Best Practices

Visit each proposed camera spot before race day. Look for elevated positions (e.g., a step stool, hay bale, or retaining wall) with a clear line-of-sight to the course. Check for obstructions — crowd control fencing, signage, or shade tents that will be added on race day. Note whether the sun will be behind the athletes or behind the camera at race time — backlit conditions significantly reduce bib detection accuracy.

Sketch the course on paper or in Google Maps and mark each camera's visible range. Aim for at least one camera covering every 500 meters of course. Priority spots: start line, finish line, major turns, hills (athletes slow down = better detection), and any notorious bottleneck or photo-worthy stretch. Don't duplicate coverage where one camera already does the job.

At each camera spot, open Speedtest.net (or the Speedtest app) on the same phone model your volunteer will use, connected to cellular data only (turn off WiFi). You need 5+ Mbps upload sustained to stream reliably. Run the test twice — once early morning (race-time conditions) and once with your phone connected to the same carrier your volunteer uses. Carriers differ significantly.

Always cover the start and finish lines — these are the moments athletes and families most want to see. Beyond that, prioritize: the first major turn (drama), any significant hill climb (effort visible), and high-density sections where multiple athletes are bunched together (good for bib detection across multiple runners simultaneously).

The bib number is printed on the front torso. A camera at waist-to-chest height (roughly 0.9–1.3 meters off the ground) captures the bib directly in frame without perspective distortion. Overhead or ground-level cameras miss the bib entirely. If using a tripod, set it to roughly chest height for a standing adult.

Backlit athletes become silhouettes — the AI cannot read bib numbers or even detect people reliably. If the sun will be in the east at 8 AM and athletes are running east-to-west, your camera must face east (into the sun) to see their fronts. Use the sun angle app or simply observe the course direction on Google Maps and plan accordingly.

Camera shake is the enemy of both AI detection and viewer experience. Use a tripod, clamp mount, or monopod secured to a fence or barricade. Even a "steady" handheld phone moves enough to cause detection failures. A $15 flexible tripod (Joby-style) works perfectly and fits in a pocket.

Landscape mode captures 16:9 video that matches the streaming format and maximizes the width of coverage. Portrait mode wastes most of the frame on sky and ground. Lock the phone orientation in Settings or use your streaming app's orientation lock.

Open your RaceLive event dashboard and copy the RTMP URL and stream key for each camera. Paste these into your streaming app (Larix, Streamlabs, etc.) the evening before the event. Test the connection — you should see the app confirm "connected" or show a green status indicator. Doing this in advance means you just press Start on race morning without fumbling with copy-paste under pressure.

Incoming calls, notifications, and FaceTime requests will interrupt the stream and can crash some streaming apps. Before starting, enable Do Not Disturb (or Focus mode on iOS). Allow calls only from key contacts if needed. This is especially important for volunteers who may get excited calls from family once they're set up at the course.

If the screen locks while streaming, some apps will pause or drop the stream. On iOS: Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never. On Android: Settings → Display → Screen Timeout → Never. Remember to re-enable this after the event.

Streaming at 1080p drains a phone battery in 1.5–2 hours — much less than the typical 4–6 hour event. Use a USB power bank (10,000+ mAh recommended) or plug directly into an outlet if available. Attach the power bank to the tripod so it's not dangling. A phone dying mid-event is one of the most common preventable failures.

Once infrastructure is spun up (1 hour before event start), each volunteer should start streaming for 5 minutes. Open your Live Monitor page and confirm each camera shows a green "Live" status. This catches RTMP configuration errors, signal issues, and mounting problems with enough time to fix them. Stop the test stream before the race starts to avoid recording dead time in the footage.

Infrastructure spins up 1 hour before the event. Volunteers should be at their stations with phones mounted and apps configured at least 30 minutes before that, meaning 90 minutes before the scheduled start. This leaves time for troubleshooting, remounting, and test streaming without stress.

Create a group chat (WhatsApp, iMessage, or Slack) with all camera volunteers and yourself as coordinator before race day. Share a concise pre-event checklist in the chat. During the event, this channel is your fast communication path: "Camera 2 is dropping — can you check?" is much faster than a phone call while 200 runners are passing.

If a volunteer's primary cellular signal is weak or drops during the event, a personal mobile hotspot on a different carrier provides a fallback. Many venues also have venue WiFi — get the credentials in advance and test upload speed. A second phone acting as a hotspot costs nothing and has saved many events.

The AI camera switcher builds a stability baseline for each feed. Moving a camera mid-event causes the AI to deprioritize it during the transition period (up to 60 seconds). If a volunteer must move their position, they should stop the stream, physically move, re-mount stably, then restart the stream.

If the streaming app shows a disconnected status or the camera goes offline in your Live Monitor, the fastest fix is: stop the stream in the app, wait 3 seconds, then press start again. The IVS channel reconnects within 10–15 seconds. Do not try to diagnose the cause while streams are down — restart first, investigate later.

Keep your RaceLive Live Monitor open on a tablet or laptop during the event. It shows real-time status for each camera — green means streaming, red means offline. The page polls every 5 seconds during active periods. When you see a camera go red, contact that volunteer immediately via your group chat. Catching dropouts early minimizes the number of missed sightings for bib tracking.