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.
At the beginning of the month we asked for ideas and feedback relating to things that need improving on the site for next year. We received tonnes of useful comments and we've collated that information into all manner of updates scheduled for sometime in January.
Because we're needy, high maintenance people the next thing we're after is criticism on our audio podcasts, video podcasts and live shows. Last year we picked up some excellent constructive feedback from both doctorvee and BlogF1 on ways in which we could improve in 2008, and the result of those suggestions led to the creation of F1 Digest.
In order to figure out how Sidepodcast 3.0 will look and sound, we're really keen to find out what you like and dislike, the shows you can't live without and the bits you'd never listen to again, even if we paid you.
The Sounds
Aside from the change of name, F1 Debrief has remained pretty consistent throughout the year. The changes made in January have stood the test of time, but we've had complaints regarding the show's length, and that sometimes we don't give all the driver's enough coverage. What can we improve on, drop or add to make Debrief better in '09?
F1 Digest was new this year, but how does it stack up against other podcasts? Do you listen to all the weekends coverage and does it give you enough / too much detail? Tell us what you think is needed for next year.
The mini-series remains one of our most popular shows, and this year listener feedback went so far as to create two of the series as well as to nominate a host of future shows. We don't have any specific plans to make changes to this in the future, but we're always open to suggestions.
The Pictures
At the start of the year we had the frankly laughable idea of releasing videos on a weekly basis. This turned out to be more difficult than we planned, but we did at least manage to put out two episodes of F1 Rewind. Should we make more time for a video news show or are race preview videos, along the lines of Inside Track, more important? 18 - 20 videos a year is probably our limit, but what should they contain? Can we do a third year of track guides or do we know our way around by now?
The Bit that Breaks Often
Although the idea of doing live shows only came into fruition halfway through the year, they've started to take over our lives. There are an awful lot of improvements we're thinking of making in this area, but what things do you think we should work on? If we keep doing live video / audio next year, would you still tune in? Should we do more, should we do less and are you interested in "behind the scenes" coverage like green screen recording, or do you prefer interactive shows such as the podpanel.
We really appreciate and take on board anything you can throw at us, and as before, I believe Rich is working on a survey that we'll combine with comments and hopefully come up with bigger and better things for 2009.
A week or so ago, we looked at how the driver's websites stacked up against each other, in fourveryseparateposts. Now we're turning our attention on the teams, but the criteria is still the same. I'll be looking at it from a fan's point of view, assessing the content and general usability. The geeky one takes a more, well, geeky look at the sites, and then we rate them. Here goes.
Ferrari
I tried to link to the actual Ferrari Racing bit of the site, but it’s so flash-based, there’s no unique ID for that page. You have to pick your language, navigate whether you want the site or the store, then click on racing. Too much effort! Once you get that far, there’s not that much information on there anyway, but I do like the timeline through the years. A unique way of doing a biography, that includes a fascinating look at the way the cars have changed. The one problem I found is, even though I picked English, there still seems to be the odd Italian word thrown in here and there, making navigation harder, but not impossible.
I do like a website that resizes and repositions my web browser, no really, nothing makes me happier. I mean why stop there, why not rearrange my desktop while you're at it? I'm only the visitor, that's all.
Regardless of the heavy handed welcome, you would have thought that F1 was important enough to Ferrari to warrant its own site, wouldn't you? Instead you'll find your racing information buried under a sea of tiny little text links, oh and good luck finding your way around, even the English language version with its 6pt sized links contained Italian phrasing I could only guess the meaning of.
Incidentally, Ferrari have some great video interviews on YouTube, and I rather expected to find something similar here (albeit better quality), but alas if they're around anywhere I couldn't find them.
Firstly, it was impossibly slow to load. There was a competition for a trip to Malaysia, but I couldn’t wait for the site to load, so I’ll never be able to participate, let alone win. There is information about the Pit Lane Park, which is useful, and some team news, but nothing out of the ordinary to make it stand out.
Okay, I'm going to come right out and say it, in contrast to Christine, I think this is the best website I've visited in a very long time. Yes, I know it's built in Flash and I know there's no HTML version, but when a team of people put in this much effort and attention to detail, I can only sit back in awe. Seriously a thing of beauty.
To best illustrate why I like this place so much, allow me to guide you through but one section of many. Selecting 'Season 2008' from the top menu, followed by 'GP Canada' will introduce a short video clip. Watch closely as for a few brief seconds a BMW screams past not only the Casino de Montréal but also The Olympic Stadium. Clearly an F1 challenger was never in the vicinity of those two landmarks, which means somebody had to put it there by hand. I can't even speculate the amount of effort that went into creating those 3 seconds of film. Literally the car could've been anywhere on any track in the world and who would've noticed? That's my kind of attention to detail.
I will concede that all is not perfect though, and the sudden bursts of noise did ruin a particular track I was listening to at the time, and yep the site's slow, and sure the shop's a touch weird, but I forgive all sins because BMW's abode simply oozes character.
We’ve covered the Renault site in great detail previously, how it went completely wrong once a certain someone left. However, I’ll look at it with fresh eyes. It’s split into two – fan and team, which already makes me feel alienated. The team site is your standard news, statistics and history. The fan site is slightly more interesting, with the blog and the member additions. They were almost up to 7,000 members when I looked, so they must be doing something right.
As Christine points out this is a site of two halves, but I'm going to ignore the "Fan" section due to the fact it didn't load. In truth it very rarely does, the words "scalable" and "architecture" spring to mind here.
Five seconds... count 'em. That's the entire length of time I spend on the Renault site and that was enough to tell me nothing had changed. The offensive music startled me once again, while a huge window opened and automatically commandeered my screen - I think they call that the element of surprise. No doubt it looks great on a 40" projector beamed on the wall of the teams HQ, however it simply mocks my inferior equipment.
I really dislike the bubble thing, when I went to click on one of them, it disappeared. That’s not a great start in terms of usability. If you discount that, though, the navigation is easy with the menu along the top, and leads to some good stuff. There’s some really nice track guides, packed with information, and a fantastic animation of the 2006 car, where you can break it down to its very basic components. With detailed biographies on the key team members, including drivers, and a really good interactive tour of the factory, I could visit the Williams site over and over again. I just wish they’d get rid of the bubbles.
If Williams were as fast on track as they are on the web, we'd be crowning this year's constructors champions already. It's nice to wander around the site, the layout is uncluttered, the colour scheme is friendly and I felt drawn into digging deeper. So much information and I just wanted to read more.
No mention of the Williams site would be complete without a hat tip to the multimedia section. They're one of, if not the best in this area. Although, I could've sworn the Earth was more spherical the last time I checked. Maybe Sir Frank knows something we don't?
I don’t understand why, when I hover a link, the timer things go crazy. It doesn’t add anything or tell my anything, and simply makes me dizzy. There aren’t too many extras on the site, just the usual driver info, car statistics, and press releases. Red Bull have a style about them, though, that makes every piece of writing worth reading, in case it holds a hidden gem. They’re not afraid to poke fun at themselves, and everyone else, which keeps me on the site. I dislike having to click “Read More” on a news article, though, when there’s plenty of room on the page to fit it in.
At last a HTML site to rival the Flash incumbents. I actually prefer the basic version, best described as "how the web should be" given that it reinforces the team's brand whilst remaining both useful and user friendly. The over the top alternate version sadly offers little or nothing extra, except I quite liked the motion-blur-rollover-effect. Flawed though it is, given that your attention automatically moves to the thing that's supposed to be blending into the background. I saw some text to read but was far to busy fading the images in and out to pay any it attention.
One quick mention for the paddock fly-by at redbullf1.com, just because someone put a lot of work into it. It doesn't add anything to Red Bull's main site but kudos for the hours of work that went into an entirely pointless but frankly gorgeous animation. I stand up and applaud such a pretentious waste of bandwidth.
Oh yes, it's true. I mentioned in the comments earlier this week that there was a peculiar ITV advertisement doing the rounds.
It looked like this:
And read:
Live coverage of Friday’s Practice, this Thursday at 11pm GMT
I clicked the message, but to my disappointment the page didn't go anywhere. It also didn't explain whether the content would be online, on television or some kind of mobile service.
Today, ITV announced that they have in fact secured the rights to stream Friday practice on the web. They also have rights to something they're calling "simulcasts" of qualifying and the race. I can't for the life of me figure if there's a difference between live streaming and simulcasting, presumably they mean shown at the same time as on television?
In addition there's a 30-day catch-up service for the F1 programmes they do show on TV.
Sadly this service is limited to UK residents only, although there's a slim possibility there may be a technical workaround when it comes to the streaming content. Many people are telling us that a simple "proxy address" change will allow you access, but we've yet to confirm that.
In general though this is fantastic news, and a massive step forward for Formula 1 online broadcasting.
Update: The first Friday broadcast went reasonably well. The good news was the rumours suggesting it was a Windows only service were wide of the mark. The player is a simple Flash application that appears to work well across most platforms.
There were issues relating to choppy playback, bad sound and sometimes total video failure, but it's unclear if these were caused by problems with the World Feed (FOM's responsibility) or a problem with the content delivery network (ITV use Limelight Networks for this).
Ignoring the early teething troubles this looks like it could finally change Formula 1 broadcasting for the better.
As Formula 1 heads into it's 'winter break' and the daily influx of gossip and rumour fades to a quiet whisper, we figured it would an ideal time to launch a news site!
They don't pay us the big bucks for nothing, let me tell ya.
Actually, it's not really a news site per se, we're just giving F1 Minute a home of it's own. The recent addition to our podcasting stable, has grown so rapidly and consistently that it's ready to leave the tender bosom of Sidepodcast, and venture out into the big, bad world on it's own.
You can view the new site at: http://www.f1minute.com/. It's still a little wet behind the ears, but basically fit for purpose. Feel free to have a poke around and let us know what you think.
So What's New?
From a listerner's perspective, nothing changes. The feed is still in the same place as it always was, so if you've subscribed to the podcast, you'll not miss a moment's news. iTunes and various other podcast directories are already pointing to the new location and we've moved all posts and comments across to the new domain.
Additionally Christine has created a Twitter thingy, to keep you bang up-to-date with the latest in news and gossip. Just in case the idea of 'F1 news every single weekday', is simply not enough information for you.
So Why Change?
We've created a new home for F1 minute, because it was getting a little bit swamped by all the action on this site. Many search engines struggled to pick up the latest posts and because it didn't get a look-in on the homepage, not everybody spotted it.
Additionally we've picked a pretty solid hosting company (that I believe is the same as Ollie's), which should give us an extra layer of stability after some of the hosting problems we've had here. Ideally we'd like to move to Amazon's EC2 cloud, but the technology is too immature to make the jump right now. Media Temple offer a good compromise, which is less flexible, but not so cutting-edge.
What About Embedded Content?
If you've jumped on board and added the embeddable F1 Minute player to your site / blog / forum, we've not forgotten you. The good news is you don't have to change a single line of code. You've probably noticed that today's episode is still happily running on your site and it will continue to do so.
However, if you've got five minutes to spare, we do recommend that you take a look at the new sharing page. The code listed there has been tweaked in order to point to the new domain. Upgrading code on your site will enable you to benefit from the increased reliability that the new host's offer us, and we'll also be adding new players and customised embed options to that page soon.
Just to re-iterate, you don't have to change anything, we know you're busy people and we don't like to impose.
In Conclusion
So, there you have it. New domain, new host, better stability and a web site dedicated solely to the vocals of Ms. Blachford.
Oh, I almost forgot. The new site is entirely at the disposal of the gravelly-voiced damsel, there'll not be an anti-McLaren post in sight (although I might stop by with some inflammatory comments). If you thought she had a lot on her plate before, you've not seen nothing yet!
Please stop by and say "howdy", leave a comment or peruse at your leisure. As always, thoughts, ideas and criticism are readily welcomed.
As Formula 1 heads into it's 'winter break' and the daily influx of gossip and rumour fades to a quiet whisper, we figured it would an ideal time to launch a news site!
