 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Katharine Norr. Today, my guest is Jeffrey Weiss, CEO of Advantage Video Systems. Today, we will learn how AVS can assist your eSports and gaming organizations and the projects you're working on. All right. Welcome, Jeff. Hey, gathering good to see you. How's Mahalo? Fantastic. Tell us about Advantage Video Systems. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, Advantage Video Systems is about 30 years old. Well, actually, it's about 22 years old. I started, I was a broadcast engineer working selling broadcast equipment, and I was working for a company, and 9-11 happened. I told my boss that I got to go out and help because I was working with the Red Cross, and he said, no, I need you here. I said, no, I got to help. I had clients in the building, and he says, no, no, you got to stay here. I said, I got to help. He said, no, and I said, I quit. And I quit and went off to help at 9-11. And I came back and I says, you know, do I want to work for a guy who won't let me help people? Oh, I want to start my own business. So I said to start my own business, and I put up my shingle, and a lot of my clients came along with me, and it's been an incredible ride. I've been one of the leading broadcast engineers in the country. Going all over the country, I've designed over 250 TV stations. I've designed hundreds of post-facilities, production companies. We've designed gaming centers. We worked closely with companies to put large infrastructures in to some of the largest gaming arenas in the United States and the world. And we worked with a lot of integration systems, and we've written as part of a company, a group of us engineers that published a book called the Media Workflow Puzzle. That's one of the cornerstones of the broadcast engineering. I've been a board member, treasurer, secretary for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, that defines the standards for the broadcasting and entertainment industry. Working on, working with other people on standards for the industry and stuff like that. You know, I've been, have awards. I've been part of the National Association of Broadcasters, giving speeches, giving lectures, being an exhibitor in all kinds of things. We're very involved in lots of organizations. We're part of the Esports Trade Association, of course, that with Megan Van Patten and the whole crew there. We're also a part of the NACAD, which is the National Esports Association of Coaches and Directors. We've been helping them produce their conferences. And we've been a part of lots of other conferences such as the Esports Business Summit, the Esports Bar, Esports Awards. We've been very involved in the Esports industry. And I'm an avid gamer myself, love gaming all my life. And so what we're trying to do is trying to fill gaps in the Esports industry. And so we're talking to a lot of people and we have a lot of one funnel things that we can talk about. Fantastic, okay. So first, before we get moving on, everyone will wanna know what games do you play? So I play a lot of games. I'm a big match of the gathering, a huge Minecraft, I love it, because a lot of times I go to conferences online and I get bored with some of the talks and I can go off to my Minecraft and just have two screens. But I also, a CSGO, I'm really good at Fortnite, not as good as some people like Ninja, but hey, I hold my own. I love the first person shooters and stuff like that are really good and I love strategy card games. That's my games. All right, so you're the perfect person to be kind of combining broadcasting with Esports. So let me ask you, why is broadcasting important to Esports? Because it really is the foundation of what Esports really does. With somebody playing a computer by itself, that's fine. But the minute you have two people playing together and you wanna and create engagement, you need broadcasting. You need to be able to have cameras so they can see each other. You need to be able to switch between different things. Without Esports, it's just some guy in his basement playing with himself and that's a messy situation. But the whole aspect of gaming is lends itself and really comes to the point of creating a gaming atmosphere where people can kin and cheer and be a part of it and without broadcasting, no one will see it. Absolutely. So what projects are you working on right now in broadcasting in relation to Esports? So we're working with a couple of schools throughout the country to help them actually build out some of their gaming design arenas. The biggest problem in Esports is that, well, one of the biggest problems is that, the people who start Esports are these gamers who are lovers and enthused and motivated as over the passion in Esports, but they don't understand the broadcasting aspect. They don't understand really what it takes to become a broadcast out and to have something that could be shown out in there. And there's a lot of aspects to think about. It's not like I was at one school and their aspect of gaming was to go out to Best Buy and buy a $500 camera and buy a $100 green screen from Amazon and buy a $50 switcher. And that doesn't really teach you the skills you need to understand. So when you go work for Blizzard and they have a $190,000 Grass Valley camera with a $140,000 Zeiss lens on it, they're not gonna know how to use that. They're not gonna know how to create, they'll go to the audio engineering area and they're not gonna know how to pick a mix minus so that you can, so that you can, that we need so we don't hear a talk back. There's a lot of aspects that you need to understand and most of these wonderful, enthused people and excited people don't understand this. And so we're working with a number of schools throughout the country to educate them or working on some really good projects and we're trying to create a campaign that's gonna really change the mindset of how game playing is played these days. So there's some specific equipment that you use that really benefits. So why don't you tell us and show us about those? Sure, I pulled a couple of pieces of equipment outside. This one right here is called the Huddlecam by PTZOptics. And the cool thing about this is they make two versions of this camera. They make one version that is a USB HDMI version and another version which is a, which is a NDI version. NDI is a network version that you can plug in. So you basically run an ethernet cable from the camera to an ethernet switch. And then you can, if this switch has PoE, PoE which is powered ethernet, then you don't have to have power to the camera. If it does then you have to run power to it through like a USB and you can just go out USB battery pack and plug that in. But, and they also make this version which is the HDMI USB version. The great thing about that I use, we recommend these is to, you know, whenever you see gamers playing on, they have these cameras on top of their screens so that the people can capture the player's face and stuff like that. Well, a lot of those have been traditionally, you know, higher end SDI cameras and stuff like that. This camera is really great because I can put this on top of a camera, connect it with my NDI or HDMI into assist and then go back to the control system, the video village. And then I can control it with this little controller here. This controller will set up to nine settings. It also has, you know, pan up and pan down so I can pull myself back or forward and pan up and pan left and right. It enables you, you know, an engineer to walk up and down the things and be able to adjust the cameras perfectly. So when players are moving or they're hunched down or this or that, he can, you know, from a remote location he can get, he can frame the shots really well and he doesn't have to go and reach up and adjust the camera. So that's cool things. And the NDI version is really has a lot of controls that you can actually do over the network. So that's the one device that I like really well. This is another device, a company called AV Pro Connect. And this is, what this is, this is a whole video server. So what I can do with this is I can, if I plug cameras into this as ethernet plugs in the back of this, what I do is I connect this to an ethernet switch and then I would connect and then I go from like a camera, like I can go any kind of camera, HDMI camera, whatever, and I can plug it into what's called an encoder, deencoder. So you plug it into an encoder system and then the encoder has an ethernet cable so I can go a long, long distance. I can even go fiber and go super long distance. And then you can take that and do a deencoder and then plug the deencoder into the switch and the switch goes into here. And this I can actually take the signals and I can do a number of things. I can create a video wall. I can take all the signals and plug them into monitors and create video walls. I can run this through a switcher and use it as a switcher. I can route the signal. So I can route it one signal and you can take one signal and route it to 192 places and I can take another signal. So you can have infinite amount of routing and stuff like that. So it's a really cool little device like this and it's very, very compact. Another device that I have that I like a lot is this little, these are sets of boxes. This is three boxes. This is made by Blackmagic Design. And what this is, is this is great for people like you because what this does is this is an ultimate box. So if I'm behind a green screen, I can actually take this and plug a camera into these. It's one camera per box and they roughly sell about $400 for each box. And what this allows me to do is I can load up a background into this box and it has a full ultimate software which is a hugely powerful software for doing green screens. And that enables me to create a three shot. So for instance, when I do interviews and I'm having three cameras and I have a tight shot on me and a tight shot on you and I have a wide shot where I have two people. If I have the same screen, the same green screen it looks funky because everyone has the same background. But I can create different backgrounds and load different backgrounds in each of these and enables me to then do that and I can really tone down and tone up the green screen so that I get a perfect green screen levels like what you're seeing. So you can create this whole thing and it looks like I'm standing behind a brick wall but I'm actually standing behind a green screen. As I am. Yeah, we're both doing that. But a lot of times people look at it and they get little fuzzies around their head. You can really tone down and get perfectly the aspect of getting that perfect shot so you look much more professional which is what we all wanna do, right? Sure, sure. That's the little toys I brought. Yeah, and I think the green screen is very important for many people who are broadcasting on Zoom just in their meetings. Right. And I can, you know, if we were producing your screen and we had a separate green screen, I mean, it would look weird if we had the same as mine. If you were in the same kind of room as me. Yeah. Right, the same background. But also you can look, I mean, if you look at me, I try to find the green phase around my body or the green segments of my move. I can move and only if I do this on a draw on a thing, you're gonna see some artifacting and stuff like that. But with this very inexpensive little device, you can actually tone it up perfectly so that you don't get that artifacting and you don't get that. And, you know, if you're gonna do anything like this, you can create a, you know, create a podcast or a TV show like you, you know, you need to have the really good, the really correct equipment that you can create, you know, and it'll, you know, it's like, you know, I look at some people like I look at Dr. Suspect and I love the guy, he's a great, great guy, but you look at his stuff and he has, he makes tons of money and he spends, and he has really very, you know, crappy, you know, engineers behind him. He's not, you know, he does, he does, when he has a monitor, his picture and picture that goes zoom forever. He, you know, I see artifacting around his green screen. You know, if the better you produce it, people will like your videos better and they're more apt to want to watch more of what you have to offer. So, you know, what's interesting is that eSports is fairly new and I know you've, you know, talked about 9-11 and so what year did you kind of move into the eSports and gaming area in terms of marrying, broadcasting with them? Yeah, I started, you know, I mean, I like, I've been a gamer all my life, but I really decided to get into it in about 2019. Beginning of 2019, I started investigating it. I was putting a bunch of equipment in, in 2018 into a big eSports arena. We were putting a bunch of ROS hardware that, you know, and these are hugely expensive integrates and we were doing the installs on that. And I just said, you know, I love gaming and I really want to create a niche for myself in this and I see that, I see there's a lot of need for someone who really understands engineering to get in here and help these schools out and help them out, really build out their infrastructures and teach them and, you know, and we want to help develop a curriculum so people can understand this. And so I decided to do that. I took the whole year to kind of really format into it and we started a company called eSports Circus in the beginning of 2019 in February, we were part of like the DreamHack conference and we did a couple of things ourselves and we were part of the DreamHack in 2020 and then soon after that, the world exploded. And, you know, but we were really, you know, we really took that 2019 year to really to try to find out our niche and try to find out how we can be the most, we can make the most contribution. And so that's where we started in 2019 and 2020 and we went on the road a little bit, we talked to a lot of people, we engaged a lot of things, we did some events. And then, but you know, the event business is really not where our niche is. And so we kind of fell back into Advantage Video Systems and kind of put eSports Circus on the hold. And so we kind of developed that, we were part of a lot of panels, part of a lot of things, eSports Trade Association, eSports Business Summit, we were really depth in being a part of what this whole industry is doing and being as best contribution as we can. You know, I've noticed that you are quite devoted to education. And yeah, and I know that you have a lot, you really focus on continuing education for yourself. And you seem to be quite devoted to education in schools and providing curriculum for broadcasting. How important do you think it is for students to learn broadcasting in school? Oh, it's so important. You can't even, the importance of, because broadcasting is where the money is in eSports. You can play games at home and get a sponsor and give you a free computer, but that's nothing. I mean, the money is in the media, the money is in creating a media that can be licensed and having understanding of the foundation of what broadcasting and production and post-production is, what visual graphics are. I mean, we work with some of the biggest visual effects companies in the world in building systems. We help build out Disney's Marvel Studios and the FX department. We help build out Asylum Entertainment, which is famous for Sharknado, we help deal with NBC Universal, which does Star Trek Discovery, we help with that. So we're part of a lot of, and if you understand what the basics are and you're able to look at, I mean, you look at what the NCAA, they were gonna get into eSports and they said, well, we can't control the media, so we don't wanna be a part of it. Cause they knew that's where the money is. When they're into football, they're into football because they can control them. They control the money, they control them. And when you control the money, you control the narrative. When you control the narrative, you control everything. So that's the foundation of what it is about. And you gotta understand what the technology is and what the future of technology is. The future of technology is an IP infrastructure. I worked on the standards for what's called ST2110, which is the IP broadcasting standard that every broadcasting, when you go into looking at the Fox trucks and ESPN trucks and all this stuff, whether it's eSports or regular sports, they're all IP trucks. They're all internet protocol trucks. And they're all designing this around ST2110 and about what this is all is. And if you don't understand this, you're gonna be really behind a lot in the industry of where you need to be. And your money, your valuation is gonna be much less. So any company out there who wants to succeed in eSports, whether it's an eSports company or a candy bar company or an energy drink company or a clothing design, you gotta understand media. You gotta create media. And if you design media that is well-produced and has media that is done correctly, you're gonna, your valuation that the investors and the people will put on you will be much better. If you go to ESPN eSports and you wanna give them your data, if your data looks clean and looks perfect, then you're gonna get a lot more valuation, a lot more dollars for that video, then you will if it's just some iPhone video. You need to really invest in proper equipment, proper technology, and you have to understand what this is all about. You have to understand things like mixed minus and what a candle is so you can understand how cameras work and understand lighting. Lighting is, lighting a sound or like some of the keys of what you do. You have bad lighting. You can't correct that in post. You have bad audio. You can't correct that in post. You can do a little bit of things to it, but you need to have good lighting. I mean, if I were to show you the ceiling here, we have really good lights here. I have quasar lights and different lights up here that are really designed, Kino flow lights that are not cheap lights, but they give really good things. So if you look at a lot of people, my facial lighting is pretty much clean. When you look at some people's lighting and they have big light on their forehead and they have or their dark shadows underneath this, you got to understand what lighting is all about to really get the proper lighting. And you have to use a good mic, you know? Like... Yeah, the mic, the sound and lighting has been a challenge for me. I have to tell you, I put a lot of effort into it and it's challenging. And people don't realize how important that is, but as most of us know who are like on Zoom all the time, we see how bad the lighting can be and we can see how we hear how horrible the sound can be and these fragments with the background. So, you know, and those are the kind of things that you notice when you're consuming media and so many people are making money with media these days. So, I see that a broadcasting education can be valuable and you can look at that, right? Absolutely. We definitely, we built them. We had a truck that is going around the United States that we're a part of building that brings broadcasting technology to all around to all the schools. It goes on a tour every year and, you know, and there's tons of really high broadcast equipment. One of the things that we put in there is a drone. And you say, what is a drone on a broadcasting? Well, you know, what we teach is this drone actually has infrared sensors on it and the drone takes off and looks at radio towers and broadcast towers for, and it has infrared thing to look at stress points and stuff like that. Also broadcasting, you know, drones can go out and shoot videos and stuff like that. But understanding how drones really work and understanding it, you actually need a license to do professional drone. You can't just buy a drone and shoot it professionally and not have a license. You have to have a real pilot's license and actually requires three people to operate a drone commercially. It has a pilot, you know, a spotter and an operator, you know, a navigator. You have to have a navigator, a pilot and a spotter. So you have to have three people to run a drone commercially, professionally, you know? And you said about, you know, about, you know, it's like people on Zoom and they have a big light behind them and they're wondering why they're in the dark, you know? Or they don't frame a shot correctly, you know? It's, you know, you gotta, you know, that they cut their heads off, you know? I mean, the only people who cut, you know, it's like, it's like, you know, I always say, you know, ISIS makes horrible cinematographers because every time they frame a shot, they cut the heads off. Let's show your website. And what do you, while we're showing that, what do you tell people how they can contact you and what you can do for them? Yeah, so, you know, we are Advantage Video Systems. So you can go to AdvantageVideosystems.com AdvantageVideosystems.com And we are there, you know, you can also reach us at 800-287-5095. That's 800-287-5095. And, you know, what we can do for you is we can do a number of things. We can help build out your school that's more than just throwing some furniture on a desk and throwing a bunch of, a computer on a desk and throwing a bunch of furniture around there and putting some paint on the walls. But we can actually create an entire workflow. I mean, if you go look at Texas A.M. School, you look at their football team, they don't just, you know, they have, they really put a pomp and show out there that we can do. We think that the future of eSports is actually getting around out of these computer rooms and building actually full, real arenas like what Full Cell University did in Florida, like what the University of Hawaii did out in a year. They're building a big giant arena. What Boise State is doing? So I think that that's the next stage. And the biggest problem in building up big arenas is a couple of problems. One is convincing the school to invest the money, but I think that they'll see it's a big dividend. And the other thing is there's a lot of kickback from some of the pro teams of having big eSports arenas in the same city as a baseball or football team. So there's a bit of kickback there, but I think that's where the arenas are gonna go. One thing we do, a lot of schools, that's different than a lot of other people is we believe that putting a computer on a desk next to a kid is a really stupid thing to do. Cause you get kids vandalized and they steal from them, they bang them, they put their Twitch sticker on them, they do all kinds of stuff. And we say that, what we recommend is you actually take the computer and put it in a server rack and lock the server rack up and then create what's called a distance-based KVM system, which is basically a one cable that runs all your things, keyboard, mouse, monitor, headset, everything, and run that to wherever you want the computers to be. That way you can move the computers around the room, you can create your own workflow, you can redesign things on a moment's notice, you don't have to worry about, if a computer breaks down, you have to pick a computer up, unplug it, take it away, find a new computer, plug it in. That's a half an hour to an hour. With us, I hit three keys and I have a full, I can switch computers out in less than three seconds. Faster than a hot dog, I can switch a computer out. So that's an incredible thing. So we have that, we're doing that and creating a lot of fun stuff. And obviously the broadcast engineering aspect that we can do with lighting and sound and cameras and servers and switches and all that stuff, there's nobody better than me. Fantastic, well. It's all advantagevideosystems.com. Fantastic, well, Jeffrey, thank you so much for filling us in on how important broadcasting is and what schools need to do in that room. Absolutely. So thank you to our viewers for watching today and in two weeks I'll have a surprise guest for you. See you then. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.