Sidepodcast

Taking a Cue From Apple

Almost since the day Sidepodcast started creating videos, you'll have heard Christine bemoan the lack of a teleprompter. Remembering reams of text, under the pressure of hot studio lights while the cameras are rolling is no-one's idea of fun. Having something to fall back on is often a necessity.

Credit: Sidepodcast

Behind the scenes of the Sidepodcast Christmas special, Christine eyes up the shot. The ProPrompter can be seen above the camera and the GorillaPod legs wrap around the body.

The problem with most teleprompters, is that being somewhat specialist by nature, they have a habit of costing a pretty penny. By way of example, the small model we were looking longingly at was set to cost us £1,800. You can see why we've been putting it off for a while.

Reusing Existing Hardware

Thankfully there's an app for that, and when Bodelin Technologies released ProPrompter (iTunes link) for the iPhone / iPod Touch our quest for an affordable autocue system was over. Coming in at a far more reasonable £5.99, the application allows the iPod to act as a tiny teleprompting system.

True, the screen is a little on the small side for this role, but playback speed is variable, colours are customisable and loading content is straightforward. If nothing else, it's a considerable improvement on holding up sheets of A4 paper and manually swapping them as required. The iPod is mounted atop the camera via a Joby GorillaPod with suction pad attachment and will happily sit there for hours.

Lacking Presentation

It's little improvements such as this gem that make us motivated to create more video content this year. Incidentally, having looked into what other sites are offering in terms of F1 video, a trend we've noticed wherever we look, is the distinct lack of presenters hosting shows.

Neither Autosport TV nor GPUpdate TV seem to offer anything beyond stock footage and a voiceover track (which is almost exclusively male). Can finding an onscreen presenter be that difficult in this day and age? Maybe having a person in front of camera is something else we should be giving USF1 more credit for.

If you're doing any form of podcasting, be it video or audio, we highly recommend the ProPrompter solution. It reuses our existing hardware and the application has already paid for itself in time and effort saved.

The Magic of Chroma Key (Part 1)

Seeing as there's a brief lull in the racing action at the moment, we might just be able to squeeze in a quick behind the scenes look at green screen technology. I should declare upfront that this post isn't remotely related to Formula 1, but a couple of people have expressed an interest in the inner workings of Sidepodcast, so please excuse the self indulgence.

The Early Years

The idea of keying out a single colour from a piece of film has been around since the 1930's. The principle is simple, pick a solid colour as a backdrop, ensure that it's not present in the foreground and then replace said colour with other footage during post-production. The techniques for doing this have dramatically improved in the last 70-odd years (while costs have drastically reduced), but the original concept remains the same.

Chroma keying is used in all forms of video production nowadays, the local weather programme is the most commonly seen example, but given its relatively low cost, there's little reason not to make some use of the technology.

That's Me in the Spotlight

Although we essentially have no knowledge of television production, when we started making videos it was pretty clear that chroma keying was a great way to turn a very small space into a larger one, and as all we had was a small space, it was worth looking into.

The first two videos we ever made for Sidepodcast didn't involve keying at all. Episode one didn't have a presenter while the second was filmed on-location. In the process of making these two short films, we purchased a copy of Final Cut Express, and hidden within its menu system was a tantalising option entitled 'Blue and Green Screen'.

Having the software was all well and good, of course, but to get started you need to own a coloured screen and we didn't have one. Neither did we have the budget to buy one. What we did have though was a blue duvet cover... so we used that instead.

As you can probably tell, the early days were quite stressful. Apart from the fact we were making everything up as we went along, it turns out that certain blues are easier to key than others, even light is important and wrinkles in the background sheet can be troublesome. Oh yeah, and remember the principle rule of chroma keying? Ensure that the background colour is not present in the foreground!

The picture above tells a sorry story. It wouldn't be possible to create a worse keying set than the one we managed to even if you were doing so on purpose. Yes an iron wouldn't have gone amiss, yes more lights were required and yes the collar on Christine's top is blue. What of it?

Saving Grace

All was not lost though, because technology is a wonderful thing, and with a lot of tweaking we managed to fashion something out of what we had. The final edit can be seen in last year's Bahrain preview. It helps that the video isn't very big, but you can clearly see that the once blue collar is now a peculiar shade of green, and there's a funny aura around the girl where rough edges were over-softened to remove troublesome artifacts.

That seems like a pretty good place to end the first part of the Sidepodcast chroma key story. In part 2 we'll look at how things improved once we bought ourselves a decent curtain.

Podcasting Show Notes

One of the things that has been consistently changing over the course of the first year at Sidepodcast, is the show notes we refer to when recording.

The first two shows we ever made – my 2006 championship review – were entirely scripted. If you've heard them, this will come as no surprise I'm sure. I was not at all confident about talking out loud and to be fair, I wasn’t totally sure I knew what I was saying. I'd read a few other reviews of the season and cobbled together my own.

The co-host was, of course, quite happy just to stand in front of the mic and throw in his comments as and when he felt like it.

After that first show, we realised that it probably wasn’t going to make a great podcast, listening to me reading out a previously written script. It was immediately obvious that it needed to be more of a conversation, but how much we needed to write down and how much would come naturally remains a matter of great consternation between us.

Here's the thing – I'm forever concerned about coming across as sounding a bit stupid. It's partly because I'm a girl and we're always worried about what other people think. It’s also because I'm in the minority when it comes to F1, and I don’t want to let the side down by dropping a complete clanger.

I know so much more than I did a year ago, and to be fair, I'm still learning every day, but that's not really what the main problem is. My problem is my memory - I don't remember stuff and it helps to have it written down.

We usually just make a note of the topics to be covered on the white-board, and then keep lists of statistics so that we don't forget anything important. If the opinionated one had his way, that would be it and we'd just get on with it. However, when you couple his hatred for verbose note-taking with the complete inability to repeat himself, you have a recipe for disaster.

For example: Opinion is a dangerous thing when you have a loose tongue and we occasionally say things that could be considered by some to be slanderous. These words aren't fit to see the light of day and self-censorship can sometimes be a good thing. Problems begin though, when we try to restart the conversation.

Everything completely changes, even the good stuff that was worth repeating. It's like he's incapable of recalling words once they've left his mouth. By way of example:

Christine: Bugger, I can't say that out loud can I? Shall we do it again?
Me: Okay.
Christine: You wanna go back and pick up from Honda?
Me: What did I say?
Christine: That Ross Brawn is impressed with their steady progress, despite the testing results.
Me: Sooo, anyway, Honda have been hopeless in testing and it's no wonder they haven't got any sponsors.
Christine: Ugh...

You see what I have to put up with? Not only do I have to remember what I want to say, I also have to remember everything he's just said as well.

So what do you think?

Should we have more notes, less notes, completely random conversations or perfectly scripted prose?

We're always meddling and trying out new ways of doing things so if you have any suggestions for improving short term memory or can recommend an alternative co-host, please let me know!

Somewhere Only We Know

Quick apology to everyone who's struggled to access ye olde sidepodcast for the past 12 hours. During the night our hosting company appeared to be playing the twisted, but familiar game - "best of luck getting out of this one".

Did you miss us?

Luckily it was just the blog affected, podcasts continued to download unabated, although yesterday's F1 Minute was slightly delayed for anyone using the new shared site version - big apologies to anyone affected there.

As it happens, we're already deep into the process of building a more reliable Sidepodcast for next season, one that should hopefully withstand irresponsible hosting companies messing with our minds.

Just for kicks, enjoy the following system status notifications, both raised late last night (within an hour of each other), and see if you can't spot the deliberate lack of joined up thinking here:

21:46: Some customers may find they are experiencing 'timeouts' when downloading email.

22:46: Customers may find they are unable to access their databases. All customers affected will be emailed shortly with further information and instructions.

Real tears, let me tell you. Real tears.

Bar Steward Vista

This is the first in an occasional series from Sidepodcast, giving you a behind the scenes look at podcasting, specifically in the Formula 1 genre. We want to share the pitfalls, the problems, and the triumphs that go into making the show what it is. As this is a joint effort, to provide you with both sides of the story, I will be writing in plain text, whilst the geeky one will add his two cents in italics.

I've always been on the PC side of the Mac vs. PC debate. I appreciate everything that a Mac is and I will gladly stand up and say it is easier to use, has some stunning applications, makes you want to create stuff, and is generally just better than a PC. But, I am a control freak and there’s something about Finder that puts me off. The thought of it makes me anxious. How will I ever find anything? The file structure, it scares me.

I did use a Mac for about six months a few years ago, and I don’t remember it being a problem, but just a simple glimpse of the Finder icon brings me out in cold sweats.

True. As a person sitting on the Mac side of the debate, I'd agree that the worst thing about Apple's operating system is file navigation. It's better in the new version, but still geared to finding files rather than organising them correctly in the first place.

I had a PC laptop and life was good. Then, gradually, it wasn’t so good. It was slow, there wasn’t enough hard drive space, and sometimes the screen wouldn’t start when you switched it on. I was getting frustrated, and I needed to upgrade.

I knew about Vista. Trust me. I'd listened to enough TWiT podcasts to know that Vista left a lot to be desired. But I figured that the little annoyances everyone seemed to be talking about were worth the fact that I would be upgrading to better hardware.

Ha.

Very, very silly.

Soon after Vista was my operating software of choice, I started to hear audio glitches whilst creating podcasts. Some of them were simple 'clicks' on playback, some were 'pops' in the recording. There was the occasional glitch in recording that was much, much worse, almost as though it had skipped a word. If it was a tape, I’d imagine that the tape had folded over on itself and covered up a second of recording. So far, I’ve been using my editing skills to the max to either chop out the damaged audio, or at least minimise the effects.

Can't say I've noticed, so you must've done a pretty good job. What I have noticed is the incessant swearing coming from your direction since the upgrade, so I imagine it hasn't been much fun.

Obviously, we've been narrowing down where the problem actually occurs but all the signs point to how Adobe Audition works with Windows Vista. The download trial of Audition 3 was supposed to be my saviour, but the glitches still occur, and there's another problem to add to the mix.

Load up Audition and it works fine. After five minutes, it gets sticky and slow. You’re moving something, you’re clicking somewhere, and it takes a second or two to catch up. It sounds like nothing when I’m writing it down, but it is not at all practical, and I find myself having to restart the software. Every. Five. Minutes.

Ahh, the Adobe approach to software development strikes again. Release early and patch later sounds familiar. It's a shame because Audition 2 was a great bit of software, version 3 is sadly worse than useless.

It seems like the only way to work with Microsoft at the moment is to downgrade everything. Audition 3 is bad, so stick with Audition 2. Vista is laughable, better to stick with XP. I just can't fathom how a company as big as Microsoft could be satisfied to produce something so bad that it's better not to upgrade.

Personally I blame Bernie, not for any specific reason, but it must be his fault somehow.

I heard PC World's hardware sales recently dropped so low, that they had to re-introduce XP machines to the shelves. A rather embarrassing affair all round. don't worry though a new OS will be available in a few years.

Like I said at the start, I’ve always been on the PC side of Mac vs PC. But now...

Make Sure You're Connected

This is the first in an occasional series from Sidepodcast, giving you a behind the scenes look at podcasting, specifically in the Formula 1 genre. We want to share the pitfalls, the problems, and the triumphs that go into making the show what it is. As this is a joint effort, to provide you with both sides of the story, I will be writing in plain text, whilst the geeky one will add his two cents in italics.

Last Friday, our broadband died. And I almost joined it.

I got home from work, ready to start researching F1 Minute for Friday, and there was nothing. No Google, no BBC, no Sidepodcast. Fair enough, the McLaren appeal result didn't come through until late at night anyway, and I probably would have waited for that before recording anything anyway, but I'm all about having the choice.

I would never have guessed.

The last time we were without broadband was when we moved house back in June. We managed to engineer a crossover period, but it involved driving back and forth between two homes, sitting on the floor in a cold, empty room, and generally getting a headache the minute anyone mentioned the words Formula and 1.

The cold, empty room was really our fault though - we could've made it more hospitable. BT did let us down with management of the switchover. They act with impunity because they have a monopoly in this country, and it's a major barrier to entry when it comes to doing anything online... at some point you have to deal with them.

All you need to create a podcast is electricity, a fast connection, and a computer. Never mind that silly food and water, those three things are the essentials in life. And I really mean that. Broadband providers seem to believe that the internet is some kind of luxury, that you can wait a fortnight for, even if you tell them that it isn't. There's no option to pay more to get it quicker, there's no way to speed things up even if your job depends on access. Sidepodcast doesn't provide us with revenue, but that doesn't mean we don't take it seriously.

A fair point. If you move house, you're guaranteed to have basic amenities like gas, electricity and running water from the moment you arrive. Internet access sadly isn't part of the deal. Usually connections don't take more than a couple of days, but in our case it was over a month.

Anyway, back to the present. We've had pretty much flawless coverage since we moved in, but the other night there was nothing happening. I had to rely on my new internet capable mobile to keep refreshing the news sites, until we could dig out the lead we needed.

Ahh, lest you forget dial-up, young lady. We still had a working phone line, and the opportunity to hear the heart wrenching bleeps of an obsolete modem kicking into life is a moment to savour.

Dial up? Yeugh.

Oh.

It's an option, yes, but it's hardly ideal. Today we have been looking at alternative backup solutions, like a portable 3G modem for example.

An external 3G modem makes a lot of sense. They run as fast (and in some cases faster) than broadband. They work pretty much anywhere in the UK and will fall back to GPRS mode should you fall out of range. However, data rates are extremely expensive compared to broadband and contracts are usually longer.

Whilst we haven't invested yet, we will be doing so as soon as we've researched the package that suits us best. The ability to have broadband wherever we go (dependent on coverage, of course), is actually more useful than just a backup. Imagine if we had the ability to blog directly from GPlive, you'd be getting all the updates of what we're seeing as we're witnessing it first hand. This is something we've always been interested in doing, it's why we invested in the portable recording device. As we go out and about more, we want to be able to bring you closer to the action as soon as we can. So whilst our broadband crisis this weekend was a pain, it has brought some more new technology to our attention. Every cloud has a silver lining, they say.

Bloomin' optimists, I say.