Sidepodcast

Video Nearly Killed the Radio Star

Somewhere between the time we started Sidepodcast and present day, we manage to attract some fantastically creative individuals to the community here, and those people never cease to come up with endless amounts of brilliant ideas and together solve all sorts of unimaginably complicated problems. Those same people also ask a lot of questions.

Credit: Sidepodcast

Christine... on the Internet

Last week Christine and I, under the guise of F1 Minute, launched a short video trial, investigating into how the current F1 Minute audio podcast might translate to the small screen. It's a challenging problem to solve, because video production typically takes considerably more effort than audio production and Christine already manages to fill every waking hour with audio work. How in the world can an order of magnitude more work be squeezed into that same timeframe too?

The simple answer is, it can't.

This didn't come as a massive surprise, given we attempted to bring F1 Minute video to life at the beginning of 2008 before the real world got the better of us. Last week's trial almost slipped through our fingers too, had mother nature not kindly intervened and given us a couple of snow days to catch up with ourselves. We're ambitious, but ultimately held to account by the same invisible force as everyone else.

In a typically Sidepodcast fashion, we made and launched our video trial without any preconceptions or expectations. The shows could've been a worldwide smash hit, or they could've vanished without a trace. We were only really interested in figuring out how long each one took to make, assuming it was possible at all.

Then questions came from the smart people and we couldn't answer them. We didn't know how long we were planning to make them for. We didn't know when they would be available. We didn't even have a logo prepared should someone wish to plug the show.

You'd never guess we'd been doing this for three years already.

Now though, we are slightly smarter after the fact. We know roughly where we are, what we can do, and where we might be going... sort of. We know that making a daily 60 second video on the subject of F1 is possible, and that given the right finances they can be made mostly by one person on a part time basis. We also know we have most of the right equipment, but that a laptop really isn't the correct machine for the job.

Clearly we now know the initial run of shows would only last for five days although we probably assumed it would be more. We also know that there are other options to explore and that we're not done experimenting yet.

As discussed on the F1 Minute blog HD video is a priority, so to is optimising a tardy workflow. It's been requested that Christine feature more throughout each show, and while we originally filmed just the top and tail of the programme, a better model would likely look similar to F1 Rewind from days of yore (except in shorter form).

Looking around for the competition, only Autosport's autoplaying video channel appears to offer anything of a similar nature, and you'll need a magnifying glass to see that. GP Update have the occasional stab at video production, and Eurosport appear to occasionally put some F1 news content online. There really isn't anyone else out there doing something along these lines, and that's the main reason we wanted to have a go.

At it's current level the series isn't sustainable without an income. How we find an income stream for it is a problem for another day, in the meantime we have more to do and more to learn. Expect more F1 Minute video before the season begins.

If you had any thoughts, ideas, suggestions and questions this past week, now is a good time to throw them out there.

Jim Clark - Yes, He Really Was That Good

Having previously discussed Jim Clark on a couple of occasions, Steven Roy returns to highlight some more of the man's success, but from another perspective

Credit: Lotus

Clark's Lotus Type 18, at Group Lotus' HQ in Hethel.

Having watched BBC4’s re-run of Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion recently I was surprised at the effect that he had on people even though I know all the stories and I have seen the film before. It seems incredible to me that someone like Dan Gurney still breaks down and cries when speaking about Clark even though the film was made 40 years after his death.

I have never been a big fan of using statistics to assess a driver’s ability. There are many examples of drivers who never achieved the results that their ability deserved. Chris Amon was rated as one of the very best drivers of his time but never won a world championship race due to his incredible ability to change teams at exactly the wrong time. However there are other cases like Fangio where the raw statistics tell you that this was indeed a great driver. There is only one interpretation that can be made from 24 wins from 51 starts.

Clark’s results like Fangio’s lead to only one conclusion but I want to dig into the bald statistics to show how he dominated the sport.

In simple terms, he started 72 races and won 25. Given that the reliability of the cars in the 1960s was nowhere near as good as it is now these are clearly exceptional results but they don’t come close to showing how good Clark really was. He drove only for Lotus and Colin Chapman made cars with two characteristics. They were fast and they were unreliable. Clark as a result retired from 23 of his 72 races and in many of those he retired from the lead.

So although he started 72 races he only finished 49 and he won more than half of those. You may think those statistics sum him up but there is better to come. Of those 49 finishes 32 were podiums and 40 were points scoring. In a career that lasted 8 seasons he only finished out of the points 9 times.

In those days, of course, young drivers were not able to spend time in simulators learning the vagaries of their car and the circuits. Neither did they have telemetry to let them know where they were gaining or losing time. So they had to take time to settle into F1 and learn how far they could push their cars. Any driver who pushed the limit too early was liable to have a very short career.

Jim’s first race was the Dutch GP of 1960 but it was not until 1962 that he won his first race. The real measure of his domination is to be found in his results from the start of 1962 until his death after the first round of the 1968 championship.

During that period he started 58 races and failed to finish more than a third of them recording 20 DNFs. From his 38 finishes he scored 25 wins, 29 podiums and 34 points scoring finishes. In just over 6 full seasons he won two-thirds of the races he finished and only finished outside the points 4 times.

In those 6 seasons he only finished outside the top 3 in the championship once. This was in 1966 when the engine regulations were changed from 1.5 litre to 3 litres and Lotus did not have a very good engine until the Cosworth DFV arrived the following season. He won two championships but had Chapman gone for a bit more reliability at the expense of a little speed he could easily have taken 5 and drastically improved his already impressive statistics.

Of course, in those days, drivers drove in many other categories and few drove in as many as Clark . Frustratingly for his rivals, it didn’t matter what he drove he was just as good in any kind of car. In 1964 he finished third in the world championship but he won the British Touring Car Championship in the Lotus Cortina. He won in formula two, sports cars and saloon cars. He won the Indianapolis 500 by two laps in 1965 and but for some dodgy lap scoring and some officials ignoring their own rules to ensure that one of their own won he would have won two more. He was even at home at the wheel of a rally car.

In the winters of the 1960s the top F1 drivers drove in the Tasman Series which was a series of races in New Zealand and Australia . It goes without saying that Clark dominated. He entered the championship for the first time in 1965 winning 4 of the 8 races and finishing second once to take the championship. The following year was his least successful finishing third in the championship with one win and 2 seconds.

In 1967 he was truly dominant. That year there were only 6 races of which Clark won 3 and finished second in the other 3. He scored 45 points while his nearest rival Jackie Stewart scored only 18 from his two wins. In 1968 the championship was again up to 8 races and Clark won 4 and was second in another to take yet another championship.

In four seasons Clark scored 12 wins, 7 seconds and one third from 30 races. In 4 seasons he finished on the podium in two-thirds of the races in the Tasman Series, winning 40% of them and taking 3 of the 4 championships.

It is hard to put into words how utterly dominant Jim Clark was but the numbers give an indication.

Double Trouble

I have, for a long time, been the minority voice calling for Martin Brundle's pre-race gridwalk to be axed. When it made the switch to the BBC along with Martin, I wasn't impressed. I do understand the joy of some unscripted driver moments, but I can't bear the painful minutes of TV that it takes to get there.

Brundle himself has said he isn't a perfect TV interviewer, or presenter, but he loves to walk the grid and if the fans love to see it, then he's happy to provide. Personally, it was a perfect moment to make lunch ahead of the Grand Prix.

This weekend, I've changed my opinion on the gridwalk, and that isn't just because there was a good minute or so of Rob Smedley footage, plus some questions to the man himself. The reason the walk no longer makes me cringe is because David Coulthard has joined the fun.

In a single broadcasting decision, the BBC have revolutionised the grid coverage. Martin no longer has to meander about the grid looking for someone to talk to, if there is no one available, he has DC there to discuss things with. Coulthard has the drivers perspective, and knows what the guys out there are going through. He provides some insight that Martin Brundle has probably lost since his years in the car.

When Brundle was angling for a chat with Vettel, when the young German was surrounded by other people, DC captured Christian Horner for a few questions as well. He has the connections, he has the friends, and he has some great thoughts to share.

The pair of them finally did catch up with Vettel, and Brundle's questions garnered mono-syllabic answers. Do you think you can win? How will you do in the wet? DC managed to get more out of  the pole-sitter than Martin ever would have. This isn't necessarily a judgement against Brundle because he is well loved in F1 commentary circles, but having DC beside him, in my opinion, makes all the difference. I may even watch the entire grid walk next time.

Formula 1 in HD, Courtesy of Toyota

Formula One teams have been dishing out corporate videos for years. They're almost always designed to push the "message" in the most unsubtle and unoriginal way imaginable. We try and avoid these full length promos as much as possible, but just this once we're going to capitulate and play a clip unedited, and in its entirety.

We're doing it because this trailer from Toyota is special, this one was filmed in high definition.

• Length: 01:22 
• Size: 30.7 MB 
• File: toyotatf109debut.mp4 
• Transcript: toyotatf109debut.pdf 
• Torrent: toyotatf109debut.torrent 

When Toyota Motorsport announced that the debut of their 2009 challenger would be accompanied by a blockbuster movie trailer, we may have laughed at the idea once or twice. After all, if you're going to bring Hollywood to Formula One you'd better do it right, but with this short film I think the team have delivered.

It may be the wrong side of cheesy, and the drivers clearly aren't missing their vocation in life, but what we have here is a team stepping up to the plate, and doing what the BBC either can't or wont do, and that is deliver F1 video in glorious 1080p widescreen.

If you're watching in your browser, make sure you hit fullscreen and turn that volume up!

Alive Alive-O

If you were following last Sunday's live streaming show, or if you've watched the replay, you'll likely be aware that we were suffering from streaming problems.

Despite our best efforts, both the primary live server (hosted by Justin.tv) and the secondary live server (hosted by Ustream.tv) failed us. It's not the first week we've suffered problems either, and it appears that as those two services gain in popularity so their reliability similarly suffers.

A solution would be to run our own streaming server, which is what we've spent the best part of the week figuring out.

Because we're new to all this, it seems like a good plan to give it a road test before Sunday. We were planning to record the green screen for last episode of Inside Track today, and as that was the show that started the live ball rolling, it seems only appropriate that it's the first show to run on the new equipment.

If you're around this evening, say about 8pm and you fancy helping us test this stuff, or if you wouldn't mind catching an early preview of the video, then please feel free to join us.

Going Live!

It's that time again, live streaming comes to Sidepodcast HQ for the second time.

Now, I should preface this post by saying we're not going to do an entry every time we are record the video. The idea is to set up a 'Live' page and give the streaming TV it's own space. You can keep your eye on the schedule to see when we're planning to record.

The reason for this blog post, then, (aside from the fact that we haven't set up the page yet) is that there are changes afoot.

As a bit of a test, we're moving from UStream.tv to Justin.tv. Personally, I think UStream is a great site, and I'm already missing it, but Justin.tv offers a lot more options. The kind of thing that the techy one gets excited about. So here's Sidepodcast how Justin see's it.

Inside Track Live is due to start any moment now, so stay tuned (if you can tear yourself away from Le Mans) and I'll see you in two!

The Magic of Chroma Key (Part 2)

In part 1 of our behind-the-scenes look at chroma keying, we covered humble beginnings and the nightmare's encountered therein. In part 2, let's look at how we solved some of the issues while creating ourselves some brand new ones.

Going Pro

We struggled on with the duvet cover for as long as we could (ironing it actually made a significant difference) but the truth is, it just wasn't good enough. We made a total of 13 videos before giving in and purchasing a professional green / blue screen.

The new backdrop made its debut on the Italy preview show and the results were instantly impressive. The screen folds away inside a soft bag which means some creases are still apparent, but when opened it remains flat and is very luminous in colour, making post-processing a relative breeze.

On one side you get green material while the reverse is blue, meaning that if Christine decides to wear clothes of similar shade to the former, we simply flip the thing around. Life's so much easier with the right tools isn't it?

Why Do You Have to Go and Make Things So Complicated?

After a couple more straightforward videos we decided to try something a bit different, so during the off-season we made the Christmas Message video, which was particularly complicated because it was the first shoot we'd done with the host seated.

The newly acquired backdrop is 5ft by 7ft which is plenty big enough to film a large chair and its occupant, but we suffer from severe space restrictions meaning that all of the furniture had to be removed from the room just to get the video camera far enough away.

The shoot took two days meaning that the room was out of bounds during that period and seeing as some of the removed furniture included the bed, it meant sleeping in the living room until we were done. Oh yes, that's how dedicated to the Sidepodcast cause we are. First we can't sleep because the duvet cover's hanging upright on the wall, and when we solve that problem, the bed leaves the room.

Camera Obscura

You may have noticed by now that Christine doesn't appear to have any legs or feet in the videos and that's purely down to problems with space. While the backdrop is willing and able, there's simply no way we can move the camera enough distance away to fit a whole person in the viewfinder. For the time being we're simply limited to half a person, whether they be sitting or standing.

One final thing to mention is that for the last two F1 Rewind show's, we didn't use chroma technology at all. We simply hung a plain backdrop from the ceiling and pointed a couple of pretty lights at the thing. The result means much less post processing work and that's something we're going to look more into in the future because backgrounds are taking us much longer this year.

In the past we spent a small fortune buying various images and movies from iStockphoto, this year we decided to make our own. How we've gone about doing that though, is a story for another day.

Any comments or questions on either of these two posts, please do shout us in the comments. We are all ears, and quite worryingly, are always here.

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.

How Much Would You Pay For this Kind of F1 Coverage?

I don't want anyone to think that I'm obsessed with Formula One television coverage, but when I saw this fantastic demo the other day, the only thing I thought was - Bernie needs to see this:

If you play the video and sit back, all you'll see is a ride on board a VW Beetle around what I'm assuming is New York City. However, grab your mouse, click on the video and drag for a few seconds and then the thing really comes to life.

360° interactive images have been available on the web for years and years, but to the best of my knowledge they've all been static. You could look around a room, or you could get a nice panorama from a cliff top. I've never seen them be interactive and contain motion before.

Take a Look Around You

The technology that enables the above visuals has been developed by a company called Immersive Media and they've created a housing containing 11 lenses called the Dodeca 2360. It's about the size of a small ball and I think FOM needs to buy about 20 of them.

Imagine watching an onboard shot during a race and being able to spin right around to see who's following or who's to the side. Envisage being able to watch the start of a Grand Prix from the center of the pack in 360°. Or catch an overtaking manouvre, but instead of seeing the beginning from a reverse angle and the end from a different one, you just follow all the action in one sweeping pan. The possibilities are endless.

Pan, Tilt and Zoom

There might be one spanner in the works though, in that as far as I can tell the technology only allows for post-processing viewing, so no live action as yet, but that's bound to change soon and in the meantime even using it for replays would be a major step forward.

Incidentally NASCAR already use something along these lines, although their's appears to be a single lens on a motorised platform and could easily miss much of the action. Additionally only one person can control that camera's direction, but when everything is recorded from every angle, anyone can look anywhere.

How much would you pay to be in control of your own race viewing, to be able to follow your favourite driver yet see so much more than they ever could? I'd put that right up there with the desire for high-definition coverage, what about you?

F1 Television Realism

It's about time Formula 1 had a dose of reality, or rather a dose of reality television.

You see it everywhere these days, in the UK it seems there's always some C-list celebrity doing something daft to get themselves TV exposure. Eating bugs, prancing on ice or whatever. Even IndyCar got the jump on F1 when Helio Castroneves recently won a television dance competition.

It's not just the stars that get a go either, after all Simon Cowell became a household name spotting the planet's untapped talent and putting them on our screens. A never ending stream of fresh-faced hopefuls paraded in front of a society that appears to have an insatiable appetite for more of the same.

Formula One should take note, a reality show could expose the sport to a much wider audience, specifically targeting armchair viewers which, let's be honest are the ones FOM are really interested in. So, if F1 could benefit from such a program, what would it be about?

Right now I'm led to believe there's a program on British TV that has something to do with choosing a singer to appear in a West End musical. Seems like a perfectly reasonable idea, the musical gets promotion, the audience gets to pick the star, the television company make money from phone-in voting.

Cheap content, everybody wins, oh yeah this show is currently being broadcast on the BBC. They just won a big contract to show Formula 1 next year didn't they?

Okay, so we have a broadcaster, a sport in desperate need of some good press, and a sensible business plan, but what should the viewers vote for?

Well, there's still that niggling question of commentators that the beeb need to sort out for next year. Everyone has an opinion right? A favourite lineup, a preferred team. It's the viewer who has to put up with whoever sits in the commentary box for the season, why shouldn't they get to vote on who that might be?

The BBC have the knowledge and infrastructure to pull off such a programme, okay they recently had some bad experience with phone-in competitions, but they're over that now, right?

As far as I'm aware no sports show has ever given this kind of control to the armchair fan, but it's those people who will be directly affected by the choice of commentator. Why not open the auditions to the general public, get the likes of Murray Walker, Martin Brundle and even Bernie himself to pre-select the bunch of hopefuls, Simon Cowell style, and leave us to do the rest?

The show could run during the close season, with the winner picked shortly before the opening race. Each week said hopefuls could be inducted into the art of F1 racing and F1 commentary. No experience necessary and the viewers can learn along with them, providing the twin solutions of training a bunch of fresh commentating wannabes whilst explaining the intricacies of Formula One to the masses.

As far as I can make out there aren't any downsides.

Okay it's not great news for the old hands like Brundle, but he could wear his trousers high and reinvent himself as a talent Svengali. C'mon, there's even room for Tamara, she could be the backstage girl hugging the tearful failures.

What do we think, is it a winner? Is there anyone else who'd fit neatly onto the judging panel, say in the Paula Abdul role? Who have I missed, and would we like to see a brand new, unknown F1 commentating line up?

Oh yeah, and finally, what in the world should such a show be called?