trees are people too

Homework for week 2.

[display_podcast]

Today is my birthday. No one should have to do homework on their birthday, so more on this tomorrow.

With all this creation of videos we are doing in integrated media, I thought it pertinent to share this fabulous amateur advert featured on youtube. Need a movie made?? Leave it to a professional!!

“What about…animation?!”

“Movies can make your life go better!!”

The question “who needs a movie” has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning.

Courtesy of the devastatingly good dlisted.

Pondering the final project: an ‘interactive quicktime movie’. hmmm. I should know what this is so why can’t I summon up a definition?

Interactive:
1: mutually or reciprocally active
2: involving the actions or input of a user; especially : of, relating to, or being a two-way electronic communication system (as a telephone, cable television, or a computer) that involves a user’s orders (as for information or merchandise) or responses (as to a poll)

Video:
1: television; also : the visual portion of television
2: videotape: as a: a recording of a motion picture or television program for playing through a television set b: a videotaped performance of a song often featuring an interpretation of the lyrics through visual images
3: a recording similar to a videotape but stored in digital form (as on an optical disk or a computer’s hard drive)

There are a thousand resources telling me how to make an interactive video (using programs such as GoLive, Flash, dreamweacer) but none that actually define what an interactive movie is. So, with my desperate need to categorise things in a futile attempt to understand them, here is my own comprehension of the term…

An interactive movie is a video file (in this case quicktime) that contains links and ‘buttons’ within the file that allows you to navigate through the piece – for instance, rollover buttons, numerous frames and perhaps simultaneous videos.
I guess it is just a video that you can, well, interact with (by controlling the direction, navigation etc), and this could be as complex and detailed as you please – something like this (an interactive video of sparta, greece), for instance – or a piece that is relatively simple and one dimensional, such as this.

More examples and clarification as it comes to hand. And please excuse my dire need to define, discuss and pigeonhole things. I’m trying to be more active, less reflective/ponderous, but it is a work in progress.

Just because I don’t think we have watched this video enough, here it is again.

[display_podcast]

This time I used a flash codec (despite the fact we were asked to use MP4) just to see how it looked.

For some reason it displays much better, without the initial weird mangling (Adrian, are you adverse to me using flash codec instead of mp4 et al?? The strange displaying may have something to do with the version of wordpress I am using??)

This led me to do a bit more reading on codecs, the programs used to encode/decode or compress/decompress a digital data stream or signal. Wiki provides a pretty good, comprehensive and simple description here.

It really frustrates me that podpress mangles the appearance of my vid (see below). It plays fine, but the initial display has something wrong with it and I cannot cannot figure it out argh. needs more problem solving skills.

Thought I would have a shot at embedding it sans plug in, just to see what happens.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not exactly my most creative work, but I am just creaking my rusty cogs into gear. This is what I was doing Wednesday March 5th at 8am. In fact, this is what I do most mornings. A sucker for both routine and for coffee. I’m sure some can relate. It’s not always this moving though, with the music and the crossfades (ha!)

[display_podcast]

And although it looks dubious, I can assure you the coffee wasn’t that bad.

The (slightly epic) soundtrack is courtesy of Antibreak. The track is called The Blue from his album Layered, which is released under creative commons (find out more info here). If you’re keen to download the (astonishingly good) album, you can do so here.