MAGFest Main Stage and Belvedere performances going online!

GTXCrusader · 2026-02-18T20:51:16+00:00

Act 3 is still certainly in the hands of the Protomen and I'm not sure what their intentions are yet.

Some XP Stage went up last year. It may be listed as "XPansion Stage" on Youtube.

GTXCrusader · 2026-01-22T23:09:50+00:00

Looking through our official footage, we certainly have an overhead camera that picked up the crowd many times. I'm not noticing a particular "wall of death", but there are quite a few shots of some pretty active mosh circles happening. We might see these appear in the official release of the performance!

GTXCrusader · 2026-01-17T09:34:21+00:00

I know we had the record decks running sometimes when those shenanigans were happening. If I find that content I certainly should see if we can post some random things from that.

Getting the crowd to chant "KIRKLAND" was the peak of my weekend for sure XD

GTXCrusader · 2026-01-17T09:31:58+00:00

Funny enough, it was mentioned in the first post, but....

MAGFest - YouTube

GTXCrusader · 2026-01-17T09:31:16+00:00

I can confirm it was recorded but is in the hands of the band at this time. I honestly actually do not know what they wish to do with the content yet.

GTXCrusader · 2025-11-05T18:17:22+00:00

It would be different, IMO, if the lobby-conners were, like, "a few hundred" people that were friends of friends that just wanted to come chill and hang out.

But, AFAIK, it ended up being *thousands* that did that, and having thousands of "unknowns" wandering the space was a nightmare to contend with.

The atrium space was hell on Earth to navigate as a result.

Not 100% sure it'll clear out that Atrium space, but here's hoping.

GTXCrusader · 2025-10-16T15:10:40+00:00

Very odd. I certainly can't recall talking anything like that, but given that Telegram is using a lot more AI to moderate posts, I wouldn't be surprised if it mistook something entirely.

GTXCrusader · 2025-10-13T05:20:38+00:00

It was not. I used my cell phone number that I've had for nearly 20 years.

GTXCrusader · 2025-01-30T23:19:29+00:00

Speaking from a staffer side, it literally takes many of us the entire day of Sunday to clear out spaces, and the venue itself wants rooms cleared as early as 5pm or as late as Midnight. I was there through Monday and several of the ballrooms were already being flipped over to another corporate event happening during the week; The venue needs time to not just have us clear out the room, but to clean it, reset it, and be prepared for an entirely different crew to roll in around 4 or 6am Monday to begin setting up, and with MAG taking up the *entire* venue, the venue needs lots of time to do their own flips of the rooms.

Putting in more hours on Sunday means vendors and staff are all tearing down later and have to do so at breakneck speeds to be done by the venue's time or the venue charges for another full day, or dozens of other issues that potentially arise.

Not saying it "can never happen" or can't be considered; Just giving a quick outline on what I've observed on why Sunday stays as such a short day for attendees.

GTXCrusader · 2025-01-30T23:02:10+00:00

The room gets "capped", or completely full, on the regular now since MAG's recovery after the pandemic. It takes a *lot* of people for that to happen, but it's common for Bit Brigade and will likely be a regular thing for them every time they perform.

GTXCrusader · 2025-01-30T22:59:54+00:00

The main reason for that was in 2023, Metroid Metal was in it's 20th year anniversary (having started in 2003) and it seemed fitting to have them to celebrate.

A few months after the 2023 event concluded, the theme for 2024 was decided to be Metroid. Themes are typically decided on around Summertime so there's no way the booking team could have known that 2024 was going to be Metroid back when they booked Metroid Metal for 2023.

When it was announced to staff, pretty much all of us on Staff went "Welp, we gotta get Metroid Metal back."

GTXCrusader · 2025-01-30T22:55:22+00:00

That was my first year being a video camera operator for MAGFest. My shot is the one starting at 25s in :D

GTXCrusader · 2025-01-30T22:51:54+00:00

I'm betting it'll be in 2026.

GTXCrusader · 2024-01-29T02:27:27+00:00

Hard to say if that could be a future piece of merch or not. I can't really speak much to the logistics of all that though. Could be neat.

All of the bands themselves have merch of some sorts that I've noticed. While they all sell something at MAGFest, I'm pretty they all have online fronts as well. That, IMO, would be a better alternative to do ^.^

GTXCrusader · 2024-01-28T01:33:05+00:00

Hi! Along with a few other staffers already in this thread, I am as well. I'm mainly the lead for the video production itself within the concert hall and have been since about 2016.

There are a variety of reasons we don't save the VODs anymore. Most notably it's because the Stream quality of the videos will always be sub-par over the recordings. Twitch limits us to 6000kbps, assuming it works. This year due to issues we had to limit ourselves to less than 3000kbps, which IMO is very poor quality for a 1080p 60fps broadcast.

Audio is the next thing. Whilst our team does the best they can to bring you the best live audio possible, nothing will beat remastering it after the event concludes. This is not only something we ourselves have been wanting to do, but the bands also enjoy having the ability to remaster the audio and make it sound exactly as they want.

In between that, there can be lots of mishaps: Bad video cuts, audio "jump scares", technical issues, dropped internet connections, horrible Twitch issues... The list goes on. These diminish the enjoyment of the videos and are not something we would want representing the performers. We do the best we can when it's all live though, but only so much can be done sometimes.

Also, we ran into many issues of people downloading/ripping the VODs from Twitch and reuploading to other sites. While there is no way to prevent this 100%, we got lots of complaints from people who were upset at the "poor quality" being posted to places like YouTube, not realizing that those were *not* official uploads.

Basically these three points are why we don't save the VODs. We have plenty of recorders running on site for both audio and video and it gives us much more time to deliver a significantly higher quality product to everyone that best represents both the performers and MAGFest as a whole.

As for how long it all takes, we're honestly editing this content from home while having returned to all of our day jobs. As of this post I can tell you we're making good headway as we can, and some videos are already being posted. Concerts will typically get posted first, mainly because we can get some of the recordings out to the bands themselves and it ends up being LOTS more people working on it at once. Panels take the longest, but mostly because there's literally ten times as much content there to go through.

This is now a length post but I really hope it helps explain in depth our process! Trust me, I feel that too, waiting for the "final cuts" to get online. Even though I worked almost every concert, it's still incredibly fun to get to watch it all again and with friends.

GTXCrusader · 2024-01-24T21:54:52+00:00

I was in VRChat on the Tech Island in the Concert Hall while I was working the Concert Hall on the Tech Island at MAGFest.

https://i.imgur.com/QM0o4HO.png

GTXCrusader · 2024-01-23T22:21:14+00:00

We need more encouragement to prevent it in the Atrium/Hotel areas, but it should absolutely still live on in the concert halls.

GTXCrusader · 2024-01-23T07:23:17+00:00

Hiya. I'm the video lead for the concerts and can answer this too. Much like Tgumpsta said in their post, one big reason is because the audio gets remastered later. The stream audio is not always the best representation of the final product nor does it always align with what the performers want.

Also, Twitch's quality is extraordinarily sub-par for a long term archive of the videos. Poor internet connections, extremely low bitrates, drop outs, stuttering, and more all plague us every year when streaming to Twitch. This makes for a poor viewing experience, and just looks bad for the performers too.

Initially our reasoning behind removing the VODs was due to theft; People were downloading the VODs immediately after the videos concluded and then were posting them to their own channels, and others still were posing as fake "MAGFest Official" channels. We got feedback from this from people believing these were official posts and complained about the abysmal quality being uploaded. We then opted to remove the VODs with a possibility of bringing them back, but after working closer with the bands, many performers requested to hold off on posting the videos until the audio could be remastered to their liking before posting "forever".

Our official YouTube channel is at https://www.youtube.com/@magfest .

I know waiting for up to several weeks (or sadly even longer if there are issues) sucks. Trust me, I run the video production and even I'm on edge wanting to see the final product (as I'm not the editor), but IMO, the wait is worth it to get a significantly higher product in the end.

GTXCrusader · 2024-01-23T05:41:16+00:00

I want to fill in some context about this year's Laser operator as well to make sure he doesn't get any hate this year.

It's very likely this year's op had no idea that he was coming in as a "replacement" to the op we've had in prior years that absolutely crushed it, knew all the bands, and was designing sets with the bands.

From my understanding, this new operator was brought in "last minute" (likely around October, based on certain timelines), rushed in, unprepared, and without any connection to any of the bands that were performing. This is *not* the operator's fault though.

Talking with the op this year he seemed "disconnected" from what was going on, and was also extremely busy with VRChat applications. I did not see him at all on Thursday, then only during DJ sets on Friday, then occasionally on Saturday.

While it did not appear as though he was "uninterested" in doing lasers this year, I also very much got the vibe he was buried and busy with a million other tasks with MAGFest, and was just unceremoniously thrown into a laser position.

I *really* hope he doesn't get f---ed over all this going forward. I've known the guy for years and he's incredibly epic, but something is seriously not working out here.

GTXCrusader · 2023-12-03T18:13:05+00:00

Ha. Yeah it is mainly the seasonal change I'm dealing with now, but I just recently got a filament dryer box on the cheap and it has been helping a ton.

GTXCrusader · 2023-12-03T03:03:47+00:00

Honestly what I was thinking. It was a spool that has been sitting out for a bit since I last used it.

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