully survey the general topography of the course, so they instead had diligently studied Google satellite maps of the course so they could plan out camera positions and so forth.

In the case of golf, the obvious camera positions are at each hole. Palm knew ahead of time that he wouldn’t have enough cameras or enough budget to cover all 18 holes, so he settled for 10 holes. “Shooting a golf event is very unique due to the distances from where the switcher and the broadcast truck is to where the holes are throughout the location of the event,” says Palm. “It’s a challenge. You have to use a lot of cable and you have to set up some DAs.”

Thankfully, E-Planet’s technology partner Terra Firma had gotten to the site ahead of Palm and his crew. “Terry Roddy, Terra Firma’s executive in charge of field operations, had laid some 6,000 feet of cable on the two days (Monday and Tuesday) before the Wednesday start of the event, and that was a big help,” says Palm. “Terry is fond of saying that we essentially laid out the show within a 24-hour setup cycle.”

Both Terra Firma and E-Planet crews had to be very careful in their cable laying so as not to harm the landscape in any way. Golf courses tend to be touchy about “keeping their pristine greens immaculate,” says Palm.

For the disc golf broadcast E-Planet used six JVC GY-HD110 cameras, which were connected via CAT-5e cable to seven locations throughout the course and one studio setup. The cameras provided both video and audio feeds to the production trailer, which was outfitted with two NewTek TriCaster Studio six-camera switchers, a Mackie Pro audio mixer, a Kulabyte Xstream Flash encoder, a Telex wireless intercom system, a Digital Rapids StreamZ encoder, and a series of wireless transmission devices that allowed the trailer to accept radio-frequency audio feeds.

The aforementioned “studio” was actually a tent set up near the last (18th) hole. Winners of the various rounds would come into the tent after the last hole to be interviewed by one of the two color commentators who were hosting the show. During the interviews, as a player reminisced about his performance, Palm (who, as director, was switching) would pull up and overlay a diagram of the hole being discussed. These custom graphics had been prepared ahead of time and placed in the TriCaster for instant access.

The Todocast Kit that Palm used consists of a .96 meter one-touch auto-deploy satellite antenna (dish), along with a Gator-G-Shock Rack Case filled with electronic components, including a satellite modem, 24-port switch, Todocast encoder appliance, and even a phone kit. Most users mount their satellites dishes on their production van, or on an SUV or even a car, but E-Planet is different. They’ve mounted their dish to a custom-fabricated electric cart that they called the “E-Planet Rover.”

Palm says the Todocast satellite system is easy to set up, and that in a short time he has mastered its operation. It worked flawlessly and was the least of his worries during the four-day live disc golf tournament shoot. “Todocast is easy to operate,” says Palm. “Of course, you have to have a certain technology skill level. You have to be familiar with the interface of encoding and how encoding works. You have to know how IP addressing works, and you need to know basic networking.”

Palm explains the route his video takes from place of capture to internet end user/viewer: “After encoding, the video travels up to the satellite over IP—we’re using Flash as our delivery target—and from the satellite it goes down to Todocast’s CDN [Content Delivery Network] and then we’re delivering to the player.”

Todocast offers their content-owning clients (or “partners”) several ways to manage viewers and set up their own cash flow revenue system. They can build their own Todocast “channel.” They can schedule a sponsored event through the Todocast partner portal, or they can schedule a pay-per-view event. Todocast also offers a customizable player that allows them to insert advertisements, thus giving them another potential revenue stream.

Palm likes what Todocast does for him. First of all, it provides new business opportunities by giving him the ability “to go out and find sports events” like disc golf that weren’t economically viable before. Millions of events happen every day that don’t pull big enough audiences to make them attractive to a CBS or an ESPN, so in the past they have simply passed by uncaptured. Now, thanks to Todocast, they can be captured and turned into profit by event videographers. Palm appreciates the opportunity.

And secondly, when he’s in the field, Palm likes the way the Todocast hardware kit frees him from “the umbilical cord of IT,” he says. “In the past we would have to scout the location days before and test the viability of getting the internet connection that they [the IT people] said we were going to have to the room where we needed it,” says Palm. “They [the IT people] say they are going to give you a 1.5 sustainable bandwidth throughout the duration of your event, and then when you get to the site, sometimes that’s not the way it is—it’s actually a segmented line. And then you have to spend time trying to interface with the IT department, open up a port, figure out how to configure the firewall, and figure out how to be able to get the live feed out from their network.”

Not only does a satellite dish free one from having to deal with surly and undependable IT staffers, it may also save money. “You could go out and spend some money, anywhere from $450 to $1,400, to have a T1 line thrown down at the location prior to going there,” says Palm. “But you’d then have to have a production budget big enough to do that.”

Palm loves the freedom the satellite gives him. “Now we roll up, deploy and, voila! We’re connected with a dedicated circuit!” says Palm. “Now I don’t have to be dependent. I’ve cut the umbilical cord.”

Ordinary Work, Ordinary Gotchas
Aside from the use of the Todocast webcasting system, the disc golf shoot was like any other live broadcast, says Palm, and the only thing you can predict about live shoots is that something unpredictable will happen. What happened this time was that two cameras went down in the middle the shoot. “Well, that’s just one of those gotchas that come with every shoot,” says Palm. “So we used our back up camera and had to find one locally as a replacement.”

Speaking of cameras, Palm vows never to buy one again. “There are just too many good rental rates out there for cameras,” he says. “The JVC GY-HD110 has a great look, don’t get me wrong,” he says. But he doesn’t like being “stuck in the 720 realm” and stuck with one camera—basically being held captive by it, feeling forced to use it until it wears out. “There are so many cameras out there,” he says. “I like to try new technology and check out the new formats that are out there. I always like to try new and exciting toys.”

Palm and his E-Planet crew covered the entire tournament, on air live six hours each day of the four-day event. Palm had his hands full switching the show, archiving and encoding and monitoring the network and transmission rates—all at the same time, like a juggler with too many things in the air. Nevertheless, Palm says it was “a lot of fun.” A live shoot is “the most exhilarating, high-pitched energy you can get,” he says.

Project Post-Mortem
Palm says that all the partners involved in the disc golf broadcast were happy with the results and have deemed it a success.

“The event was promoted within a limited window of only four weeks before the event,” says Palm. “Yet the disc golf community rallied behind the pilot project to the tune of approximately 8,000 registered viewers from 46 nations around the world. They watched from Africa to Afghanistan to Arizona. From those viewers who donated to the production, we collected approximately $8,000. However, given that this was a pilot project,” he adds, “all three parties”—the PDGA, E-Planet Media, and Todocast.tv) did donate significant resources and finances to create our inaugural disc golf production. Therefore, no profits were realized by any of the three partnering groups.”

But while the project didn’t make any of the partners rich, they all see it as an investment in the future. “This was the pilot, if you will,” says Palm. “Now we’re geared up for 6 to 7 stops on the tour this year (2010), with the first one scheduled for March 3–5 in Fountain Hills, Arizona.”

Palm is happy with the way things went during the broadcast of the 2009 U. S. Disc Golf Championship, and he doesn’t think he’ll do things much differently the next time he covers a disc golf event. Next time he’ll simply try to “get better communications” and to cover more holes. He’d also like to experiment more with the use of Skype, eBay’s P2P software application that enables phone calls and videoconferencing over the internet. He says he’s been experimenting with the technology since 2007.

“We first used Skype by feeding it into a Folsom ImagePro so fans could interact with the bands we were broadcasting over the internet,” says Palm. “Now everybody is using it from Oprah to CNN, but we were the first to incorporate it into a live feed for internet broadcasting. Since then we try to use it as much as possible for our live feeds. We use it for the on-line viewers as a method for them to connect and interact with the program, thus truly making it an interactive experience. Plus we don’t use the Skype interface; everything we do is custom; we basically skin the player to match the client’s identity.”

The bottom line in the success of this disc golf production or any production, says Palm, was (and always will be) money (budget) and time. The more of both you can get, the better the production.

“If you think you need two days, you’d better put a third day on the schedule, and if you can get four days, go for it,” says Palm. “Yeah, more time is always good, but the silver lining with the disc golf shoot was that despite time constraints, the satellite technology worked. The technology really works.”

—Mark Fritz