[LM24] Eurosport coverage (Closed - Use 'TV and Streaming' Thread)

[Paradise City]

Originally Posted by ArnageWRC

I suppose we have to be grateful for their coverage - but it could be miles better! Not sure about the new ACO/ Eurosport deal myself.
Also, could do with some mainstream highlight shows as well.

Being an honest and blunt with our criticism, it helps them, it helps us.

I'm glad Eurosport have the contract, because no else would give the 24 hours the full splash.

[Mal]

Originally Posted by Paradise City

I'm glad Eurosport have the contract, because no else would give the 24 hours the full splash.

I am sure Motors would do it and use RLM for commentary

[deggis]

Originally Posted by Mal

I am sure Motors would do it and use RLM for commentary

In substandard SD and reach about 1/10 of what Eurosport can reach.

[Victor_RO]

2011 was probably the best year of Eurosport coverage of Le Mans in recent years (if you only count the race and ignore the shambles that the 24 Minutes show has always been). No Carlton Kirby, and they managed to rope in Hindy for about a quarter of the race.

[valedave]

*settles down to watch re-run of Eurosport coverage*

"And there's Bill France waving the Tricolore..."

*OFF*




Absolute garbage, and an utter disgrace if only half of what's written in this thread is true (about Allan's accident, mainly).

[wewantourdarbyback]

Originally Posted by Paradise City

They must've been commentating back in Paris? But then Liz Halliday was in and out of the box/pitlane so that can't be it. I remember switching over to Eurosport and CK merrily talking about the one hour red flag at the start of the race - switched back to RLM as quick as die when I heard that I can tell you.

Martin Haven was definitely trackside, he came and commentated on RLM in the last few hours.

[AstonGeoff]

I have a solution to the agony of watching the race on Eurosport, it's quite simple really. Go and watch for real

I have only ever seen the Monday night 24 minutes show for the last few years, and to avoid that next year we are going on the Sunday

[Simmi]

Haven't been able to watch beyond 90mins in since I got back from the race. That's not solely down to the comms or Allan. Just waiting for the right time I suppose.

[supermario21]

Don't forget the booths are often in terrible locations with not a great view. Bob Varsha of SPEED tweeted this when someone asked him why the SPEED announcers fly home on Friday to do the race announcing from Charlotte.

[Simmi]

I'm not having that as an excuse. It's not Nascar. All you get is one view of the track and your screens. You don't need any more than that.

[Entr0py]

A little late but here goes! Since the end of the race I’ve probably watched the whole thing back in its entirety a three or so times now.

I thought the level of coverage this year was excellent, for those of us stuck in the UK it was quite nice to come in from work and sit down to a live night qualifying session, just magic. I think it’s fair to say there’s always going to be irritations with commentators you spend the better part of 24 hours listening to, any minor faults are magnified and hard to get away from. I thought Eurosport did a much better job this year keeping the coverage on mainly one channel, in contrast to last year’s back and forth across the channels.

My biggest (petty) gripe with the coverage was the continually cutting away from night onboard shots of the P1 cars entering the Porsche curves, I lost count how many times we’d be onboard and soon as they swept into the 1st Porsche curve the camera would cut away to some mechanic asleep etc. It got to a point where I thought there must be some restriction on the ‘money shot’ so to speak!! Personally I very much enjoy Neville’s commentary and I have a lot of time for Jeremy Shaw and Mark Cole. Liz got a few uncharitable comments on other websites forums (cough cough Autosport) but I thought she was much better improvement for the pitlane questions than the usual French lady.

Constructive feedback for next year, restrict Martin Haven. Yes I know that won’t be a popular opinion but I found him very overly opinionated for a commentator. Many of us no doubt will enjoy other motor racing series and I got increasingly racked off at the constant digs. It’s great to have passionate commentators, but not to have fanboy commentators. For instance there was a few digs at Lewis Hamilton, yet a quick scour on Youtube will find Martin commentating on Lewis in GP2 and practically wetting himself in excitement and full of praise. I found that Martin dominated other commentators on air with him and at one point he insulted viewers tweeting in to correct some mistakes, brushing it off saying they’re at home drinking so they must be wrong. Plenty of new viewers tweeted in questions and some were answered kindly, some were answered with barely concealed derision. I don’t think it’s delivered with malicious intent but sometimes it was uncomfortable listening.

I look forward very much to next year and hope the gradual improvement of HD onboard continues, and fingers crossed for a Hindy return.

[sceptic]

Originally Posted by supermario21

Don't forget the booths are often in terrible locations with not a great view. Bob Varsha of SPEED tweeted this when someone asked him why the SPEED announcers fly home on Friday to do the race announcing from Charlotte.

Nothing to do with Speed refusing to pay the fee to hire a commentary box then?

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Entr0py

Constructive feedback for next year, restrict Martin Haven. Yes I know that won’t be a popular opinion but I found him very overly opinionated for a commentator. Many of us no doubt will enjoy other motor racing series and I got increasingly racked off at the constant digs.
...
and fingers crossed for a Hindy return. [/FONT][/COLOR]

You make some good points. Although those two points don't stack up!

I'm up to morning break on the Eurosport coverage. They did get tired!

[Gingers4Justice]

Can't get to sleep. Maybe a rant will do me good

I still don't fully understand why Eurosport turn the majority of their cameras off for nearly half the race.

Look at this video of 1999 - plenty of footage from many different parts of the circuit, some of it in pitch black darkness.

If it was possible 15 years ago, it should be possible now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOFdT-2UA9M

I think the coverage of Le Mans has moved on very, very disappointingly in the past 15 years. Apart from HD cameras - which is, let's be honest, the bare minimum you'd expect - the television pictures lack any sort of imagination or innovation. I can't think of any major leap other than HD in the past two decades.

In-car cameras have arguably gone down hill as well. I understand that in a cramped LMP1 cockpit, it's difficult to fit a camera in well, but Rebellion seemed to do it fine for Silverstone (we didn't get any shots of that car at LM though).

If you look at the amount of in-car or on-board cameras in Grand-Am or ALMS last season, it's pretty pathetic that the pinnacle of the sport can't get its act together.

Put a camera on every car. It will be difficult and potentially expensive, but if the ambition is there, it will happen.

Fair enough, you can't have every single camera around the circuit operated on all the time - but when the camera man or woman leaves their station, at least tell them to leave the camera pointing at the track properly. And, Mr. Director, these cameras show some fabulously ambient shots. Just a few more of them in between mechanics sleeping and eating Bratwurst wouldn't go amiss...

I'm not just complaining about Eurosport, I'm complaining about the ACO too. Le Mans has been the proving ground of so many difficult technologies because it is a test, and it's trialing.

Show a bit of ambition. Bend over backwards for any TV or camera company wanting to try something out. If it works at Le Mans, it works anywhere.

Le Mans is just such a fabulous place, but the TV pictures don't even come close to doing it justice.

[deggis]

Originally Posted by Gingers4Justice

Put a camera on every car. It will be difficult and potentially expensive, but if the ambition is there, it will happen.

I remember accurately some press release around 2007-2009 where they promised to do just that. Clearly plan has not materialized.

I can't understand how the audio quality in the onboard in the louder cars is always so crappy. Like the microphone was optimized for diesel volume level. I also hate onboard cameras that do not show the steering wheel but of course it is not always possible to place the camera just anywhere in the cockpit and then that kind of view does not show the road as well.

French work laws is often thrown around as a reason for the lack of operational cameras... but if that's true then isn't then solution to hire more camera men?!

Why practices and qualifying always have so limited amount of operating cameras: since the streets are opened between the sessions they can't install all cameras (thiefs etc) and thus the operational ones are mostly in the permanent part of the circuit.

[Simmi]

Lots of good points made here. Agree with pretty much everything.

Except I don't think the blame lies with Eurosport - they are just taking pictures from the host broadcaster and have very little control until it's thrown to their camera in the pits.

It's on the ACO to make the changes.

[Nick Woodbury]

Originally Posted by deggis

French work laws is often thrown around as a reason for the lack of operational cameras... but if that's true then isn't then solution to hire more camera men?!

I have thought the same thing for a number of years since I picked up on proper sports car racing. Can't they just institute working shifts for the camera operators? It is disappointing to say the least.

[GT6]

Not sure a camera in every car is possible 56 cars would make it very expensive to do and you would need a huge team to monitor it

[isynge]

Originally Posted by GT6

Not sure a camera in every car is possible 56 cars would make it very expensive to do and you would need a huge team to monitor it

I think the latter point Simon makes cuts to the heart of things - the challenge isn't so much generating the footage, and I suspect in the greater scheme of things mandating an in-car camera shouldn't be eyewatering (and scope to license it to a camera manufacturer such as Go Pro?) but making sense of it all.

We're already seeing how highlights packages aren't edited, instead being more a collection of live footage stitched together with no real contextualisation, and unless you've got a production team who are capable of recognising in advance that a particular bit of in-car is going to be good then we'll be in a similar position to the current situation with interviews in the pits, where it really doesn't matter what's going on on-track, or what the commentator is saying, the footage will just cut to what is generally a pretty mundane interview.

Every time I'm moved to moan about the quality of coverage I dig out the highlights video for 1980, where as far as I can tell there was one camera which over the course of the race made its way around the track, and if it happened to be where something exciting happened good, and if not, well there's nothing to be done about that.

[Le Vieux]

Originally Posted by isynge

Every time I'm moved to moan about the quality of coverage I dig out the highlights video for 1980, where as far as I can tell there was one camera which over the course of the race made its way around the track, and if it happened to be where something exciting happened good, and if not, well there's nothing to be done about that.

Or worse - the 1969 video. I'm told that Ickx and Hermann repeatedly swapped the lead in the closing laps, but the video shows only repeated, near-identical shots of both cars going through Mulsanne or passing in front of the pits.

Certainly, it's not perfect now, but for those of us who remember earlier races, what we have now is superb!

[Gingers4Justice]

Originally Posted by GT6

Not sure a camera in every car is possible 56 cars would make it very expensive to do and you would need a huge team to monitor it

That is true, but the cost per car wouldn't be too high, would it? Is a percentage of the entrance fee diverted towards the TV coverage? If so, it wouldn't take a massive hike to cover the costs.

That said, having 56 in-car cameras working for 24 hours would be an incredible achievement - but one worthy of Le Mans.

[deggis]

What I also hate is that whenever the director decides to show incar, he only does for some seconds (same for WEC) and the seconds are very random and then cuts to the usual pit interview or something other irrelevant. Only during the nights they might show longer clips. So in a way the onboard parts kind of lack context.

And what was going on in in 2007, when the incar camera feed didn't even get through from the other end of the track (after Mulsanne) and kept constantly breaking up? And audio from the incar was completely asynchronized? See youtube for proof. Camera angle was vastly better though...

Some things have improved too: at least tv graphics have now live running lap times, but even this was something that only appeared couple of years ago...

[Bandicoot17]

Yeah it should be a requirement to have onboard camera's. They're aren't expensive and as someone said, it can be a tie in with GoPro or some other 'action' orientated camera brand.

My main issue is the random cutting to the pits and 'crowd' shots when there's stuff actually happening on the track. I know what a pitstop looks like and I know what someone with a flag looks like too. Fair enough if there's some drama like an Audi being wheeled in or a fire or something but not for every single fricken pitstop.

I think the WEC as whole needs to up it's media game, TV camera angles don't seem as good as those used in F1 (at the relevant tracks) and things like the posters and to some extent the TV graphics just look cheap. The 2014 'teaser' was a move in the right direction and I hope those changes are happening across the board.

[Simmi]

I'm on the fence really about 56 onboard cameras.

I think to intersperse into the race edit there isn't any need for 56. With the best will in the world there isn't enough inter-class wheel to wheel racing to warrant it.

When you really need them is when something goes down. So much goes on that we don't see. So what you could do is pick maybe 12 core onboards, then have other ones to draw upon when needed. Maybe put them online, let the teams do so too.

[Gingers4Justice]

Most of the cameras wouldn't be used, I'm sure. Just every single incident would be caught in camera in some form.

Just like how all 22 F1 cars have onboard cameras - they don't all have to be used.