Contents:

• What should I check before raising a Support Ticket?
• Our Ball Clips aren't being captured, despite Capture/Edit Video ticked and Auto Capture ticked?
• There's a buzzing on our microphone, what do I do?
• What size of Watermark do you recommend?
• Our IP Camera has the wrong resolution?
• Our Highlights are being cut off and missing the key action?
• Does connecting cameras via USB make use of the laptops GPU, or does it only rely on CPU?
• Our Play-Cricket Match Centres were showing video, but they're not now?
• My Highlights Package is showing duplicated Overlays?
• The Main Action is missed on the Play-Cricket ball clip?
• How are the ball clips saved on my laptop named?
• Do you recommend AMD Processors?

 

Q: What should I check before raising a Support Ticket?

Please ensure you have done the following:

Graphic Drivers are up to date: please use Tools -> Configuration -> Video Capture -> Auto Detect -> click the relevant links to update.

Windows Updates are done: this can be done by clicking Start -> Settings -> Updates and Security -> Windows Updates -> Check for Updates or typing in Check for Updates in the Windows Search bar.

Using the Recommended Hardware Settings: follow the steps in point 1 e.g. Tools -> Configuration -> Video Capture -> Auto Detect -> change any Settings according to our recommendations to ensure you see the confirmation Your Video Configuration Settings are optimal.

Please restart your laptop to ensure the relevant changes have been made. If your issue still exists following these suggestions, please submit Diagnostics again and relevant links and screenshots to help us support you as best as we can.

 

 

Q: Our Ball Clips aren't being captured, despite Capture/Edit Video ticked and Auto Capture ticked?

You need to first check Capture/Edit Video is ticked:

Then you need to set the appropriate Auto Capture Settings (if using Auto Capture, which is recommended).

The easiest way to check that Ball Clips are being captured is to use the Ball By Ball Panel and check that clips are being saved in the Video Column e.g.

As well as a duration (in black) appearing a few seconds after scoring each ball, check on the Status Bar (at the bottom of the main panel, next to the right of Video Sync Status) where a small disk icon briefly appears as each ball clip is saved to disk before being encoded and uploaded, especially at the start of each innings. The Video Display panel will also show a blue border when Auto Capture is setup correctly, and hovering over Video Display will popup an "Auto Capturing" tooltip.

If you want to upload Video live to the Play-Cricket Match Centre during a match, you need Video -> Live Upload ticked. If doing it retrospectively you can use Video -> Live Upload or Video -> Upload Video Now.

 

 

Q: There's a buzzing on our microphone, what do I do?

As we’re not sure what microphone/audio source you’re using, we can only really suggest turning off the audio input, which can be done via Tools -> Configuration -> Video Capture -> Audio Settings -> Show Advanced Settings and tick the Disable Audio Input checkbox.

However, this will require a restart of the live stream to take effect, so it may just be easier to unplug the audio source/microphone.

For our support team to investigate any issue properly, please use PCS Pro’s Help -> Report an Issue (Live Streaming) function so that we can get details and Diagnostics from the computer at the time you are reporting a problem.

 

 

Q: What size of Watermark do you recommend?

In terms of the logo, shown at top-left - PCS Pro automatically resizes these relative to the 1080p resolution of the video input and they are set to a fixed height (90 pixels). You could therefore use something like Canva to test what looks best.

For example, 360px (width) x 90px (height) might work look best for landscape orientated logos.

You could increase the width further but are restricted with the height. You can also play around with colours/background colours of the logos, etc, according to the sponsor to see what you think looks best.

 

 

Q: Our IP Camera has the wrong resolution?

The important parts to adding the camera in the correct aspect ratio are... 

Adding it at 1080p on the Hikvision/IP Camera dashboard:

Note, you don't need to replicate the other settings from this screenshot but you do need to have resolution set to 1920*1080p.

2. Adding the Camera as 1080p on PCS Pro

From here you can drop the resolution so the stream uses less data, but importantly you need to complete steps 1 and 2 at 1080p.

Here is a screenshot of dropping the resolution (from 1080 to 720):

 

 

Q: Our Highlights are being cut off and missing the key action?

If the Highlights videos are cutting off the shot being played, it's perhaps because your settings are trimming the clips to 10 seconds? Can you confirm if Shorten Video Clips is ticked?

 

 

Q: Does connecting cameras via USB make use of the laptops GPU, or does it only rely on CPU?

Assuming the USB connection is similar to a CamLink then the GPU wouldn’t specifically be used for decoding the video, but would benefit overall PCS Pro performance (e.g. the video display). The aspects which benefit from a GPU most is the video encoding which includes creation of ball clips, live streaming and creating highlights packages in Video Package Manager.

 

 

Q: Our Play-Cricket Match Centres were showing video, but they're not now?

If you go to the Cricket Matches folder for the [cricket club] CC match, are there any video clips in this folder? If so, you might be able to use Video -> Upload Video Now option.

If there was video there on the Match Centre, but isn't there now, this is probably the consequence of an ECB decision when Match Centres were first setup, whereby if an edit is made in Play Cricket post-match the Scorecard reverts to the Play Cricket version/data (in case this is more accurate, for whatever reason), rather than the PCS Pro/NV Play version, which also means the links to the video clips are lost. All video clips remain accessible on the Ball by Ball and Videos tabs.

If you re-edit such a match in PCS Pro as Live Scorer, e.g., by changing a 1 to a Bye/Leg Bye then back again), the Scorecard should revert to the PCS Pro/NV Play version and return the links to the video clips, as it’s a case of “last edit wins”. If not, or you’d prefer Scorecards not to revert to the Play Cricket version after being edited post-match, please raise a ticket with the Play Cricket Help Desk via play-cricket@ecb.co.uk.

If no, video appears to have been captured from the [cricket club] CC match on your laptop, I can respond with information on why this might be, but hopefully the "last edit wins" info above will resolve it first.

 

 

Q: My Highlights Package is showing duplicated Overlays?

A: We believe the reason for your 'double overlays' is because you have downloaded onto your machine the web clips uploaded from another machine, which are encoded with the overlays when they are captured, so they already have the 'first overlay' embedded on the clips. We can tell this because:

• The uploaded ball clips on the Match Centre at https://corsham.play-cricket.com/website/results/5557928  have the 'first overlay' (in blue and green)
  The two match scorers were C Bush and S Boniface, so we assume you weren't scoring/capturing video but accessing the ball clips from the server - correct?
• The behaviour you describe and your screenshots all fit with the Tools -> Configuration -> Clipping -> Enable Overlay Graphics on Web Clips setting (ON and inactive) and Video Package Manager functions (but we may now review whether Add Overlays should still be selectable given the 'double overlay' result)

We can also confirm that the current colours for both teams (on the server) appear to be the same as the 'second overlays' from your machine, so the two team colours in the 'first overlays' from the video capture laptop are incorrect. Perhaps that laptop hasn't synced properly or custom colours were set on the day?

Thus, for this match (we note that no ball clips have been uploaded for the first innings), we suggest generating the highlights package without Add Overlays ticked (and for any subsequent match where the highlights package is being generated from downloaded web clips), so that only one overlay is displayed. Obviously, these will be of the incorrect colours, but we'll leave you to check the video capture laptop as to why these are different from what's on the server.

 

 

Q: The Main Action is missed on the Play-Cricket ball clip?

A: What is likely to have happened around some of the wickets is that the scorer has scored the ball (and/or the one preceding it) too far after the actual action/fall of the wicket.

Scoring each ball as soon as possible after it is 'dead' is critical, as the Auto Capture Video feature uses the act of scoring (ending) the ball to record the ball video clip, i.e. 17 seconds preceding the scoring (ending) of a normal ball and 37 seconds preceding the scoring of a wicket. As the X ball clip is after the delivery/catch (and the same is true for the X wicket), it's simply been scored 'too late' to capture the required action.

We appreciate that this is sometimes difficult, e.g. the scorer taking time to identify the catcher, but they could use 'Unknown' to ensure the ball clip includes the delivery/action and then edit the catcher later to update the ball clip overlay that is used in the highlights package.

 

 

Q: How are the ball clips saved on my laptop named?

A: Ball clips have filenames in this format: Innings_Over_Ball, so the first ball of a match is 1_001_01. Thus, for example, 2_10_6 = Innings 2 Over.Ball 9.6, i.e. the last ball of the 10th Over (so 9 = completed overs), rather than Innings 2 Over.Ball 10.6, i.e. the last ball of the 11th Over.

 

 

Q: Do you recommend AMD Processors?

A: We do not recommend AMD devices because we don't currently support hardware acceleration on them, so the AMD processor effectively becomes redundant, as PCS Pro will revert to software encoding for live streaming. However, there's also no guarantee that the AMD processor will be powerful enough to support the software encoding for a quality live stream, and we can't provide guidance here as it's not supported and we don't test against AMD.

Consequently, while the AMD processor may be an improvement on the one in the current device, using this device would be at your own risk.

Ideally, therefore, an Intel computer (which allows Intel encoding with hardware acceleration) with the minimum specs in the Single Input Video Capture category can be procured. To ensure high quality live streaming for a number of years to come, we would recommend a computer that meets the Recreational Streamer (two video inputs and a dedicated NVIDIA graphics card that also allows hardware acceleration) specifications as the best option.