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Thursday, May 15, 2008

CineForm Software

CineForm – Visually Perfect Real Time HD

CineForm Software is a company located in Solana Beach that specializes in compressing HD video into a smaller format that is easier to store and transfer.

They are currently working on a project to start using Christie Digital Cinema Projectors in movie theatres to display full HD in theatres with a digital file that is sent to the theatres through a network, instead of through the mail. With this compression format editing HD video has never been easier. Their Real Time software will make editing on a timeline in either Adobe Premiere CS3, Final Cut Pro HD, Sony Vegas, or AVID very easily with a file size that is very reasonable with a standard home computer.

Real time editing means that as you are working on a timeline in either of the programs, you can complete a full version of your project without having to render the timeline for playback (in flash: publishing for a flash file) until you are completely done editing the project. This process could take up to a couple hours on a slower processing computer.

Cineform’s software sets itself on top of all other high definition editing platforms because it allows HD Editing in real time, for the first time. Before CineForm, editors found themselves sitting around for hours waiting for the computer to render the file, or simply prepare the edited file for playback.

People that would be interested in CineForm’s software would be any institution or person that uses one of many editing software platforms integrating HD Real time technology. If a computer company isn’t allowing HD capability in their software yet, it seems like they are about a year behind in a very fast paced market.

I’ve been into video editing for years, and it has always been a hobby of mine to make home movies with friends, or whenever project possibility would come up in classes, I would always try to integrate a video in some way or another.

I think that this company’ software is effective because they are the first company to allow high definition video to be compressed into a format that is easy to do anything you could do with a standard definition file, with close to the same storage space.

Check Out:

CineForm Technology (Company Web Page – What Is?)

http://www.cineform.com/technology/default.htm

CineForm RAW: "CineForm RAW™, announced in April 2006, is an extension to CineForm Intermediate that encodes raw sensor data for digital cinema cameras that use large-format Bayer sensors. Processing sensor data in its raw form, prior to conversion to YUV or RGB color spaces, offers many creative benefits to the post-production workflow, including higher dynamic range and more flexible color palette, which results in a more cinematic look for theatrical productions."

Free speech for designers! Open source Design tools


Interactive media can be composed of many different types of media including images, graphics, audio, video, and HTML. Getting various audio and video formats to work with your project can be difficult. Fortunately, there are free open source solutions that help make this process easier. Open source software is not just free of cost (like "free beer"). It is free as in freedom (like "free speech"). Open source software gives you the freedom to use a program, study how it works, improve it and share it with others. I will briefly describe four of these free tools that can make your life a little easier


SUPER ©

The first is a media encoder called SUPER, which stands for Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer. SUPER can convert virtually any format of image, audio, or video file to virtually any other format. As the website says, SUPER does for FREE what other encoders CAN'T do for money. SUPER also has built in support for the h264 codec, which is becoming increasingly popular. Super is truly the Swiss Army knife of video conversion tools. Windows only (Sorry Mac Users). Check out there website to find more information. http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Ever have a video or audio file that won’t play in your default media player? Video and audio files are encoded using codecs. In order for your media player to play these files you must first install the appropriate codec. Codec packs are available but often slow down or conflict with your computer. VLC is a highly portable cross platform multimedia player that will play virtually any audio or video file, including corrupt, broken, or incomplete files without requiring you to install any annoying codecs. This player has more features than any player I have ever seen and is very easy to use As long as you don’t mind the simple user interface, you will likely never need another video player(real player files are the only ones I have found that are not supported. VLC can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. Check out there website to find more information.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/


Since we were talking about codecs, I should mention GSpot. GSpot is a handy little program which will identify for you the codec of a particular audio or video file, and tell you whether or not it is currently installed on your computer. It will also display other information such as bit rates and aspect ratios. This is a very useful program when working with different types of a/v clips. (Windows Only)View a screen shot of the software here: http://www.headbands.com/gspot/v26x/ss_main.html

Check out there website to find more information. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/index.htm

Recording, editing, and adding effects to audio can be easy and free thanks to Audacity. Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to: Record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs. Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files, Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together, change the speed or pitch of a recording, and much more.

Check out there website to find more information. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/


I would also like to mention four other open source design solutions.

1. GIMPshop is a modification of the free/open source GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), intended to replicate the feel of Ado

be Photoshop. Its primary purpose is to make users of Photoshop feel comfortable using GIMP.

2. NVU! Finally, a complete

Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

3. Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X. What sets Inkscape apart is its use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format.

4. Blender is a free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Another source for audio - iStockAudio


I recently noticed that iStockPhoto has added an audio section to their offerings. Not free, but not highly expensive either. Sometimes the free sites don't have exactly what I'm looking for - so for me (who uses iStockPhoto pretty regularly) this is a welcome new option.

Splashup.com

I just wanted to share with everyone splashup.com

It's essentially a dumbed down version of Photoshop, but available free and it's completely online. The application is built entirely with Flash, and allows you to save files in a number of different formats, including the sites own proprietary file format that allows you to save your work online.

With Splash up you can share photos, edit multiple images, use layer and blending modes, filters, layer effects, brushes, text editing, etc.

This site is really helpful in a pinch when you need to do some basic (and a little advanced) photo editing, and you don't have access to Photoshop.

Nathan

Airtight Interactive - Flash Developer, Felix Turner

Airtight Interactive is the studio of developer, Felix Turner. Felix was a featured interview on The FWA (Favorite Website Awards) which is where I came across him.

Felix offers a broad array of services including - Flash development, Actionscripting (versions 2 and 3), Flex development, interface design, prototyping, motion design, video, 3d animation, and game development. I found a couple things interesting about his site:

First, I liked the movement in his 'cover page'. As a design element and a brief demonstration of what he is about, I think it is very effective. It presents his skills enveloped in some interesting text dynamics - the text rotates, moves closer and farther away, 'jumps' or flickers briefly, goes in and out of focus... but the way he did it was very nice, made it feel almost like a living, curious creature examining you. That's a good project to take on to experiment with and learn how to create and communicate motion - use a very simple element, something that isn't alive and try to make it feel alive. I'm thinking this summer I will play with that.

Second, he makes an effort to share his knowledge with the Flash community in his news page - here he discusses problems he ran into and the solutions/explanations he found. His demos page is also interesting in this regard as he discusses his goals and how he went about trying to solve the problems.

Third, he offers some interesting free components for you to download and integrate in your own websites - including Simpleviewer, a free, customizable Flash image viewing application. SimpleViewer may be used in any kinds of personal and/or commercial projects. Please ensure that the SimpleViewer download link in the bottom right corner is clearly visible.

In the interview Felix did with The FWA, he mentions his three favorite design firms which I provide links to below for your pleasure. I always find these references interesting... and I have to admit, I particularly liked the first... which is a slightly off kilter site that uses the music from the Wizard of Oz. The mixture of graphic elements, sketch-like art, limited color palette (very stark - black, gray, white, red) and general weirdness of what is presented tickled my fancy. The second design firm also concentrates on motion dynamics and like some sites offered in other blogs, offers some interesting examples. The third site belongs to a Belgium design firm. The art is interesting, but the style is almost becoming cliche to me... somewhat grunge. It is included more for completeness than any particular interest on my part. Someone else may find something of use in the reference.








WeFail.com








Yugop.com








Group94.com



Artist Exploration - Masayuki Kido

Masayuki Kido _ROXIK became popular when he won grandprix in Adobe MOTION AWARD 2006 with "PICTAPS". In PICTAPS, you draw your own character and then make it dance. It is little similar to the paper doll web site which Erin showed us before. Since it was 2 weeks before the due date when he knew about the award, He worked throught the every night to finish this game. He deserved.

In Another game he made, you can grab and throw characters by mouse. As you throw people, as the scene changes to next stage, it is fun to see the story developing.

Now he is working on a new project which is developed version of 3D face he has now in his website. You can trace the line of your face from web camera to create your own 3D face. Even you can make it speak a text you type in. It will be universal to see 3D motion on the Web near future.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Movies Make Good Websites



So, for this hopelessly overdue blog entry, I am looking at a movie website for a Korean movie called "hansel and Gretel" (although I think it will have a different name in the US release), and a really addictive little game called "Shift".



I found the movie website while on some YouTube stint looking at trailers for different Asian horror films. Hansel and Gretel popped up and I found the website very entertaining. (http://www.lovehansel.com/)%20WhileWhile it lacks the "flash" of big American movie sites, it manages to evoke both a compelling and eerie feeling. Even more intersting is how it manages to make you feel that way, even without words, since the whole site is in Korean. While I don't know anything about the content of the site, the feelings that it manages to portray are enticing enough that I can't wait to see this movie (although a translation will help).


I imagine that the programing of this site is not really all that complicated. Given time, I can actually see how most of it is done. It makes liberal use of mouse scrolling, and does an especially good job of given debth to the scene by slowing the movement of the objects and scenery that are farther away.


Adding further to eerie feeling of this site are the subtle movements of objects and light sources. These movements occur both independent of the mouse or as a result of a mouse-over. The motion is subtle, so much that you may not notice it the first time you scroll over the scene. Of course, clicking on many of these objects will bring you to other pages, which I'm sure are full of great movie information - if I read the language. As it is, I'll just have to stick to the pictures.


What I really like that this site illustrates is how much you can do with the tools we already have - regardless of how long it would take us to produce it...


The game that I am STRONGLY recommending everyone take a look at is called "Shift" http://armorgames.com/play/751/shift. Word to the wise, check this site out AFTER you've finished your final project. It's terribly addictive. This game is graphically about as simple as you could hope. Black & White, Squares & Triangles - and one little guy - that's you. The object is to get to a door thought a black and white two dimentional maze. There are keys in the maze, which move little platforms, which may save you from falling on the triangular spikes as you make your way through the maze. The "shift" allows you to flip your character from the black part to the white part - at which point your character's color goes from white to black. If that description makes sense to you, your better than I am. Better yet, give it a try - but make sure you've got time to burn.


This is one of those rare games that is brilliant in its simplicity. As far as creating it - probably a bit beyond me :o), but I'd love to see the code. Even without amazing graphics and any sound effects whatsoever, the game is entertaining, addictive and actually makes you think.



I think both of these sites are, in different ways, studies in simplicity. The movie site uses rich graphics and relatively simple code to create something effective and compelling, while the game uses simple graphics and more complicated code (and a lot of clever thought) to make a game that's downright addictive.



Oh yea, there's a Shift 2, also. Have Fun.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Blue Suburbia


http://www.bluesuburbia.com/


Blue Suburbia is an interesting website developed by Nathalie Lawhead. I found her website from Flash Goddess, a site devoted to women who use flash, although any developer can benefit from their site and forums.
http://www.flashgoddess.com/html/gallery_nlawhead.html

Nathalie spent most of her life in Europe, and then moved to LA in her high school years. Nathalie grew up with computers and art. Blue Suburbia started with a small Flash animated village as she began playing with the paint tool and becoming acquainted with Flash. She really enjoyed flash and began animating her poetry. Blue Suburbia is an experiment in finding a common ground between art and technology. The piece reflects question and observations she has about the contemporary educational system.

The Blue Suburbia site is has animated cursers for navigation, clues, and animated creatures. The site reminds me somewhat of a dark Alice in Wonderland.

Nathalie’s design is creative and interesting. The first time I started the game, I missed the introduction which explains the genre. Make sure the site loads completely. Once the music starts, you can begin. The game takes you from one design to the next, without a clear picture of the goal or direction you are intended to go. Perhaps the goal is in the exploration itself. Each animation on the page will open a different door, so once you leave, you can return to try another path. If you like a mystery combined with interesting art work, this is a great site for you. If you want action packed intrigue, then pass it by.

Adobe AIR

Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system runtime that lets developers combine HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash®, and Flex technologies to deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop. Adobe AIR allows developers to use familiar tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver® CS3, Flex® Builder™ 3, Flash CS3 Professional, or any text editor to build their applications and easily deliver a single application installer that works across operating systems.

With Adobe® AIR™ runtime, you can deliver branded rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop that give you a closer connection to your customer. Adobe AIR uses the same proven, cost-effective technologies used to build web applications, so development and deployment is rapid and low risk.

You can use your existing web development resources to create engaging, branded applications that run on all major desktop operating systems. A web browser enables a user to interact with content and applications typically located on a website on a server. Adobe AIR builds upon capabilities and technologies used in the browser to enable deployment of applications on the desktop. Adobe AIR complements the browser by providing users and developers with a choice about how to deliver and use applications built with web technologies.

By using Adobe AIR as part of your RIA strategy, you can boost productivity, extend your market reach, enhance customer satisfaction, improve customer retention, lower costs, and increase profits.

Adobe AIR is available for Microsoft® Windows® 2000; Windows XP; Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise; and Mac OS X v10.4 or 10.5. The Linux® release of Adobe AIR is under development. The free Adobe AIR SDK provides a set of command line tools for packaging Adobe AIR applications. This can be used with any text editor to build and deploy an AIR application.

Developing Adobe® AIR™ Applications with Adobe® Flash® CS3 Professional
http://livedocs.adobe.com/air/1/devappsflash/

(References) http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

Download the latest version of Adobe AIR
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Adobe AIR 1.0.1 InstallerWindows, English 11 MB
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Thursday, May 8, 2008

Flash Company AgencyNet

I am very interested in building flash websites. As a designer, I am constantly looking at different creative solutions. One website in particular has caught my eye over the years, http://www.bacardi.com/. I love the look and feel of this website. It has an edgy, hip, feel but it is also clean cut with a professional look. I wanted to show good website design so I found out who was responsible for this site, AgencyNet.
http://www.agencynet.com/.


This company was founded over a decade ago by CEO Richard Lent. His vision was to create an agency that would truly change the game in terms of how brands and consumers interact. Over the past 14 years, they’ve had the opportunity to build robust brand portals, serving as a digital agency of record for some of the worlds most recognized brands.

AgencyNet contributes some of their success to the 8 step process, which is the basis for everything they do. It shows you where they are, what to look out for, and where they are going next. It starts with a detail fact finding discovery session, identifying business objectives, target audience, and specific brand messaging. Creating successful work is about understanding their clients at a personal level.
Their industry focus is media/broadcast, spirits, cause marketing and consumer brands. Core services would include brand portals, buzz generation campaigns, destination micro sites, and emerging media.
Some of their clients include Bacardi, http://www.bacardi.com/,
Roxy Hunter, http://www.roxyhunter.com/,
Quit Doing It, http://www.quitdoingit.com/,
Budweiser, http://www.budweiser.com/,
and many more.

The combination of video and flash is what makes this company stand out. Their clean-cut, yet cutting edge technology really pulls everything together to produce a clear and concise design, which engages the eye and keeps you interested. It’s not overdone, not too flashy, but as just enough emphasis where needed. The websites are easy to maneuver and well presented. This company is clearly ahead of the game.

They have one many awards including the Webby Award, Gold W3 award winner, the SoFie award. They have been named the FWA site of the day several times, been mentioned in several web magazines and even have been showcased by adobe.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/showcase/index.cfm?event=casestudydetail&casestudyid=282325&loc=en_us

Flash The Good, The Bad, The Ugly...

First The Good...

General Electric is an enormous multinational corporation; they make everything from washing machines and air conditioners to trident submarines and MRI machines. The company employs more than 300,000 workers and they are in 160 different countries. GE’s market segments include financial, infrastructure, healthcare, industrial, and media components.

With that kind of foot print one would expect their web presence to be hopelessly chaotic and difficult to navigate but, that is simply not the case. I was profoundly surprised when I was doing some design research for a solar energy companies' web site to find that GE's web sites use flash extensively and that have successfully utilized the tool to improve communication rather than doll it up with a bunch of superfluous effects.

In example, consider their Ecomagination site focused on alternative energy products and solutions. http://ge.ecomagination.com/site/index.html#home
Note: that at no point does the site lapse into some gratuitous use of flash for effect; the effects reflect and enhance the content; see how the content pages uses flash to communicate the content without overpowering it.

Now The Bad...
In order to find an example of bad flash design, I thought why limit yourself to strict definitions of what is or is not flash go to the veritable source of bad... Microsoft. After all what could be worse than bad flash designed & implemented in a poorly typed ASP 3.0 rip-off created by a suicidal inept multinational corporation hell-bent on making over blown, non-intuitive interfaces that slowly drive its user base insane?


Since I have no respect for this company I not going to dignify my charge that their site sucks by actually investigating it, but I am willing to put $10 on it...

As For The Ugly
Well there are tons of ugly sites out there. So I'm not going to single out any one site however, I do want to mention that perhaps the ugliest truth about flash is that in spite of its many advantages flash adds a significant layer of added effort required for web site construction and content loading. Thus smaller companies are at a distinct disadvantage using flash as it still does not spider as efficiently, and the added cost for content loading and design is generally prohibitive.

Sound Website

This is a good website for free sounds.


Thursday, May 1, 2008

Animated PDFs

















Since I first began learning Flash I’ve been interested in the possibility of inserting animation into PDF documents. This interest reflects my profession—I’m a freelance writer and illustrator, mostly for high-tech clients. It also reflects my interest in how “written” communications are changing. I think it’s likely that over the next few years many types of documents (e.g., newsletters, whitepapers, corporate backgrounders) will incorporate active multimedia.
There are two aspects of this situation I find particularly interesting:

  1. Information resolution. Edward Tufte, a pioneer in information visualization, talks about how a well-designed illustration or page can be information dense—that is, it communicates a lot in a small space. Animation greatly increases the potential for creating high-resolution documents. A simple example would be a customer success story where you have a line graph showing improvement. In the space that a static document requires for one such graphic, you could successively show or simultaneously compare the results of several customers. That’s not very exciting, but the possibilities for more creative content are open-ended.
  2. Bridge documents. Many younger people coming into the workforce never click on PDFs; they prefer to consume information in video or audio form. In contrast, many people 35 and older have little patience for these linear media. I, for example, rarely click on video or audio since I don’t like having to sit through a linear stream when I don’t know what it contains. A lot of folks like me find text a more efficient medium since we have highly developed skills for scanning it and quickly pulling out just what’s important. Animated PDFs could serve as a bridge for text-oriented people, enabling us to selectively consume multimedia and become accustomed to it.

So how does the potential for animated PDFs compare with today’s reality? Over the past couple of weeks, as the opportunity to do a project for a client arose, I set out to explore the state of current capabilities. Here is what I found out:
  • PDFs currently support only AS2. I hadn’t realized this, but Adobe didn’t update Acrobat along with the other CS3 applications. The next version of Acrobat, which should be out around the end of the year, will likely support AS3 and, one would hope, eliminate some of the limitations, described below.
  • One major limitation and disappointment for me was that embedded animations are not visually seamless. Even if you use the same background color for your Flash movie and your text page, there is a hairline frame around the movie. And when you activate the movie, it often flashes before it plays. (This is probably because it is swapping out the still “poster” image you’ve chosen for the actual movie. Neither I nor the Adobe tech support person I spoke with was able to get the “retrieve poster from movie” option to work.)
  • Movies can’t currently be layered over text, and I’m not sure they can be placed on multiple layers even if they don’t overlap with anything. That’s too bad because the Acrobat layer views offer a lot of high-resolution opportunity. For example, you can easily create a bilingual document by putting the languages on different layers and then providing the user with a button or link for choosing the version they want. If you could put layer movies that way, you could increase the density of a single page quite a bit. (Incidentally, while Acrobat lets you create buttons and links to display one or more layers—in the same way that you can use them to go to display a different page or even zoom into a place on a page—you must create the layers first in InDesign then export the InDesign document as a PDF.)

There’s not much useful information about this on the web. Most of what’s available is old (pre-CS3 or even pre-CS2). The best resources I found are books: Padova/Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible and Kvern & Blatner/Real World InDesign CS3: Industrial-Strength Page Layout Techniques.