Up and coming.

I will be posting a tutorial on how you can pause a video playing automatically when you use a button on flash (Using a multi swf. approach.) that possibly takes you to a pop out or just another web page, and then how to resume the video automatically in the same place when you return as I have not seen any comprehensive explanations of this on the web. I simply know this from much trial and error on my current project!

-AJM

Unit 62 work.

Unit 62 – Criteria 1
Understand the principles of digital video in interactive media
Designers working in the interactive media industry keep coming up with new innovative ideas on more interactive platforms. Because the internet is so widely available and more and more people are now connected many ideas are uploaded here for our responses. Ideas such as interactive advertisement which involves digital video becoming somewhat interactive, the user can view parts of the video and sometimes even choose the outcome of the idea. Also, on other platforms such as games consoles, there are many ‘cut – scenes’ in which you play for a section of the game, then a small digital video piece is played to accompany, or illustrate a part of the story or game play. But this is just a small sample of what ideas designers are coming up with to incorporate digital video to interactive products, or taking the original digital video and making it interactive in some way. It can entertain the user more, and make the experience more memorable which in advertising cases is very important. According to www.business-innovative.com ‘interactive video improves the experience.’ (See, http://www.business-innovative.com/innovation-in-advertising-%E2%80%93-interactive-video-improves-the-experience )
One way of incorporating basic interactivity in terms of digital video is using short films (A smaller file size means they can be uploaded easier.) is to link a video with a webpage. For example a video when clicked on will go to a previously specified site that is in some way relevant to the video. But designers can also create short videos of which you can choose the outcome, short videos that have buttons or links to another short video to show the next part of the story. These videos can have different buttons so that each one will link to a different video and changing the storyline. By letting people choose the outcome of a storyline, digital video has gone beyond a passive experience; you are no longer just watching and accepting the story but interacting with it and the choices you make change the story. Examples of interactive digital video can be found and can be very popular on websites like YouTube. YouTube is simply a website created so people can create an account and easily upload their own videos. This is one example of an interactive digital video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ba1BqJ4S2M. In this case it also acts as a type of advertising. It has become a viral video (Spread rapidly throughout the web to many users.)having over 14 million views to date and you can decide to either shoot, or not shoot a bear which is supposedly going to attack the main characters in the video. The advert goes on to create the experience even more interactive by actually letting the user type in a word of which then they act out in the video. Key words link to different videos, and the characters even interact with the ‘tippex’ advertisement in the side bar to connect the video with the advertisement. Short video’s are also good for advertising other types of media such as bands. Because videos are quick and easy to upload to the web, a band could advertise their music for free.
To upload a video to the web, after the editing stage the video must be compressed in order to have a smaller file size which means easier loading but less picture quality in the long run. If a file is more compressed it will have a lower bit rate, while this is good for lowering download speeds it also lowers the quality ( A bit rate is how much information is streamed each second.) although, there are different types of digital video compression. For a band it would be essential to keep some quality for audio purposes. Lossless compression means that none of the original file is lost; it is simply put into a smaller area. A good example of this would be a zip file; it is a smaller file yet still contains all of the data. Another type of video compression is called lossy compression in which some of the original data will be lost as the video quality gets lower because of the compression. Compression is essential when uploading videos to websites such as YouTube because if the file size is too large, the video simply will be too large to load! www.microsoft.com says that ‘Digital video is compressed because it takes up a staggering amount of room in its original form. (See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/expert/digitalvideo.mspx) But even before the editing stage, designers and editors must capture the video footage if they wish to edit this later. This means that the recorded footage is uploaded to a computer from the video recording device probably in a editing program such as Adobe Premiere. Users can choose when to stop capturing film so this means the film being captured can be taken in smaller clips to upload easier and to edit easier. Then after the film has been edited it is rendered and compressed. A video file can be converted into a variety of different formats. There are different types of containers which hold movie files, the most popular of these include AVI, MPEG/MPEG- 4, MOV, FLV and WMV. Whilst converting and compressing video files is good to keep its size down, the bit rate will usually become lower. After production it is not always essential to change the bit rate at all but more experienced users may do so. Video uploading is free, with the most popular site being YouTube as it continues to grow with many videos uploaded daily.
To play any video, you need some sort of media player which will recognize the type of file of which you want to play. The most common media players are currently Adobe Flash Player, Windows Media Player and QuickTime. These are generally good for playing a range of digital videos with different file sizes, also easy to use and are widely available. Designers will create videos in formats to suit these media players so that more people can view them, making them more popular.
Games such as ‘Gears of War 2’ have good examples of how digital video can be incorporated into interactive game play. The player starts the game by watching a video clip and then following the story on from the clip. The cut scenes of the game will enhance the players experience as it explains the storyline better, on top of game play. Killing enemies for hours without reason would seem to make the game tackier and even though during game play the story does unfold and evolve, this is enhanced but the cut scenes. Here is a good example of a cut scene during the ‘Gears of War 2’ console game - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN-JKSM3b5A. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN-JKSM3b5A for more of the game information.) Also, having cut scenes in video games is now very common as it can help to give a feel of professionalism in the game, designers who have animated the characters to create cut scenes give users the impression of what may come up next in game play. For example if there is tension with building music there will most probably be more action in the next section of game play.
In terms of larger video files such as DVD’s and presentations the file size will be larger so will need more buffer time in many cases. This means the video needs to load on a program or device before viewing. For a basic example, DVD’s can be played easily on a computer with a media player such as windows media player or obviously on a different media platform such as a DVD player. As film size progresses we can see that designers face problems with interactivity if they wish to make the user more involved with the film. In terms of cinema viewings, this is difficult to make interactive. Effects such as adding 3D to the movie may add extra viewing pleasure elements but still is not interactive. By letting the user decide what happens next in the storyline and ultimately causing the outcome whatever that may be is a good way to add interactivity to a movie. Some may argue that some video games are a type of interactive movie but the prime idea for a video game is just that, interacting with the game, not the film. (See - http://www.interactivemovies.org/ ) Also, interactive DVD’s have also come out. These can sometimes replicate game shows and have many video sequences in between the basic playing parts of the feature or choosing where to go to explore different areas of the DVD. Also because of online video viewing it is easier to create an interactive feature within online film playing. Advertisements are becoming more interactive for online viewers too. Before popular or branded videos designers sometimes run small advertisements before the video starts, in some of these it is possible to click a ‘skip’ button or other buttons that are actually links to that particular company’s website.
To design an interactive feature that includes digital video is to make the user enjoy the experience of the film, whilst still having some input into the feature which could determine the outcome of the experience. (This is where it changes from a film into an interactive product.) At the other end of the scale are video games which are nearly all interactive with digital video on some occasions. In between is where we are seeing more ideas which grab the user’s attention and makes the experience memorable for them. In the long run, generating more profit for the producing companies. As YouTube is such a highly viewed website a good search for interactive films will definitely come up with some interesting results, and can be used on many devices such as mobile devices.

(1,638 words.)

Alex Mold.

Assignment Overview

As we have been learning about branding in college we have been tasked (Yet to recieve brief.) to go out to any charity, local or not, and creating a web banner and possibly a graphic for them. Admitedly local charities will be easier to use as it is possible to meet with them in person. Although we are yet to recieve further detail on what we will definately and specifically doing.

Stand by for further posts...

Badge fun

We were tasked at college to create somewhat 3D looking badges using Adobe Illistrator, we were not confined to any ideas, we could use anything, heres how mine went.

Festive art...

Messing around on Photoshop trying to make a festive picture, from an original art piece.

College promotional video.

The video made for the Weymout College promotional project.

B-Side Video

The b-side video was posted on YouTube a while back. (Alex Mold, Zach Williams and David Bain.)

Creating a jumping lamp.

Our first work in Adobe Effects, creating a lamp that jumps before falling the edge... of something. Somewhat simular to pixars lamp, although it was a first try!

Vector and Bitmap Images – Alex Mold.

Bitmap image definition - A set of bits that represents a graphic image, with each bit or group of bits corresponding to a pixel in the image.                                                                                                                                                                               

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000

Vector image definition - a computer image that is stored in memory as lines rather than a series of dots, allowing it to be rotated or proportionally scaled. Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2011.

Images made up on the computer and put onto the computer can be made in two different ways. Vector and bitmap images have both similarities and differences but both are good ways of creating images and have many uses. For example you may be sending images round the web or putting them up on websites, or maybe even just using them for print. Each type presents different ways of editing the image on programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to create a desired effect or finish.

An overview - Bitmap and vector images in basic terms are different because bitmap images are made up of many small individually coloured squares called pixels, and vector images are simply coloured shapes put together to create the image. A photograph would be a bitmap image on the computer because of how many colours there are, (you could make this image using a vector program but you would need to use many tiny shapes anyway!) as opposed to a large banner logo which would probably be made on a vector program as it can be scaled without an issue.

Putting the bits together… Bitmap images on screen are displayed at 72 dots per inch and print at 300 dots per inch. Formats for bitmap images include JPEG, PNG, GIF, BmP, Tif and Psd. But less of the tech – spec, what are bitmap images actually good for? Well, they are very useful for complex and detailed images including photographs (Previously covered.) so this can cover a wide variety of media including images for the web, articles and image orientated sites or magazines. Uncompressed bitmap images will be very large in file size compared to an compressed bitmap file or a vector image file. Also, because bitmap images are made up of individual pixels and are so complex, you cannot enlarge the image as this will degrade the quality of the image and make it become pixilated. (Or interpolation.) This means that the image may become blurry or it’s even possible to see the individual pixels of the image. Look at the animation; see how the image becomes pixilated as it zooms in. You may have already experienced this by getting an image off of the web and then trying to enlarge it on a program, such as Microsoft Word.

With bitmap image creating programs such as Adobe Photoshop users are also able to create many effects and designs to create the desired outcome. By using layers, different images can be put on top of one another and altered in ways by changing their transparencies, transforming the image (sizing It.) and many other tools in between to make stunning images. Here is an example of a bitmap image, one being partially transparent, (opacity at 50%) the other being the original.

Now on to vector images. As previously covered, vector images are made up of not many individual pixels but of lines, curves and shapes. Areas in industry that would need to use these images would be professions like graphic designers for a company logo, where the image would need to be enlarged for large scale items such as a shop banners, maps and diagrams or scaled down for items such as individual products, or for their logo on work papers. This is a great advantage over bitmap images because the image can be easily transformed without having to worry about the item becoming pixilated or distorted. In the editing process there are many tools in programs such as Adobe Illustrator including, draw, shape, transform, transparency tools as well as many, many others to create the desired image. An upside to editing vector images is that if you wish to erase a certain shape, it can be easily deleted whereas in a bitmap image the eraser tool would simply just delete pixels relative to where you use the tool. Also, for many tasks, vector images need to be converted to bitmap images, either for web displays of other functions. (Vector images can always be converted to bitmaps; this does not work vice versa.) This means editors can have the image at the size of their choosing before converting the image to bitmap so they can still have high quality images that are large. Although larger images will take up much more memory space, in general terms vector images will have smaller file sizes. Formats include ai, eps, 3ds, Swf, Sug.

 In summary the two types of computer created imagery are obviously different because they are used for different jobs. You wouldn’t scale a small bitmap image to be large, and you wouldn’t create a vector image to replicate a very complicated photograph colour - wise. The actual quality of an image depends on the quality of your computer screen but pixilated images can still easily be seen usually. When images are scaled down for example a web page, the computer has to throw away pixels. When a vector image is resized or scaled down for example for print, it simply just becomes smaller, the scale is lower. In a lot of ways vector and bitmap images will combine, usually a vector image being transformed into a bitmap image for a different program. Because they are different and are edited differently, there are usually jobs for creating them in the interactive media industry will hold different titles and need different training. Also they may lead on to different areas of the industry. Bitmap image designers could move on to other media such as creating images for a computer game whereas vector image designers could move on to design items such as logos for companies. Obviously the paths of the two are not set as they can combine easily but the two types of imagery have their differences for different objectives.

1048 words.

Alex Mold.