A few more juicy bits about Sky Sports F1 HD
I, Ollie Parsley, have just come back from a tour of Sky Sports News and the Sky Sports F1 setup. I won’t go on and on about it for many paragraphs. So I’m going to summarise what was learnt today and some more information about the Sky Sports F1 Channel.
Sky Sports News
As you might already know, Sky Sports News are providing 2 dedicated reporters for 6 days surrounding a race weekend.
Technical challenges
One of the first broadcasters (just one in Spain) have made use of the 5.1 surround sound. There is also way to provide 5.1 in on-board cameras by putting the base sounds behind, to give them impression you are in the driving seat. This is the first time it will be used this comprehensively and Formula One Management have been working with Sky Sports (an ex-sky employee is the FOM sound engineer) to make sure the sound is awesome.
There are fibre optic cables from each race circuit back to Sky Sports HQ to enable multiple video streams back and forth across the world.
Studios
There is a small studio that will be at 16/20 grand prix that includes an awesome touch screen interface that Anthony Davidson, Georgie Thompson and Ted Kravits will be using.
There will be 17 tonnes of equipment and editing studios at each grand prix.
Red button
This is known as “Race Control” and will have 9 separate channels.
There will be around 3-4 driver camera to choose from, also a pit lane camera, a tweets panel, driver tracker and a few more. Plenty to choose from!
Graphics
We got a glimpse of some of the graphics that will be used on the various programmes. They feature video introductions of every driver, CGI grids, CGI track info, generally great graphics.
Virtual car
In the F1 studio there is will be a virtual car that the presenters can walk around. Eventually all the cars for the season will be done. We even got a chance to have a go in the studio and use the virtual car. If I’m brave enough I’ll put the video up, I need to wait for the video to be edited first though.
Opening titles
Unfortunately we weren’t able to see/hear the opening titles. Apparently they are awesome. We should find out next Wednesday or Thursday.
That’s about all for now. Even that went on for several paragraphs! Please note that I am not affiliated, endorsed or paid by Sky to do this. I’m just a massive F1 fan and really excited to get into the season and see what else Sky Sports F1 HD has for us!
