Reachmahjong.com

Marseille, France's Chuuren potos club shot its first game! Sorry for offering only two camera angles, our fourth camera became unavailable at the last minute! Also please keep in mind it's a first for us, players and narrators, but we aim at getting better and better!

https://youtu.be/ExI2xbDmbws

That's a very nicely presented video. I see you've followed the example of Japanese pro TV coverage for the text overlay and this is effective. The red text for the dealer is helpful, especially as the dice are not always visible; however you might want to consider more explicit wind markers, either on the overlay or actually on the table (I've seen the latter used in Japanese videos).

The two cameras are adequate although the tiles are not as easy to read as they would be with four. Players (particularly Chantal!) should be reminded to make their drawn tile visible to the camera each turn. Did you switch between the cameras live during the match or was it edited afterwards?

Another excellent video from your club. Bravo!

Very cool, Gnom.

Oh gosh, that looks really good! I'll watch the whole video to comment on your playing.

I'm also wondering about the editting process, mainly switching camera angles so smoothly. Any tips, software suggestions for that?

We also recorded a sample Mahjong video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSkmCDEnneg

You're doing a great job! Keep those videos coming. I HOPE you'll inspire others to make their own videos. It's high time European players started exposing themselves a bit more. There's still not much going on in that department...

BTW: I've shared the link on our Mahjong Club FB.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mahjongbielawa/

Thanks for your feedback and your enthusiasm!

Barticle, you're right, I perfectly forgot about those wind markers but they'd be really useful! We'll add them in the next video. About the readability of the tiles, that will be partially taken care of when we can do a 4-camera setup (hopefully for the next video), but what we also really miss is light, which is always a difficult point in the making of a video. Right now there is a lot of shadow and since the light is generally low there's also noise which make the tiles harder to make out.

About making a live edit, we don't have yet what's required. Technically it is not a really difficult task, but we would need some more equipment and it's always hard to invest on those. Since it is not THAT expensive we might consider it. But that's not the only thing we'd need. We would also need a bigger team. This video is mostly a one man job (plus two people for the comments), but with a live editing we would need one person to switch live, one responsible for the points display (someone who can accurately and quickly count), some people for the comment... A grand minimum of 4 people, and a bit more would be more comfortable... So we may consider it but not in the close future and only if there is really some need for it (for example national tournaments or the like).

As for the editing, it's done on Final Cut Pro which is expensive and Mac only, but I'm sure cheaper multi-platform software could do it. It's a fake live edit, meaning that I can switch from cameras in real time although it's been recorded before. It is very convenient because except for the touch ups, one minute of video takes one minute to edit. Software aside it's also a matter of workflow. If someone is interested it'd be my pleasure to elaborate of course.

Thanks! I'd appreciate it if you could provide further details

I'm pushing myself to learn Adobe After Effects so that I can do something that has all the usual riichi info but with a more sports station themed scoreboard. But learning how to script in AE is not easy, and I suck at art so...

We made another one !
https://youtu.be/qygSpkEjmnw
The quality of the commentary is a bit down (although it's probably gonna be unnoticed here ), due to the fact that we were not as numerous and that the workflow we used this time made it more difficult to make out the game during recording, but we did shoot with 4 cameras! Despite the level being far from videos from Japan, we hope you'll enjoy!

Our next video is available! Unfortunately we had some technical issues, I hope it remains fun to watch.
http://youtu.be/JNSFUjknj_k

Yes, I watched some of the new video last night. The overlay with each player's name and wind looks really good now!

The only technical issue I spotted was that Simon's camera was slightly out of focus. This made his tsumo tiles (farthest from the camera) a little hard to see (especially craks).

It was a good idea to place the camera on the opposite side for the left-handed player, although the left end of his hand (where he places his tsumo) was occasionally obscured by the dora display.

I think you could get away with zooming in a little so that the tiles are larger. With a left-handed player the camera should be angled so that the tiles are all in the lower half of the screen.

I only noticed a couple of instances of poor camera-awareness, usually where a player decided quickly to tsumogiri and didn't take their fingers off their tsumo. If you want to emulate Japanese pro coverage then you could get the players to briefly place each drawn tile sideways on top of their hand (that'd be nearer the camera too).

The close-ups of the winning hands are nice. It's perhaps personal preference but I would use "han" and "fu" instead of "hans" and fus".

I think that the previous video had better camera angles - cameras were set a bit higher and farther from the table (?).

The discard pile of Minh Tri is barely visible/not visible at all throughout the video. This could be related to those 'technical issues' category you mentioned, though.

Do you do proper test recordings prior to playing? If not, I'd really suggest it!

Camera adjustment is the main problem I face each time we record a video at our club (for strategy analysis) as we only have 2 cameras... I set them up slightly differently each time and it's been hit or miss so far. It's even more difficult when you have to consider game info display.

Do you record whole games in one go or do separate videos for each deal?

Finally - yeah, the video is ENJOYABLE!!! I'm really really happy that some people in Europe are doing something more than just playing for themselves!

Thanks for sharing the vid and keep them coming

Barticle wrote:The close-ups of the winning hands are nice. It's perhaps personal preference but I would use "han" and "fu" instead of "hans" and fus".

There's a rule regarding the use of plural nouns in English and French where if they are of a language without plural markers like Chinese or Japanese, you are only supposed to pluralize words that have been a) assimilated into the target language, and b) can actually be pluralized.

This rule is part of the French wiki's editorial guidelines, but since I wrote that and I'm not in charge of the video, it's not my responsibility.

Ex. 1: Everyone knows what a katana is. One katana, two katanas. Deux katanas.
Ex. 2: Sushi has been assimilated into English and French. However, in English, since there is no article, there is no way to talk about "three sushis", so you can't pluralize it. In French, you can use un/le and des/les, so "trois sushis" in French is fine. Yen follows the same rule, and should be pluralized in French.
Ex. 3: Han and fu are nowhere near accepted into mainstream language. While French plurals often add an s (or x, or a modified -x ending) that are completely silent, it doesn't mean they get added to everything. There's a list of about 50 words that are accepted into the French language, everything else should never take a plural s.


It is an error, but I'd rather see more videos with "hans" in them than nothing at all. I've been too much of a lazy prick to make my own videos in Montreal, and my finances are just getting healthy again.

You're right, while I try to stay focused on those pluralisations in the wiki I just wrote it as it came here. I'll fix it for the next video!

As for the technical issues, the main one is as you stated the poorly focused camera, and there's also a camera shutting down for three deals in the middle of the game.

The camera angles are another problem. The main problem is that during test runs players are very careful about where they discard so it looks good but during the heat of the game they tend to chance their discard zone —Minh Tri's camera being something unexplained: to get to this level of a bad angle I suppose the camera's been bumped at some point... The good point is that we got new ideas for placement rules that should help get a good shot

It might be unnecessary if you can find the perfect camera angle, but you could consider physical aids for hand and discard placement. Perhaps green stickers, strips cut from green post-it notes, clear adhesive tape, a cardboard square placed in the centre or even faint pencil lines on the mat? When Sonic plays against his stream viewers he uses tape on his mat (link).

Yeah, Gnom - the more videos you make the better they're gonna get. It'll take some time for people to really get comfortable with cameras at all times.

Barticle's suggestion is really cool. I wanna try that too!