When I talked to people online about the previous NorCal Regionals, more often then not they mention the NBA-style intro video to the stream. It was cheesy for sure, but it brought the hype like none other. So for Super NorCal Regionals I decided to step it up a bit and aimed for video intros to every game represented at the tournament. My friend (and NorCal boxer) ILLiterate helped out a lot with the the brainstorming and script writing process, but to tell you the truth the collaboration went a lot like this-

ILLiterate: I have a dumb a idea!

Me: And I know how to make that idea even dumber!

When you're editing video all your lonesome until 4AM every night with little to no oversight, you tend to surrender yourself to your creative processes regardless of where they seem to take you. That's about as best as I can explain the utter insanity we at iPlayWinner subjected the audience to with these intros. Overall they went over pretty well and John Choi didn't punch me in the face for all the Sandstorm, so I'll put this one down as a win.

So here they are, all the intro videos as seen at Super NorCal Regionals, minus one: Capcom vs SNK 2, of which I'd like Switcher to upload that one himself.

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You'll have to pardon the dust as just about all my spare time has been dedicated to either gaining employment or working on the stream for Super NorCal Regionals. This includes tons of video production (such as the trailer above), staff management and of course, copious amounts of beer and Street Fighter.

If you recall, last November, the iPlayWinner crew and myself essentially set the benchmark for fighting game tournament streams with our work at the previous NorCal Regionals. If that was a revolution, Super NorCal Regionals will be much more of an evolution as we've taken a hard look at everything that went right, and wrong with our previous broadcast and doing everything we can do either maximize or eliminate these issues.

The biggest improvements you'll see as a view will be the visual fidelity as we're now armed with HD capture equipment and the hardware to process it. As for everything else you'll just have to wait until Memorial Day weekend to see.

I've been creating and hosting live streams of Street Fighter gatherings for a little over a year now and not only have I learned a lot since I first began, but I'm actually still learning little tricks here and there that makes this hobby of mine as fresh as ever. With more and more outlets jumping into the fray of streaming live events, I've become something of a go-to person when it comes to figuring all this stuff out, so I thought today I'd share some of the knowledge that comes from constant streams a year later.

For everything technical regarding what sort of equipment or software you should be using, my good friend Niedel over at iPlayWinner (of which I'm a media consultant) wrote up a great guide that covers all of that. When it comes to hardware, really, just about setup you can come up with will probably net decent results and in software, nothing beats CamTwist, which is a Mac only live editing application. Without it, I have no idea how I'd be able to do a lot of the cooler aspects of my streams.

As for everything else, here's my all-purpose advice for running a live stream.

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