Sidepodcast

• File: track9.m4v
• Length: 06:19
• Size: 72.6 MB
• Transcript: Coming soon

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It’s a sort of homecoming for Formula One this weekend, as racing returns to Silverstone 60 years after the circuit hosted the first ever race of the first ever FIA Drivers’ World Championship. In its honour Sidepodcast actually visits the circuit for this special episode of Inside Track.

We look back at the preparation for last year’s British GP with Red Bull’s very own Ole Schack, as well as finding out what to look out for in 2008 with all the boys from Toyota. There’s the usual lap of the circuit plus a quick championship refresher. In short, everything you need to know about the next race on the F1 calendar.

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He went without me!? Well, he’s lucky I’m in a good mood and don’t mind updating you on his progress.

The laptop used to post the previous pictures died, but not before capturing some live video. Check it out:

I can also tell you that it is nigh on impossible to hold a sensible telephone conversation with someone standing near the track of an F1 test. However, we shall do our best to remain in touch, and keep you in the loop as well. Stay tuned.

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• File: track8.m4v
• Length: 06:14
• Size: 71.8 MB
• Transcript: Coming soon

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Last year Bernie Ecclestone claimed there would be no more outings to the Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, yet Formula One returns there once again. In honour of the track that, despite being almost universally loathed amongst paddock regulars, will not disappear, Sidepodcast takes a spin around rural France to see what’s there to amuse our drivers this time out.

We also catch up with the sole French driver on this year’s grid, Sébastien Bourdais. Hear his thoughts on his debut F1 season, the support of the fans and the French federation as well as racing in Magny-Cours. If one man (other than Bernie) can save France’s place on the racing calendar, it’s likely to be Le Seb.

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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.

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• File: video24.m4v
• Length: 03:41
• Size: 42.2 MB
• Transcript: video24.pdf

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Last weekend in Canada there was a new man standing upon the top step of the podium, Robert Kubica. It was also the first time his team BMW Sauber F1 had won a Grand Prix and they did it in style with a perfect 1-2.

Formula One has been dominated by just two teams and a handful of drivers for the past 18 months, so we figured this was an event worth documenting. In the process, we catch up with Kubica and teammate Heidfeld along with big boss man Mario Theissen on their way back from the podium celebrations. But don’t you go pretending that a gutted Nick Heidfeld doesn’t make you want to cry, you know he does.

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Something we’ve been planning for a very long time, but that seems to have taken forever to come to fruition is Partner TV.

Essentially, the original idea we had was to provide a low maintenance option for any site wanting to play our videos, along the same lines as the F1 Minute sharing model. However, in this case we wanted to go further and make an explicit link between Sidepodcast TV and the site doing the embedding. To do this we’re pushing the video player to the max, and creating custom graphics that play before and during episodes, in order to show that there’s a relationship between one and the other.

It’s likely that you’ve already seen a working version of this on BlogF1, as Ollie did a fine job of integrating our videos into his homepage a while ago, but we’ve just finished working with Ian from Racing Bulls and the result looks pretty good, so we wanted to include it here:

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• File: track7.m4v
• Length: 06:33
• Size: 75.9 MB
• Transcript: track7.pdf

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Formula One takes an early breather from its European tour and heads across the Atlantic to Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix. Following swiftly on from the lottery that was the Monaco weekend, Sidepodcast takes a look at what this year’s sole North American race has to offer.

Last years event was the scene of one of motorsports most spectacular accidents, when Robert Kubica bounced off of a Toyota, a kerb and two concrete walls. Safety improvements have been made this year to prevent similar incidents, so join Christine on a hot lap of the track to make sure you’re up to speed with the changes for 2008, and everything else you need to know about racing in Canada.

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I tend to judge how important a Formula 1 story is in the context of the wider world, by whether or not Fast Lane Daily make mention of it.

The show goes out five days a week and features lots of motoring related news, but it’s based in the States so F1 rarely gets a look in… unless of course it’s big news. Today’s FIA vote predictably was the lead story.

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We’re going to try something a little bit different today, we’re planning to broadcast live video directly from Sidepodcast HQ.

Every week prior to a Grand Prix, we film Christine’s piece to camera for the video podcast Inside Track. We discussed what goes into that process earlier in the week and seeing as a few people found it interesting we thought we’d show you what actually goes on during recording. Oh yeah, and we decided to do it unedited and raw… we promise to watch our language.

Update: The live stream has now finished. We’ve updated the video player to show the recorded session.

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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.

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