Video on Web site

[scot]

frenchy, you're wrong about a lot here. Flash will look the best and fit into a website more consistently than anything else. It's more supported than anything else, and you can make some really amazing stuff that's small.

If we're actually trying to deal with the problem here, and not just show off our knowledge, I would like to add that Rick should hire someone to do the video stuff. The editing will look good and that person can worry about compression and crap.

Rick, post on design and video forums and ask to see online demo reels. You could also try posting fliers at local colleges with video departments. You should be able to get your video done for less than $1000 by someone that's halfway decent.

[Doctor Eric]

Flash has to be embedded in HTML, it looks just fine when you put the two together, I'v seen a lot of great examples of it.

"Frisbee's old site was HTML & had a flash gallery. Although it was a nice gallery, it was like "one of these things is not like the other."

Oh, I see, Frisbee screws up one time and the rest of us have to pay for it? How well are you going to combine two different web elements when you are trying to code with Lobster claws?

[Frisbee]

Lobster

Lets stay on subject about web videos...those are fire hands not lobster claws...it's a style choice in the design that I went with.
besides if I HAD lobster claws I would probably be a bit more famous and definately more freaky.

[le pire]

Originally posted by Doctor Eric

Oh, I see, Frisbee screws up one time and the rest of us have to pay for it? How well are you going to combine two different web elements when you are trying to code with Lobster claws?

That's REALLY funny!

[Steven Ragatz]

The current versions of Flash offers very good support for delivering video on the web. If you (the collective 'you') are interested in working with web video via Flash, it might be good to point out that there is different support depending on the version you purchase. Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX 2004 Pro differ in several ways. For example, the Pro version will support true streaming and some other fancy bells and whistles as well as cost several hundred dollars more. Both provide support for many of the modern codecs (ways of encoding the information so that video files that are originally 90 MB can be squeezed down to a couple of MB). And Flash does provide a wrapper so that the end user doesn't have to install any viewer, as opposed to having the video presented in a QuickTime or windows media format (both of the latter require that the user have some software installed on their computer to view the footage).

Some other issues to consider are if you wish your user to be able to save your movie on their local disk. I would guess that most of the P.Net performers would probably prefer to protect their footage and prevent users from copying the video to the client, but for example, Cirque du Soleil keeps a database of footage in their casting department and I am told that they save video footage in digital formats associated with their casting database. Not that it is a determining factor just for the French Canadians, but my point is that one has to consider the specific needs of the target end user when determining a media delivery mechanism.

Another issue that hasn't been brought up yet is the ability of Flash to integrate video into a presentation. For example, one could have a video object in the Flash file (.swf) that triggers bullet point text objects to appear at certain frames in the video playback. With careful integration, one can create the appearance of a larger movie than is actually playing and also have text with effects look crisp (anti-aliased) and far more legible than if it were included in the compressed movie. Or one could have jump points - sort of like chapters on a DVD - that the user to interactively select to jump to specific frames of the video footage. There are many possibilities...

But, unless you are really interested in learning the techniques and details of the development tools, I would concur with the others to hire a professional. I suggest using Paul Whitener (paul (at) thelatetrain (dot) com) (http://www.thelatetrain.com) He is a full time professional and does some very nice Flash work and design. I have worked with him on almost a daily basis for the past five years and he comes highly recommended. Also, feel free to contact me directly with any technical questions. If I don't know the answer directly, I will be able to find it quickly.

Steven Ragatz

[scot]

nice post steven. I'm integrating text and vector into video coming soon to my site. It's all really hard.

[Steven Ragatz]

Warning!: Tech-talk following...

I don't know the exact syntax of Flash, but I understand the structural basics. I would suggest attaching an action script function to the video object itself that polls the frame property of the video. If you store your frame cue points as frame counts in an array (a sorted array used as a makeshift stack), then this function can check to see if the video has passed the top-most cue-point of the array, if it has, then trigger the visible property of the appropriate text movie clip and increment the array index.

The function videoFrameLoop() would be called each time the playback head enters a new frame on the main timeline.

myCues = array([100, 350, 734, 1020])
myTextMC = array(["text1", "text2", "text3", "text4"])
movieClip = array([movieClipObj1, movieClipObj2, movieClipObj3, movieClipObj4])
currentCue = 1

function videoFrameLoop {
// make sure that we are not accessing a cue later than one stored
if currentCue <= myTextMC.count {
// if the movie has passed the last cue
if videoMovieClip.frame > = myCues[currentCue] {
// all ok, so show the text (could be a gotoandplay if animation)
movieClip[myTextMC[currentCue]].visible = true
// move on to the next cue
currentCue = currentCue + 1
}
}
}

This obviously is not ActionScript syntax, but is pseudo-code that will do what I was describing.

This may not be anything like what you are doing, but it seemed like a good idea to post it in spite of the three margaritas floating in my head.

Steven Ragatz

[scot]

It would be easier to set the array values to keys that match your keyframes. EG:
cueArray[100] = "text1";

And, even easier than that, you can just import the movie and go through the clip inserting animations in the timeline. That's what I'll be doing.

I didn't know you were such a computer geek, Steve.

[Hunter]

I'm currently one of the college video geeks being exploited by peoples everywhere because I'm broke - and as a member of this crowd I can assure you we all love it.

Hire college students to do your promo videos for you and you will have an decent chance of getting some excellent results from someone just starting up. Don't feel bad about jipping them if they don't even have a demo reel to show, they need to get one together and a symbiotic relationship is a great jumping off point. They get 'professional experience' and you get cheap labor.

For those of you who aren't feeling the tech-talk, visit http://www.flashkit.com They have sample movies you can download and analyze to figure out your own way- and also tutorials on anything you could possibly want to do in flash.

That said; quicktime's newest free version has excellent support of the .mp4 file format. This allows better quality compression than .mov files at a fraction of the size. Because my web content is focused on quality of video for projects I direct photography on I've spent a lot of time with Sorenson Squeeze; which is one of the best compressors out there. If you feel quality is the most important thing to your, lets say nighttime glowball performance, this may be worth looking into.

As a side note; performers; sound design is HUGE, and it seems to be consistantly the worst component of the promos I've seen. One of the most impressive parts of a fire poi act is hearing the flame whip through the air. Take the time to record from a wireless lapel; 30 minutes of so and get the whole act. Point a shotgun mic straight at yourself during the act to get the hit of the clubs on your hands. This is completely honest as it's not even truly foley work; it's compiling data of the same action. I've got a good deal of experience with sounds design as well, and I can say with 100% certainty that some extra care with audio can do wonders more than a mills mess in time with a pop-song you don't have the rights to use.