Web Animation for Interactive Media

Hello! and welcome back to It came from the blog's guide to interactive media. In this article, we will aim to give you the knowledge you need about web animation, its practical uses and the ins and outs that will enable you to create an animation!

Within this article, you can find the following:

Uses of web animation

• Banner ads  
• Linear and interactive animations
• Promotion 
• Information 
• Entertainment

History of animation: 

• This section contains an extensive history of animation, from the very early technoloies to current motion capture technology

Animation

• Optical illusion of motion (persistence of vision)
• Stop motion; 
• Computer generation (frame rate, frames, key frames, onion skinning, tweening)

Digital animation

• Vector animation
• Raster (bitmap) animation 
• Compression (file size, download speeds
• File formats, eg .fla, .swf, .gif,

Web animation software

• Authoring, eg Flash, Swish, Amara, Director;
• Players, eg Flash Player, Shockwave,Real Player, Quicktime

Uses of web animation

There are various uses of web animation, they vary from advertising to entertainment, this section will focus on the various uses, how they are made and why they are used.

Banner Ads

A web banner or a banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract web traffic to a specific website by linking to the website of the advertiser.

This advertisement is constructed from an image (either a GIF, JPEG or a PNG file). A javascript program or a multimedia object uses technologies such as Shockwave or Flash (these I wlll talk about in more detail later in the blog, under the software section). These usually use animation, sound or video to attract the attention of the user. 

As can be seen from the picture to the right, there are various forms and sizes of different web banners both large and small, the various sizes differ in cost, both to animate and to host of a website

How do banners make money?

The advertising company usually earns money usually on a CPC (cost per click) basis. For every unique user click on the ad, they earn a small amount of money.

The web banner is displayed when a web page that references the banner is loaded into a web browser. This event is known as an "impression". When the viewer clicks on the banner, the viewer is directed to the website advertised in the banner

ow does it affect the user?

Many web surfers regard these advertisements as highly annoying because they distract from a web page's actual content or waste bandwidth. (Of course, the purpose of the banner ad is to attract attention and many advertisers try to get attention to the advert by making them annoying. Without attracting attention it would provide no revenue for the advertiser or for the content provider) 

How are they stopped?

Newer web browsers often include options to disable pop-ups or block images from selected websites. Another way of avoiding banners is to use a proxy server that blocks them, such as Privoxy. Web browsers may also have extensions available which block banners, for example Ad-block Plus for Mozilla Firefox, or AdThwart for Google Chrome and ie7pro for Internet Explorer.

Linear and Interactive Advertisements

Otherwise known as Linear and Non-Linear, these are essentailly how the advert plays out, linear is where there is no interaction occuring, and the advertisement plays out in its intended duration for example a banner advertisement with a 'roll over' bar with a full length advertisement, such as the one to the left, found in a web banner on a website. Non-linear (or Interactive) animations allow a user to change the outcome of the entire animation,  A great example of non-linear animation is a flash game on a website. These games, also known by their related technology as "flash" or "java" games and are usually found embedded within either unique websites such as miniclip.com or within other websites such as www.facebook.com

As you can see from the advert to the left, this is a browser based flash game. On the website shown, there are hundreds of interactive animated flash games, many are re-iterations of classics as mentioned above, and some are new and spring up daily. Facebook even has embedded flash games developed by 3rd parties for use of facebook users, and example of which you can see below

This video  is a simple promotional video showing how their form of healthcare works. This links to another video when 'interacted with', showing the interactivity of the animation.

Informative animations

An educational animation  is a cartoon developed to be used in classrooms, on educational television programs, and in other settings where people want to provide information to people of all ages in a clear, accessible, and informative way. A number of companies specialize in the production of educational animations, including shorts for use as clips and inserts in larger produced pieces. Such cartoons are often available online through company websites or video sharing services

In an educational animation, information is broken into chunks that are easy to present and understand. The animation may involve a story with characters interacting with one another to present the information. It can also simply be an animation of the information, like an explanation of how volcanoes work. The animation can include prompts like discussion questions, as well as tools like mnemonic devices designed to help people remember key pieces of data presented in the animation. Songs and rhymes may be used in cartoons designed for younger viewers

Instructors can use an educational animation in the classroom during a teaching unit to provide students with a more dynamic learning experience. Some students learn better through visual and audio information like that in animations, and will recall the course material better when presented with this type of video. Animations can also make the classroom environment more interesting, capturing attention and keeping students engaged. Animations can also be used for general public education, as for example in a public service announcement about recycling accompanied with an informative animation.

 Promotional Animation Video

Exactly as the name suggests, these are standard promotional videos promoting a service, these types of animations can be both linear and non-linear.


They can also show their promotional content in much finer detail than any live action advertisement, such as the animation below showing the paths of a comet and the various orbits around the sun.

Educational animations on the computer may allow people to interact directly with the animation, manipulating variables to change the circumstances. By being able to change the settings, people can see how different factors change a situation and they can apply this knowledge to their understanding of the real world. People studying weather systems, for instance, could change wind speed and direction in the educational animation in order to see how factors in the climate interact with one another. 

Informative Animations

Otherwise known as infographics, in this type of animation, information is broken into chunks that are easy to present and understand. The animation may involve a story with characters interacting with one another to present the information. It can also simply be an animation of the information, like an explanation of how volcanoes work. The animation can include prompts like discussion questions, as well as tools like mnemonic devices designed to help people remember key pieces of data presented in the animation. Songs and rhymes may be used in cartoons designed for younger viewers. An excellent example of this type of animation can be seen below:

 This video shows  the recent economic downturn, explained in a simple and easy to understand manner.

Entertainment

This is a very broad term to use to describe animaiton, any type of animation can be portrayed as entertainment as it is perceived by the viewer, however for this blog we will focus on animations made for entertainment purposes. 

The main bulk of web animation is taken up with entertainment, be it short animation films or fully animated games as mentioned above. There are at least six websites dedicated to hosting "interactive flash games" and dozens of websites dedicated to short films and clips. Another type of animation in this format is a rollover banner advertising a trailer for a film, this is animated to expand, even though it does not contain any animation on its own. Dedicated websites that animators use to promote their own animations and associated publications are growing in popularity due to the ease of setting up, an example of such a website and associated press is known as "Simon's Cat", a series of short animated videos, this how now spawned a book publication, all promoted from a single website, and example of this animated video can be seen below, with links to the website 

 

A History of Animation

To better understand the various types of animation, and to enable you to know more about the process, you must first know where animation came from


Many of the early inventions designed to animate images were meant as novelties for private amusement of children or small parties. Animation devices which fall into this category include the zoetrope, magic lantern, praxinoscope, thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, and flip book

The Zoetrope

This is a device which creates the image of a moving picture. The earliest known model was created in China around 180 AD by the  inventor Ting Huan . Made from translucent paper, Huan hung the device over a lamp. The rising air turned vanes at the top from which hung the pictures painted on the panels would appear to move if the device is spun at the right speed.


The modern zoetrope was produced in 1834 by William George Horner. The device is essentially a cylinder with vertical slits around the sides. Around the inside edge of the cylinder there are a series of pictures on the opposite side to the slits. As the cylinder is spun, the user then looks through the slits to view the illusion of motion as can be seen from the picture to the left. 


The zoetrope is still being used in animation courses to illustrate early concepts of animation.

The Magic Lantern

The magic lantern is the predecessor of the modern day projector. It consisted of a translucent oil painting and a simple lamp. When put together in a darkened room, the image would appear larger on a flat surface. Athanasius Kircher spoke about this originating from China in the 16th century. Some slides for the lanterns contained parts that could be mechanically actuated to present limited movement on the screen. 

 The Praxinoscope

This is the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered. An example of the Praxinoscope can be seen to the right.

In 1889 Reynaud developed the Théâtre Optique, an improved version capable of projecting images on a screen from a longer roll of pictures. This allowed him to show hand-drawn animated cartoons to larger audiences, but it was soon eclipsed in popularity by the photographic film projector of the Lumière brothers.

Flip Books

This is essentially a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners. 


The first flip book appeared in September, 1868, when it was patented by John Barnes Linnett under the name kineograph ("moving picture"). They were the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular (as in the older phenakistoscope). The German film pioneer, Max Skladanowsky, first exhibited his serial photographic images in flip book form in 1894, as he and his brother Emil did not develop their own film projector until the following year. In 1894, Herman Casler invented a mechanized form of flip book called the Mutoscope, which mounted the pages on a central rotating cylinder rather than binding them in a book. The mutoscope remained a popular attraction through the mid-20th century, appearing as coin-operated machines in penny arcades and amusement parks. 


Above is a video of a flip-book in action!

Animated Films

The first animated film was created by Charles-Émile Reynaud, inventor of the praxinoscope, an animation system using loops of 12 pictures. On October 28, 1892 at Musée Grévin in Paris, France he exhibited animations consisting of loops of about 500 frames, using his Théâtre Optique system - similar in principle to a modern film projector.


The first animated work on standard picture film was Humorous Phases of Funny Faces in 1906 by J. Stuart Blackton (This you can see below) . It features what appears to be a cartoonist drawing faces on a chalkboard, and the faces apparently coming to life; whereas it was actually black line art drawn on white paper and then printed as a film-negative to look like white chalk

 Cel Animation

In 1914, an American called John R Bray applied for a patent on numerous techniques for animation, the most prevolant being the process of printing the backgrounds of the animation. During this year, Earl Hund applied for a patent of what we know today as Cel Animation. This is the technique of drawing the animated portion of an animation on a clear celluloid sheet and later photographic it with its corresponding background

The cel is an important innovation to traditional animation, as it allows some parts of each frame to be repeated from frame to frame, thus saving labor. A simple example would be a scene with two characters on screen, one of which is talking and the other standing silently. Since the latter character is not moving, it can be displayed in this scene using only one drawing, on one cel, while multiple drawings on multiple cels will be used to animate the speaking character.


To the left you can see the process of creating a simple Cel Animation.


For a more complex example, consider a sequence in which a girl sets a plate upon a table. The table will stay still for the entire sequence, so it can be drawn as part of the background. The plate can be drawn along with the character as the character places it on the table. However, after the plate is on the table, the plate will no longer move, although the girl will continue to move as she draws her arm away from the plate. In this example, after the girl puts the plate down, the plate can then be drawn on a separate cel from the girl. Further frames will feature new cels of the girl, but the plate does not have to be redrawn as it is not moving; the same cel of the plate can be used in each remaining frame that it is still upon the table. 


The cel paints were actually manufactured in shaded versions of each colour to compensate for the extra layer of cel added between the image and the camera, in this example the still plate would be painted slightly brighter to compensate for being moved one layer down.


In 1934, Urb Irwek created what is known as a "multi-plane'' camera, enabling the camera to film several seperate layers of cels, giving rise to the first 3D animations, such as the trench running briefing scene in star wars as can seen below:

CGI

Otherwise known as Computer Generated Imagery, this was the next step in technology ladder of animation, an American by the name of Ken Knowlton, working at Bell Laboratories started developing computer software for producing animated movies. This computer technology gave rise to the modern CGI software such as Flash, Blender and 3DS Max. Most computer animation software was developed in-house and tailored for a specific use, such as Alias Software and MenV( this is the technology that was developed by Disney and Pixar for Toy Story (detailed further down the blog). 


At the University of Utah, Ed Catmull developed a scripting language called Siggraph 98, using this scripting he produced an animation of a smooth shaded hand in 1972. Fred Parke, of the same university pioneered this technology in producing the first fully computer generated facial animation. 

In 1982, the full length feature film Tron is one of the first movies to make extensive use of computer animation. While many people think much of the animation was done with computers, in truth only about 15-20 minutes worth of material involves actual CGI. These graphics were created in part by Triple-i using the computational engine, called the F-1 (often referred to as the Super Foonly). 


This technology was heavily adapted and has been used in the remake, released in December 2010.


Morphing Technology took the technology of CGI that little bit further, and came into prevolance during the 1988 film "Willow", it uses what is known as grid warping technology, where an image is transferred onto a computer, given a grid overlay, this grid is then enhanced. One year later, this technology was used in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the main villain in the movie dies as shown below

The effects on this film were created by Industrial Light and Magic using the grid warping technology as described above, this technique was developed by Tom Brigham and Doug Smythe, from AMPAS. This 'morphing' technology was used more recently to create the character Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.


Although CGI  by this point was an emerging technology and only used in parts for films, it wasnt until 1993 that it took over and became a prevolant feature in the film Jurassic Park, where a molded dinosaur is designed on a computer, then digitally animated as you can see below:

In 1995, the very first full feature film to be made entirely using CGI, Toy Story was released. With this film, each character was either created out of clay or was first modeled off of a computer-drawn diagram before reaching the computer animated design. 


Once the animators had a model, articulation and motion controls were coded, allowing each character to move in a variety of ways, such as talking, walking, or jumping. Of all of the characters, Woody was the most complex as he required 723 motion controls, including 212 for his face and 58 for his mouth. To sync the actors' voices with the characters, animators spent a week per 8-second frame detailing the characters' mouths and expressions. After this the animators would compile the scenes, and develop a new storyboard with the computer animated characters. Animators then added shading, lighting, visual effects, and finally used 300 computer processors to render the film to its final design.


During post-production, the film was sent to Skywalker Sound where sound effects were mixed with the music score.


In total, the film required 800,000 machine hours and 114,240 frames of animation, with 2–15 hours spent per frame.

Motion Capture

With the vast improvements in CGI, motion capture technology came into strong development. This type of technology captures movement and translates it on to a digital model. It can capture all movements of all the limbs on a human body, even very subtle expressions that are impossible to recreate through traditional digital means - this is known as performance capture

This animation data is then mapped to a 3D model so that the model performs the same actions as the actor. This is comparable to the older technique of rotoscope, such as the 1978 The Lord of the Rings animated film where the visual appearance of the motion of an actor was filmed, then the film used as a guide for the frame-by-frame motion of a hand-drawn animated character.

Camera movements can also be motion captured so that a virtual camera in the scene will pan, tilt, or dolly around the stage driven by a camera operator while the actor is performing, and the motion capture system can capture the camera and props as well as the actor's performance.


This allows the computer-generated characters, images and sets to have the same perspective as the video images from the camera. A computer processes the data and displays the movements of the actor, providing the desired camera positions in terms of objects in the set. Retroactively obtaining camera movement data from the captured footage is known as match moving or camera tracking.

How does it work?

There are various systems in place that make up motion capture technology, these are 

• Optical Systems
• Passive Marker System

Optical System

These systems utilize data captured from image sensors to triangulate the 3D position of a subject between one or more cameras calibrated to provide overlapping projections. Data acquisition is traditionally implemented using special markers attached to an actor; however, more recent systems are able to generate accurate data by tracking surface features identified dynamically for each particular subject. 

Tracking a large number of performers or expanding the capture area is accomplished by the addition of more cameras. These systems produce data with 3 degrees of freedom for each marker, and rotational information must be inferred from the relative orientation of three or more markers; for instance shoulder, elbow and wrist markers providing the angle of the elbow.

 Passive Marker System


This system use markers coated with a retroreflective material to reflect light back that is generated near the cameras lens. The camera's threshold can be adjusted so only the bright reflective markers will be sampled, ignoring skin and fabric.


The centroid of the marker is estimated as a position within the 2 dimensional image that is captured. The grayscale value of each pixel can be used to provide sub-pixel accuracy.


An object with markers attached at known positions is used to calibrate the cameras and obtain their positions and the lens distortion of each camera is measured. Providing two calibrated cameras see a marker, a 3 dimensional fix can be obtained. Typically a system will consist of around 6 to 24 cameras. Systems of over three hundred cameras exist to try to reduce marker swap. Extra cameras are required for full coverage around the capture subject and multiple subjects.


Unlike active marker systems and magnetic systems, passive systems do not require the user to wear wires or electronic equipment. Instead, hundreds of rubber balls are attached with reflective tape, which needs to be replaced periodically. The markers are usually attached directly to the skin (as in biomechanics), or they are velcroed to a performer wearing a full body spandex/lycra suit designed specifically for motion capture. 

 For the film Avatar, motion capture evolved to such a degree that it was an integral part of the film, using this and animated graphics, the native aliens called the Na'vi were created using the actors with motion capture suits and markers, as you can see below.

The Animation Process

Persistance of vision


Persistence of vision is the phenomenon of the eye by which an afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina.


A critical part of understanding that emerges with these visual perception phenomena is that the eye is not a camera. In other words vision is not as simple as light passing through a lens, since the brain has to make sense of the visual data the eye provides and construct a coherent picture of reality.

Persistence of vision is still the accepted term for this phenomenon in the realm of cinema history and theory. In the early days of film innovation, it was scientifically determined that a frame rate of less than 16 frames per second (frame/s) caused the mind to see flashing images. Audiences still interpret motion at rates as low as ten frames per second or slower (as in a flipbook), but the flicker caused by the shutter of a film projector is distracting below the 16-frame threshold.
Modern theatrical film runs at 24 frames a second. This is the case for both physical film and digital cinema systems.


It is important to distinguish between the frame rate and the flicker rate, which are not necessarily the same. In physical film systems, it is necessary to pull down the film frame, and this pulling-down needs to be obscured by a shutter to avoid the appearance of blurring; therefore, there needs to be at least one flicker per frame in film. 


In drawn animation, moving characters are often shot "on twos", that is to say, one drawing is shown for every two frames of film (which usually runs at 24 frames per second), meaning there are only 12 drawings per second. Even though the image update rate is low, the fluidity is satisfactory for most subjects. However, when a character is required to perform a quick movement, it is usually necessary to revert to animating "on ones", as "twos" are too slow to convey the motion adequately. A blend of the two techniques keeps the eye fooled without unnecessary production cost.


Animation for most "Saturday morning cartoons" is produced as cheaply as possible, and is most often shot on "threes", or even "fours", i.e. three or four frames per drawing. This translates to only 8 or 6 drawings per second, respectively.

Stop Motion Animation

This type of animation is a technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Motion animation using clay is called clay animation or clay-mation.


A very good example of stop-motion clay animation is Wallace and Gromit, after detailed storyboarding, set and plasticine model construction, the film is shot one frame at a time, moving the models of the characters slightly between to give the impression of movement in the final film. In common with other animation techniques, the stop motion animation in Wallace and Gromit may duplicate frames if there is little motion, and in action scenes sometimes multiple exposures per frame are used to produce a faux motion blur. Because a second of film constitutes 24 separate frames, even a short half-hour film like A Close Shave takes a great deal of time to animate well. General quotes on the speed of animation of a Wallace and Gromit film put the filming rate at typically around 30 frames per day — i.e. just over one second of film photographed for each day of production. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is an example for how long this technique takes to produce quality animation; it took five years to make.


As with Park's previous films, the special effects achieved within the limitations of the stop motion technique were quite pioneering and ambitious. In A Close Shave, for example, consider the soap suds in the window cleaning scene, and the projectile globs of porridge in Wallace's house. There was even an explosion in "The Auto Chef", part of the Cracking Contraptions shorts. Some effects (particularly fire, smoke, and floating bunnies) in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit proved impossible to do in stop motion and so were rendered on computer.

Computer Generated Animations

Frame Rates

This is the measure of the number of frames displayed sequentially per second of animation in order to create the illusion of motion. The higher the frame rate, the smoother the motion, because there are more frames per second to display the transition from point A to point B. In various applications, 24 frames is usually used for every 1 second of animation required.

Key Frame

A key frame in animation and filmmaking is a drawing that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. They are called "frames" because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film. 

A sequence of keyframes defines which movement the viewer will see, whereas the position of the keyframes on the film, video or animation defines the timing of the movement. Because only two or three keyframes over the span of a second do not create the illusion of movement, the remaining frames are filled with inbetweens (or tweens)

Onion Skinning

This is a 2D computer graphics term for a technique used in creating animated cartoons and editing movies to see several frames at once. This way, the animator or editor can make decisions on how to create or change an image based on the previous image in the sequence. 

In traditional cartoon animation, the individual frames of a movie were initially drawn on thin onionskin paper over a light source. The animators (mostly inbetweeners) would put the previous and next drawings exactly beneath the working drawing, so that they could draw the 'in between' to give a smooth motion.


In computer software, this effect is achieved by making frames translucent and projecting them on top of each other.


This effect can also be used to create motion blurs, as seen in The Matrix when characters dodge bullets.

Tweening

The word 'tween' is actually short for 'in-between', and refers to the creation of successive frames of animation between key frames. In computer animation, the term is most commonly used for Flash's "shape tweening" and "motion tweening" processes, where the user can define two key frames and Flash will automatically create the in-between frames, either morphing one shape into another over a set period of time or else moving a shape or shapes from point A to point B over a set period of time. 3D animation programs also have their own method of "tweening".

Digital Animation

Vector animation

This is a term used to refer to animation whose art or motion is controlled by vectors rather than pixels. Vector animation often allows cleaner, smoother animation, because images are displayed and/or resized using mathematical values instead of stored pixel values. One of the most commonly used vector animation programs is Macromedia's Flash.

As you can see from the above video, these types of animations look more cartoony, this is due to the accentuation of the vectors.


This type of animation was also used in the 2006 film A Scanner Darkly, the obviously cartoony animation is more obvious in this type of film, as you can see from the trailer below

Raster animation

Raster based animation frames (and all raster images for that matter) are made up of individual pixels. These pixels each contain information about the color and brightness of that particular spot on the image. This is somewhat similar to the concept of pointillism in painting, with the sum of the points making up the totality of the picture or frame. Raster animation is used for depicting realistic representations of people, animals or places, rather than the more stylized, anime-style animation you might get with vector graphics. Raster animation is also use to create animation for logos and banners based on photos or drawings.

One of the problems involved with creating raster-based animations on a computer is the enormous amount of computer power that is often involved in creating them. For example, a single frame of animation that is 400x300 pixels in size will have have a total of 120,000 pixels. Each of these pixels will have (depending on the color scheme being used) eight to 48 bits, meaning each frame might use as many as 5.76 million bits. 


This means that an animated 14-frame-per-second video of 20 minutes would have 2.02 trillion bits of information. Most films are larger than this with a higher frame rate. A major difficulty with working with raster-based animation or images is that they are not infinitely enlargeable. This means that if you create a raster based animation at a certain size (400x300, for example), you will not be able to enlarge it to any significant extent without loss of resolution in the images. Vector graphics do not have this problem.

Compression

There are two major techniques for compressing the animation -- color compression and pixel compression (also called pruning) -- and a few minor techniques like eliminating comments and certain technical parameters that aren't always used.

Color compression

A gif file can store from 2 to 256 different colors (1 bit to 8 bit color), however the more colors, the bigger the file. If you used significantly less colors than 256 colors, you can make the file smaller by compressing the color palette. Take a bouncing ball animation for example: the images is drawn using only 4 colors (black, grey, green and red) but the global palette contained 256 colors in the palette. The file was saving 252 colors that arent really needed. By compressing the palette from 256 colors (8 bit) to only the colors used colors (2 bit in this case) the file was reduced from 2622 bytes to 1455 bytes - a 45% reduction in size. 


Also having a global palette, and not having to stores a local palette for each image also saves space. 


Pixel compression


The second, and often more significant, way to reduce the file size is to prune out redundant pixels. Often only a small section of an image changes from image to image. Having each image be a full image is a waste of space. But this results in an animation where all the non-moving parts are redrawn for each image along with the moving parts. Wouldn't it be nice if your browser could download a much smaller image of the section that changed and just draw it over the rest of the image? Well it can - that's what pixel compression does. There are several different techniques to do this, the basic ones being "minimum bounding box" and "difference method"

Animation File Formats

.fla

 Flash files are in the SWF format, traditionally called "ShockWave Flash" movies, 'Flash movies' or 'Flash applications'. These usually have a .swf file extension, and may be used in the form of a web page plug-in, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a self-executing Projector movie.

Flash Video files have an .flv file extension and are either used from within .swf files or played through a flv-aware player, such as VLC, or QuickTime and Windows Media Player with external codecs added, as mentioned in last weeks blog!

The use of vector graphics combined with program code allows Flash files to be smaller, therefore for streams to use less bandwidth than the corresponding bitmaps or video clips. For content in a single format (such as just text, video, or audio), other alternatives may provide better performance and consume less CPU power than the corresponding Flash movie, for example when using transparency or making large screen updates such as photographic or text fades.

SWF, originally an abbreviation for "ShockWave Flash" this was changed to the backronym "small web format" to eliminate confusion with Shockwave, from which it was derived) is a file format for multimedia, vector graphics (we covered these in last weeks blog, if you need a refresh be sure to visit it!)  and ActionScript in the Adobe Flash environment. Originating with FutureWave Software, then transferred to Macromedia, and then coming under the control of Adobe, SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function.

Currently, SWF functions as the dominant format for displaying "animated" vector graphics on the Web. It may also be used for programs, commonly browser games using ActionScript.[update]

SWF files can be generated from within several Adobe products: Flash, Flash Builder (an IDE) and After Effects
 

 .svg 

These are a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic (i.e. interactive or animated)

 SVG images and their behaviors are defined in XML text files. This means that they can be searched, indexed, scripted and, if required, compressed. Since they are XML files, SVG images can be created and edited with any text editor, but drawing programs are also available that support SVG file formats.

 All major modern web browsers, support and render SVG markup directly with the exception of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). The Internet Explorer 9 beta supports the basic SVG feature set. Currently, support for browsers running under Android is also limited.

 SVG allows three types of graphic objects:

    * Vector graphics
    * Raster graphics
    * Text

Graphical objects, including PNG and JPEG raster images, can be grouped, styled, transformed, and composited into previously rendered objects. SVG does not directly support for separating drawing order from document order for overlapping objects, unlike some other vector markup languages like VML.

 .gif 

This is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.

The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel, allowing a single image to reference a palette of up to 256 distinct colors. The colors are chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space, as detailed in the blog regarding digital graphics. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.

 GIF images are compressed using the lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality.
 

  Web animation software

Authoring

Flash

The Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program is used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform, such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices.

Adobe Flash Professional is the successor of a software product known as FutureSplash Animator, a vector graphics and vector animations program released in May 1996. 
 
FutureSplash Animator was developed by FutureWave Software, a small software company whose first product, SmartSketch, was a vector-based drawing program for pen-based computers. In 1995, the company decided to add animation capabilities to their product and to create a vector-based animation platform for World Wide Web; hence FutureSplash Animator was created.

In December 1996, Macromedia bought FutureWave and so re-branded and released FutureSplash Animator as Macromedia Flash v1.0. In 2005, Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia; subsequently, in 2007, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, the next version of Macromedia Flash was released.

Swish

This is a flash creation tool that is commonly used to create interactive and cross-platform movies, animations, and presentations.

It is developed and distributed by Swishzone.com Pty Ltd, based in Sydney, Australia. SWiSH Max primarily outputs to the .swf format, which is currently under control of Adobe Systems as shown above

SWiSH Max is generally considered to be a simpler and less costly Flash creation tool in comparison with Adobe Flash. SWiSH Max does not support some Adobe Flash features such as ActionScript 3.0, shape tweens, and bitmap drawing capabilities. It does, however, include general Flash creation features such as vector drawing, motion tweens, and symbol editing. In addition, SWiSH Max incorporates a number of automated effects and transitions, which make building certain Flash elements such as buttons, advanced transition effects, and interactive Flash sites simpler. One drawback of SWiSH Max is its inability to open or save .fla files, which limits exchanges between other programs to final .swf files.

Adobe Director

Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director) is a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia—now part of Adobe Systems. It allows users to build applications built on a movie metaphor, with the user as the "director" of the movie. 

Originally designed for creating animation sequences, the addition of a powerful scripting language called Lingo made it a popular choice for creating CD-ROMs and standalone kiosks and web content using Adobe Shockwave. Adobe Director supports both 2D and 3D multimedia projects.

The differences between these two products has been the subject of much discussion, especially in the Director development community. Extensibility is one of the main differences between the two, as are some of the sundry codecs that can be imported. Director has tended to be the larger of the two, but that footprint has been part of its weakness.

Animation Players

Flash Player

The Adobe Flash Player is software for viewing animations and movies using computer programs such as a web browser. Flash Player is a widely distributed proprietary multimedia and application player created by Macromedia and now developed and distributed by Adobe after its acquisition. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other Macromedia and third party tools.

Adobe Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both a multimedia authoring program and the Adobe Flash Player, written and distributed by Adobe, that uses vector and raster graphics, a native scripting language called ActionScript and bidirectional streaming of video and audio. 

Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash is the authoring environment and Flash Player is the virtual machine used to run the Flash files, but in colloquial language these have become mixed: "Flash" can mean either the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.

The Flash Player was originally designed to display 2-dimensional vector animation, but has since become suitable for creating rich Internet applications and streaming video and audio. It uses vector graphics to minimize file size and create files that save bandwidth and loading time. Flash is a common format for games, animations, and GUIs embedded into web pages.

 The Flash Player is available as a plugin for recent versions of web browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey, Opera, and Safari) on selected platforms. The plugin is not required for Google Chrome any more since Google integrated Flash support into the Chrome browser. Adobe states that each version of the plugin is backwards-compatible, with the exception of security changes introduced in Version 10. 

Shockwave

Adobe Shockwave (formerly Macromedia Shockwave) is a multimedia platform used to add animationinteractivity to web pages. It allows Adobe Director applications to be published on the Internet and viewed in a web browser on any computer which has the Shockwave plug-in installed.
 

It was first developed by Macromedia, and released in 1995 and was later acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Shockwave movies are authored in the Adobe Director environment. While there is support for including Flash movies inside Shockwave files, authors often choose the Shockwave Director combination over Flash because it offers more features and more powerful tools. 

Real Player

RealPlayer is a closed source cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.RealPlayer was a popular streaming media player during the early years of the Internet, but in recent years it has been surpassed in market share by Windows Media Player, and, since mid-2007, Apple's iTunes. 

Many users would have initially encountered RealPlayer as a plugin to watch streaming video or listen to streaming audio, e.g. the BBC's websites at one time used this almost exclusively. It can play the following animated formats

• swf (requires Flash of Shockwave Player installed on the machine to play)
• .flv

Quicktime
 

This software is developed by Apple Inc., and is capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. It is available for Mac OS classic (System 7 onwards), Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The latest version is QuickTime X (10.0) and is currently only available on Mac OS X v10.6.

QuickTime is integrated with Mac OS X, but it was once an optional component at install for earlier versions of Mac OS. 

QuickTime for Microsoft Windows is downloadable, either as a standalone installation or bundled with iTunes.

QuickTime is available free of charge for both Mac OS X and Windows operating systems. Some other free player applications that rely on the QuickTime framework provide features not available in the basic QuickTime Player. For example:

• iTunes can export audio in WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless
• In Mac OS X, a simple AppleScript can be used to play a movie in full-screen mode. Since version 7.2 the QuickTime Player now also supports full-screen viewing in the non-pro version

 What file formats can be used in Quicktime?

There are various file fornats that are supported in Quicktime, including many audio and picture formats, however in terms of video formats, some of the major ones supported are listen below

• 3GP and 3G2

• Animated GIF

• Audio Video Interleave (AVI)

• DV

• MPEG-1

• MPEG-4 Part 2

 ----------------------------------------      The End ?    -----------------------------------------

Thats it! I hope you have found this blog informative and useful over the past few weeks, and i hope you have had as much fun reading this as i had writing about it! Hopefully over the past few weeks you have learnt a lot about Digital Graphics, and the associated technologies regarding web animation and how they are all inter-connected.

Stay tuned for future blogs, who knows what on!

Videos in Interactive Media

Hello again! Welcome back to It came from the blog's guide to digital graphics and interactive media

Last week we gave you a basic introduction to digital graphics, this week we are aiming to give you all the knowledge you need to understand the various formats, video compression and frame rates. This also includes all applications of videos in interactive media.

This week we will cover various topics as seen below

Applications - This is how video is used

Platforms - The types of platforms where videos are used

 Technology - The various compression and types of digital video file formats, including the various methods for playing the videos.

First of all, here is a brief introduction on the topic of videos in interactive media, this will aim to give you a basic understanding of what you are about to read!

Introduction

Moving images are no longer restricted to the cinema and TV. Changes in technology mean that people expect to be able to watch and share movies online and on the move. As the proportion of internet users
on broadband continues to grow, it becomes increasingly possible to view, upload and download films
quickly. Mobile phones carry increasingly sophisticated technology for shooting, sharing and playing moving
images. Portable music players show television content and people can watch movies on their portable
games consoles. DVD has replaced VHS video as the standard format for watching movies at home so
every popular format is now digital. 


In short, video in interactive media is everywhere.

Applications of Digital Video

Video can be used in interactive media in several ways, this includes advertising, promoting material, to educating and informing the masses. Video is used in interactive media to do these as it is an effective way to transfer information. Why is this more effective? Well, the current generation prefers to watch TV rather than read a book, they have so many platforms to access their media and information from, using anything other than video to transfer information would be pointless!

So, where are videos used? 

Promotional Videos 

What are they? 

Promotional videos are marketing and sales tools designed to introduce or educate customers about a particular product, cause or organisation. They are structured to be precise, direct and to only last for no more than ten to fifteen minutes. This allows the video, providing it is well produced to hold the attention of viewers long enough to make the key points necessery to generate additional interest

As a marketing tool, promotional videos are often provided to prospective customers free of charge and can be embedded on various mediums such as internet or in public place. More information on embedding can be found towards the end of this blog

Advertisements

What is an advertisement?

Advertising is a non-personal form of promotion that is delivered through selected media outlets that, under most circumstances, require the marketer to pay for message placement. Advertising has long been viewed as a method of mass promotion in that a single message can reach a large number of people. But, this mass promotion approach presents problems since many exposed to an advertising message may not be within the marketer’s target market, and thus, may be an inefficient use of promotional funds. However, this is changing as new advertising technologies and the emergence of new media outlets offer more options for targeted advertising.

So, how are videos used in advertising? 

Aside from billboard advertising, it is most likely the biggest form of advertising, you cannot turn on the tv without seeing an advertisement at some point during the programme (unless it is from a publically funded tv station such as the BBC). These videos are both standard adverts and off-the-wall and sublte.

Standard Advertising

Here is an advert featured on TV in America advertising a popular breakfast cereal known as "Trix" 

Now, as you can see, the advertisement is clear, concise and immediately shows the viewer what they are advertising. Now consider the picture below, if you didnt already know what they were advertising having heard about it or seen it already, you would have no idea what it is advertising. See if you can guess what it is advertising

No idea?

Water. From the initial image you would not have guessed a troop of roller skating infants would be advertising Evian water. There are hundreds if not thousands of advertisements advertised in this way, some adverts are even interactive. Why would anyone want to create an advertisement in which you wouldnt know what it was advertising until the very end? This is to generate interest and to keep the viewer hooked until the very end. Interactive advertisements allow the viewer to change and to interact with it, this gives an added level of depth to the advertisement. 

Interactive advertisements

How do they work? As the name suggests, they are advertisements that change depending on the user input. Below is an advertisement for Tipp Ex, however unlike typical advertisements if gives you hundreds of user generated advertisements that can be used which all affect the final outcome of the advertisement

Once one of the links in the video have been clicked, it takes you to a second video, in which it gives you the option to type anything in to the bar, as you can see below

So, its been established that there are many interactive adverts, so what? Whats the use of these types of advertisements? Taking a step away from the standard one way communication, this allows users to be interested in the advertisements, take part in their forming. This will generally give you more recognition and hit the audience harder in terms of the effect the advertisement has on the user.

Lets be honest, how many people mute the television or walk away during an advert break in between programmes? I certainly do! This type of interaction is more engaging and more likely to hold their attention long enough for the message and point of the advertisement to get across to the user.

User Generated Content

Although this sounds quite ambiguous, user generated content is actually fairly specific. It is the content the user creates themselves with the use of a video camera or other hand held recording device, such as an iPhone.

According to www.socialnomics.com, 25% search results for the World's Top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content. Unlike print and broadcast media, web users do not need to send something to the mainstream media for it to be distributed to an audience; a member of the general public, from all walks of life can upload a video to YouTube with the potential to reach hundreds of millions of users (and thats just the subscribers!!) all over the world. They can share anything they want, as long as it is deemed fit by the standards of decency that YouTube set forth in their guidelines for posting.

Sharing user generated content does not refer to just YouTube, or even direct video websites such as Daily Motion, Break.com or others. It refers to anything that contains a video or anything created by a user, this blog is a perfect example, If i show you the link below

www.youtube.com

That in itself is interactive, as you click on it and it takes you to another website, i have created the link, and you clicked it! This is the very basics of interactive media, the actual physical sharing of the link to the website is the foundations of interactive media and this had to hundreds, if not thousands of websites leading to the videos we see today. 

The main difference with user generated content online is that there are no limitations on the space it can occupy. Whole websites can be dedicated to showing UGC (User Generated Content). Several newspapers such as The Sun, Telegraph and Daily Express all host social networks where readers can publish photos, blog posts and talk on forums. The Guardian's CommentIsFree website provides a platform where dozens of non-journalist experts blog about the issues of the day.

Sky and the BBC both provide a similar service but for multimedia, where users can upload hundreds of photos and videos

User Generated Content can essentially refer to anything ranging from a post from a one-time anonymous visitor to a website, or a 40minute documentary that someone spent years researching the topic 

The phrase "anyone can be an internet star" is very true, the video below was uploaded on the 8th of November, and in just over two months he has attained over 18 million views. His first video was broadcast on YouTube at the start of 2010, and since then he has posted over 50 videos, all reaching over 5 million viewers minimum. The fact that he stars in this video, with 50 Cent is a tribute to his rising fame, with appearances on various late-night talk shows in the USA

This is a prime example of how recent changes in technology have allowed anyone with access to some sort of recording device to upload anything within minutes and be accessible to the entire online community.


The videos can be recorded with varying technology, these will be shown in depth in the technology section of this blog! (near the bottom!)

Viral Advertising

Viral marketing campaigns are an amazing way to generate a huge amount of buzz and brand awareness whether they are carried out online or offline.

Read more about Viral Marketing - The Top 10 Viral Marketing Campaigns Of All Time by Blogstorm SEO Blog

Viral advertising is a type of advertising that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives. Simply put, it is the "word of mouth" advertising for the internet. So, an important question is, how is a one-way communication tool interactive? A simple ansewr to this, it isnt! The interactivity comes from the sharing of content on social media sites. 

A typical viral video will seem that the advert is a normal, unbelieveable clip of a person performing a feat that seems impossible, or sooutrageous that it cannot possibly be real, it is this "spark" and "shock" factor that generates the hype and sharing between friends. If you take a look at the image below, imagine youself as the user on the left, on his own.

The viral chain can start with a single person, and as he tells two friends, they then tell two others and so on until the viral advertisement eventually spreads around the globe. How much has this cost the developer of the advertisement in terms of actual advertising? Zero! 

It may cost nothing to actually advertise the product, yet you can reach more people across the world than any other form of advertising. A good example of viral advertising is shown below, see if you can guess what it is advertising.

Even though it is staged with actors, it still didnt stop the buzz of the video! It attained over 20 million views on the page it was posted in the first month! Thats not bad for a video that started off being posted by one individual. 
 

Games

Games is a very broad term for us to use, so in this context I will be focusing on the browser based games.

The rising popularity of Flash and Java led to an internet revolution where websites could utilize streaming video, audio, and a whole new set of user interactivity. When Microsoft began packaging Flash as a pre-installed component of internet explorer, the Internet began to shift from a data/information spectrum to also offer on-demand entertainment. This revolution paved the way for sites to offer games to web surfers.

These games, also known by their related technology as "Flash games" or "Java games", became increasingly popular. Many games originally released in the 1980s, such as Pac-Man and Frogger, were recreated as games played using the Flash plugin on a webpage. Most browser games had limited multiplayer play, often being single player games with a high score list shared amongst all players.

As you can see from the image above, this is browser based flash game. On the website shown, there are hundreds of interactive flash games, many are re-iterations of classics as mentioned above and some are new and spring up daily. Facebook even has embedded flash games developed by 3rd parties for use of facebook users, an example of which you can see below

This is a game loading up, and unitentionally i caught another interactive sharing video within the loading bar, an advertisement! These creep up on almost any video on any site, including youtube, who since being acquired by google have advertisements popping up on a wide variety of videos. 

As these videos are being watched by millions of people, you'd be stupid not to! 

Interactive Media Platforms

What do we mean by platforms?


The range of digital media platforms on which interactive products can be experienced is constantly evolving.
In broad terms, though, they fall into four overlapping categories. These should be thought of as 'content platforms', rather than technical ones. Each is typically associated with one or more delivery platforms, which may apply to several content platforms and may change over time:

Web and Internet Content

This is delivered to a user through various means, including (but not limited to) Desktop Computers, Mobile Devices, Tv's via set-top boxes, Broadband Hubs, and Wireless networks. 

What content do you get?

In short, everything. 

The readiness of data and information that is available through the internet, not just on a desktop computer, mobile devices are equipped with faster internet, delivering all content from visiting websites to direct streaming of videos from youtube. Why? 

The answer to that is simple, to make the internet available to everyone, on the move and able to have access to information when they need it. The only thing that restricts this medium of delivering and receiving this content is signal! In some buildings, namely offices and educational buildings there is usually a wireless network, allowing anyone with a remote device such as a laptop or a wifi enabled phone to access the internet, even with no signal. There are however a few downsides to having internet and accessing media in this format, namely the cost. IPs (Internet Providers) charge for the rental of the line and for the priveledge of connecting you, and mobile phone providers can charge for the amount of data transmitted. However, they usually set a limit which is included in the price you pay per month, with the mobile network 3, they have a limit of 1GB.

On Televisions, companies such as Virgin Media offer a complete package, Television, Phone and Internet all in one. This is interesting as these companies offer their TV as interactive, as it uses the internet to offer premium services such as Pay-Per-View. This is where they offer a list of content, and the user can choose what they want to watch, provided they pay for it.

Interactive Television Content

What is interactive television content? This is the idea that the program, itself, might change based on viewer input. Advanced forms, which still have uncertain prospect for becoming mainstream, include dramas where viewers get to choose or influence plot details and endings. There are however some forms of interactivity where the content provider gives you options to interact with, the most prevolant of which in the UK is the BBC's red button service. This sometimes you will be prompted to press the button by an announcement in a programme or a red button logo appearing in the top right-hand corner of the TV screen.

This interactive service is found by pressing the red button from any BBC TV and Radio channel for features including:

• News the latest local, national and international news, and a menu of multiple screens for video updates, all available 24 hours a day
• Sport up-to-the-minute sports news and results, plus a choice of coverage with extra live matches and alternative commentary
• Information weather forecasts, travel reports and business news
• Join in with programmes have your say
• CBeebies games and stories for very young children

So, now we have established what interactive tv content is, why would we want to use it? During major events such as the Olympic Games, or Glastonbury where there are multiple 'events' that occur during the broadcast for example various sports during the olympics or various stages that are on at glastonbury. Not everyone wants to watch the sport or artist that is being broadcast on the main channel, this is where interactivity comes in very effective, it gives the user control of what they want to watch, as you can see in the below picture:

 This gives you the option to watch one of the main five acts that is currently performing , or if you are watching a programme, you can catch up and watch the weather or news as you can see from the below picture

This gives you the option to either watch the television giving live news coverage from the BBC's News 24 channel, national/local headlines and the weather.

Why would you want to use this if you can just change the channel?


The simple answer to this, is that some people do not have the time to sit in front of the television and wait for a specific article of news or the weather to come around, this means they can have the news and weather right then and there.

Computer games

These are forms of interactive entertainment and can be delivered on various platforms, such as Desktop Computers, TV's, Consoles or mobile devices via CD-Rom, DVD or online. 

As the name suggests, these are games that are played in one form or another, where the user uses some form of user interface to control the action, an interface can refer to a mouse, a keyboard, a Tv remote or a dedicated controller that you get with home video consoles such as the Xbox or Playstation. Computer gaming is one of the biggest media industries going, with such a broad range of software and hardware that can range from cheap to what some consider to be over-the-top pricing. 


Games can be delivered to the users via many different forms, from CD or DVD, through to direct download from the creators
 
An old standard that was used in the 80s and 90s was to deliver the game to the user via the form of a cartridge, for examples in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES for short, ending with the most recent the Nintendo 64. However even Nintendo's reign of cartridge content has moved into the CD and DVD phase, as it allows them to fit more content into the games and deliver better quality.  


Some developers are offering a direct download service, a very recent example of which is of a popular games title known as World of Warcraft. The biggest selling PC game of all time, the devlopers Blizzard ( bought out by Activision, one of the worlds largest gaming companies) offered there new expansion Cataclysm by direct download. Usually new content of this magnitude is offered only on CDs or DVDs and require the user to purchase from a store, however the option of downloading the content instead of purchasing the content on a DVD has allowed the developers of these games to reach a wider audience by this ease of purchase. Another plus point towards digital downloads, especially with games such as this, is the fact that the games become so large through multiple disks, it allows the file to be compressed and installed with just one file, rather than via the multiple disks.


Interactive DVD games have grown in greater demand since they were devloped and first rleased in the 1990's. What are they? In their simplest form, they are games that are played via a DVD player on a TV set, one of the most well know examples is a game known as Scene It, in which viewers interact and answer questions based on clips they are shown. These usually can be interacted by more than one individual and can all be used with one remote. This is just another example of the changing technology and how it allows users to interact with each other and with the game

Interactive Kiosk

An interactive kiosk may appear in several different forms, such as on the exterior of a building, or inside an enclosed space (think old style phone box).

Just about everyone today has used at least one type of interactive kiosk or another. The most common of all interactive kiosks is the ATM, or automatic teller machine. Located on the exterior of many banks, as well as at many supermarkets and other retail outlets, these financial kiosks allow you to access your bank accounts, check balances, and draw out cash if needed. Configured to only work if you are able to provide correct access data, ATM have made a huge impact in the way most of us do banking.

Another increasingly common form of the interactive kiosk is the self service supermarket check out kiosk. Supermarket kiosks are designed to allow shoppers to scan items, place them in bags and then pay using a credit card, debit card and even cash. This form of kiosk has proven to be a boon for people who run into the store for a few items and don't want to wait in line behind a lot of people to check out. The supermarket kiosk can have you in and out of the store in no time at all.

Many airlines now maintain interactive kiosks that allow passengers to check into a flight, print boarding passes, and even luggage labels as well. When arriving at the destination, many travelers will find that rental car agencies have in like manner installed an interactive kiosk that allows persons who have a reservation to quickly check in, verify their preferences and swiftly collect keys to the rental car. Upon the return of the vehicle, the kiosk again allows for an easy check-in, allows for quick payment for the rental and issues a receipt that is ideal for an expense report.

In self-checkout systems, the customer is permitted to scan the barcodes on their own items, and manually identify items such as fruits and vegetables (usually with a touchscreen display), which are then weighed where applicable, and place the items into a bagging area.  
 

Benefits

The benefit to the customer is in the reduced checkout time because stores are often able to efficiently run two to six self checkout units where it normally would have had one cashier. Some customers appreciate the ability not to have to deal with anyone. 


The benefit to the retailer in providing self checkout machines is in reduced staffing requirements since one attendant is all that is required to run 4 to 6 checkout lanes at one time

The disadvantages

The time efficiency requires that the customers using the machine be reasonably competent. An inexperienced customer can cause even more delays than an inexperienced cashier on a conventional register, and older customers may expect the attendant to assist them directly with scanning items, preventing the attendant from dealing with other customers who actually require intervention.


As the weight observed in the bagging scale is checked to allow the customer to proceed only if the observed and expected weights match, it is difficult to reconcile with the use of environmentally preferable alternatives to shop-provided bags, for example, baskets, rucksacks, and other reusable (but heavier) carriers. Conveyor belt-based verification avoids this problem.


Another frequent problem is the bagging scale failing to register properly the weight of the items purchased. The systems often falsely report that unscanned items have been bagged, or that scanned items were not placed in the bag. These false alerts halt the checkout process and require the store attendant to come and approve the weight exception, often eliminating any time savings that could have been realized by using self-checkout instead of waiting in line for a regular register. 

Technology behind Video

This section of the blog will contain the information you need to get to grips with the changing technologies in video, this includes the following:

• Compression

• Digital Video Capture

• Aspect Ratio

• Digital Video Formats

• Streaming Methods

• Data Transfer Rates

• Various Media Players

• Digital Rights Management System

Video Compression 

If you use digital video, file size is an important concern because digital video files tend to take up a lot of storage space on your hard drive. The answer is compression—making files smaller.
With text files, size is less important because the files are full of “spaces” and can be compressed very tightly—a text file can be made at least 90 percent smaller, resulting in a high compression ratio (the ratio of compressed data to uncompressed data). Other file types, like MPEG video or JPEG photos, hardly compress at all because they're in a format that's tightly compressed to begin with. 

 Why do digital videos need to be compressed?

Digital video is compressed because it takes up a staggering amount of room in its original form. By compressing the video, you make it easier to store. Digital video can be compressed without impacting the perceived quality of the final product because it affects only the parts of the video that humans can't really detect. For example, there are billions of colors, but we perceive only about 1024 shades. Since we can't discern the subtle difference between one shade and the next we don't have to keep every color. There's also the matter of redundant images—if every frame in a 60–second video has the same chair in the same spot, why save the data of that chair in every frame?


Compressing video is essentially the process of throwing away data. Standard digital video cameras compress video at a ratio of 5 to 1, and there are formats that allow you to compress video by as much as 100 to 1. But too much compression can be a bad thing. The more you compress, the more data you throw away. Throw away too much, and the changes become noticeable. With heavy compression you can get video that's nearly unrecognizable. 


When you compress video, always try several compression settings. The goal is to compress as much possible until the data loss becomes noticeable and then notch the compression back a little. There are two main forms of compression, Lossy and Lossless compression.

Lossy

A compression technique that does not decompress data back to 100% of the original. Lossy methods provide high degrees of compression and result in very small compressed files, but there is a certain amount of loss when they are restored.

Audio, video and some imaging applications can tolerate loss, and in many cases, it may not be noticeable to the human ear or eye. In other cases, it may be noticeable, but not that critical to the application. The more tolerance for loss, the smaller the file can be compressed, and the faster the file can be transmitted over a network.


Some very common Lossy standard file types are MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and VC-1 (used in many DVD's and Blu-Ray)

Lossless

The term lossless means “no loss of data.” When a file is compressed in a lossless fashion, 100 percent of the data is still there, much like when you zip a document—the document file gets smaller, but all the words are still there when you unzip it. You can save lossless video over and over without any loss of data—compression simply squeezes that data into a smaller space. Lossless compression saves less space because you can compress data only so much before you have to start discarding information. It is not widely used for mainstream video such as DVD's and CD's, due to the sheer data taken up by these files.


This type of compression is usually used for 2D animations, using the Animation Codec, this supports color depths from 1 to 32 bits, and is one of the few video codecs that supports an alpha channel. The Animation codec uses run-length encoding, and as such works well for traditional 2-D animation where there are large areas of constant color. For complex 3D rendered scenes or digitized film of real-world footage, it barely compresses at all and can also add visible noise at lower than 100% quality levels

Digital Video Capture

Digital video capture is Converting analog video signals, such as those generated by a video camera, into a digital format and then storing the digital video on a computer's mass storage device. Video capture from analog devices requires a special video capture card that converts the analog signals into digital form and compresses the data. There are also digital video devices that can capture images and transfer them to a computer via a standard serial or parallel interface

Aspect Ratio

What is aspect ratio?


An aspect ratio is the ratio between the width and height of a film image. The number denoting width comes first, and the height portion of the aspect ratio is always written as 1. In simple terms, if an

A motion picture's aspect ratio often appears on the back of the DVD or video box. An example would be 1.85:1. This means that the size of the original theatrical presentation of that film is 1.85 times as wide as it is high.
Using the 4:3 ratio as a basis for explanataion, the ratio is 4 units wide, and 3 units tall, comparatively the 16:9 is 16 units wide by 9 units tall.




Aspect ratio enables material to be played on various types of television screens without much loss of picture, keeping the composition the director intended and enabling a better viewing experience. As technology changes and TV's get larger, less of the original will be lost when shown.

Digital Video Formats

Digital video is becoming more and more important with the growth of technology, with the growth of media centers, movie downloads and other digital media make it a necessity for integrators to understand the various types of digital video formats available today. In this section i will detail the various formats available. Before the various file types can be explained, a small feature known as a Codec is imperative and essential to all formats.

What is a codec?

 "Codec" is a technical name for "compression/decompression". It also stands for "compressor/decompressor" and "code/decode". All of these variations mean the same thing: a codec is a computer program that both shrinks large movie files, and makes them playable on your computer. Codec programs are required for your media player to play your downloaded music and movies.

Why are they needed?

When video and music files are large, they become difficult to transfer across the Internet quickly. To help speed up downloads, mathematical "codecs" were built to encode ("shrink") a signal for transmission and then decode it for viewing or editing. Without codecs, downloads would take three to five times longer than they do now.

Now we have established what a codec is and why it is important, I'll explain the various file formats below, and what uses they have in video playback.

.MPG

 MPG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group (driven by Microsoft's early need to force every file into a three-letter extension box, MPEG has evolved by dropping the "E" to become MPG).


So, technically, MPG is more of a title than a file format. Even so, it has shifted in meaning as the file extension standards created by that group as well. It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission bandwidth.


MPG is very popular in the video world. And there are a number of MPG formats that you should consider -- all with different purposes.


MPG video pioneered digital distribution of video on the Internet and disc. With MPEG-1 you get poor video quality, in some situations, no better than VHS.


The next generation of MPEG technology is MPEG-2, which is used by most TV stations. MPEG-2 technology is also the compression format behind DVD, as well as the ATSC standard for broadcast HDTV. So, don't think MPEG-2 is going away anytime soon!

 

.MP4

.MP4 is essentially the 4th generation of MPEG - MPEG-4 (commonly known as MP4 or m4v). This format deals with a much better picture quality, for an idea of the quality, think Blu-ray or HD-DVD quality high-definition video, with an even better compression ratio.

MPEG-4 absorbs many of the features of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 and other related standards, and adds new features such as  VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language - essentially it is 3D rendering within a video capacity), object-oriented composite files (including audio, video and VRML objects).

It is also streamable and supports most multimedia content. It is used by iTunes and with the iPod, as well as often being the most commonly used file format for sharing videos over the Internet.

MPEG-4 is still a developing standard and is divided into a number of parts. Unfortunately, the companies promoting MPEG-4 compatibility do not always clearly state which "part" level compatibility.

Another version of MPEG-4 is 3GP. A growing number of mobile and smart phones have a video recording option. Most store the files as a 3GP file (from the creators, 3rd Generation Partnership Project).

They can then be transferred from phone to phone or over the Internet. 3GP files can be played on QuickTime Player and RealPlayer, but not on WMP! I will go further in depth into 3GP towards the end of this section

.MOV

 

This is a computer file format used natively by the QuickTime application, originating from Apple Macs.

Because both the QuickTime and MP4 container formats can use the same MPEG-4 formats, they are mostly interchangeable in a QuickTime-only environment. MP4, being an international standard, has more support.




In QuickTime Pro's MPEG-4 Export dialog, an option called "Passthrough" allows a clean export to MP4 without affecting the audio or video streams. One recent discrepancy brought in by QuickTime 7 is that the QuickTime file format now supports multichannel audio (used, for example, in high-definition trailers), while QuickTime's support for audio in the MP4 container is limited to stereo. 

.AVI

AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave, and is a file format designed to store both audio and video data in a standard package to allow its simultaneous playback. It was introduced by Microsoft in November 1992, as part of the Video for Windows technology (originally a direct competitor to Apple's Quicktime software) allowing users to play digital video on a computer, this is generally played through Quicktime as mentioned above, this cross-flatform file type has allowed for the ease of video transfer between multiple systems and played across the internet, however the compression codecs for online video differ substantially from commercial formats. 

.WMV

Windows Media Video (WMV) is a video compression format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. The original video format, known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other formats, such as WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater for specialized content. Through standardization from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), WMV 9 has gained adoption for physical-delivery formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

.SWF

SWF (originally an abbreviation for "ShockWave Flash" this was changed to the backronym "small web format" to eliminate confusion with Shockwave, from which it was derived) is a file format for multimedia, vector graphics (we covered these in last weeks blog, if you need a refresh be sure to visit it!)  and ActionScript in the Adobe Flash environment. Originating with FutureWave Software, then transferred to Macromedia, and then coming under the control of Adobe, SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function.

Currently, SWF functions as the dominant format for displaying "animated" vector graphics on the Web. It may also be used for programs, commonly browser games (as mentioned in the platform section above) using ActionScript.^[update]

SWF files can be generated from within several Adobe products: Flash, Flash Builder (an IDE) and After Effects. These file types are a very important type for use within the interactive media through animation as the compression rate depends on the format that is is being exported to:


When working with Macromedia Flash software, lossless compression maintains the highest quality but creates much larger file sizes. When exporting the SWF file, lossy compression is used as it creates a much smaller file but adds interactive artifacts to the final file  (artifacts are essentially the bits that make up a SWF file) 

.3GP

This is audio and video container format developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP); designed as a multimedia format for transmitting audio and video files between 3G cell phones and over the Internet; commonly used by mobile phones that support video capture. 3GP is used on these platforms due to the high rate of compression that is required for transmission of the file over the cellular network. This is due to the speeds of the network being incredibly slow when compared to modern home internet, however the amount of data that can be transferred is increasing as new technologies new implemented. 


The 3GPP platform is slowly being upgraded to 4G through the LTE (Long Term Evolution) Programme, this eventual improvement of technologies is slowly giving way to eradicating the need for the lower quality 3GP videos and will soon allow the same sort of speeds being attained on home internet to come to wireless devices such as mobile phones.

Device support for .3GP

• Most 3G capable mobile phones support the playback and recording of video in 3GP format (memory, maximum filesize for playback and recording, and resolution limits exist and vary).

• Some newer/higher-end phones without 3G capabilities may also playback and record in this format (again, with said limitations).

• Audio imported from CD onto a PlayStation 3 when it is set to encode to the MPEG-4 AAC codec will copy onto USB devices in the 3GP format, this is again due to the sheer loss of file size when compressed, allowing for storage to be easier. 

 Streaming Methods

What is streaming?

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider, the name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than to the medium itself.

The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over telecommunications networks, as most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g., radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (e.g., books, video cassettes, audio CDs). The verb 'to stream' is also derived from this term, meaning to deliver media in this manner. Internet television is a commonly streamed medium.

Live streaming, more specifically, means taking the media and broadcasting it live over the Internet. The process involves a camera for the media, an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher where the streams are made available to potential end-users and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. The media can then be viewed by end-users live.

Security remains one of the main challenges with this new methodology. Digital rights management (DRM) systems are an example of a solution to keep this content secure, i will go into further detail towards the end of the blog.

To the right is a simplified diagram of how streaming works

1. A user visits a web page hosted on a web server and finds a file he'd like to see or hear

2. The web server sends a message to a streaming media server, requesting the specific file

3. The streaming server streams the file to users computer, bypassing the web server

4. Client software on the users computer decodes and plays the file

Examples of streaming

So, now we have established how it works, where can you see or find files to stream?

In short, everywhere.

Streaming is not just about videos, according to RAJAR, on average, 57 million people listen to Internet radio every week! Thats nearly the entire population the United Kingdom listening to radio at some point during the week!

However, perhaps the most popular form of streaming over the internet is from YouTube. In 2009, people watched more than a million streaming videos a day on YouTube [source: Reuters]. The same year, television network ABC started streaming its most popular TV shows over the Web. People who missed an episode of shows like "Lost" or "Grey's Anatomy" could catch up on the entire thing online -- legally and for free.

To view streams, you'll need a plugin for your Web browser or a stand-alone player. Most of the time, the Web page you've visited points you in the right direction. It prompts you to download a specific player or shows you a list of choices.

These players decode and display data, and they usually retrieve information a little faster than they play it. This extra information stays in a buffer in case the stream falls behind. There are four primary players, and each one supports specific streaming file formats:

• QuickTime, from Apple, plays files that end in .mov. 

• RealNetworks RealMedia plays .rm files. 

• Microsoft Windows Media can play a few streaming file types: Windows Media Audio (.wma), Windows Media Video (.wmv) and Advanced Streaming Format (.asf). 

• The Adobe Flash player plays .flv files. It can also play .swf animation files.

For the most part, these players can't decode one another's file formats. For this reason, some sites use lots of different file types. These sites will ask you to choose your preferred player or pick one for you automatically.

Live streaming

Live streaming is essentially the same as normal streams, except the data you stream is being broadcast live. Common media that is streamed live are:

• Football Matches - these are streamed via the providers own websites or even from illegal streaming sites

• Major Sporting Events - such as the Olympics or Commonwealth Games

• Political Debates - such as the Leader's debate before the 2010 general election

• News - This can be streamed online either via the broadcasters local website, or via various applications on mobile devices, for example on the Apple iPhone, a BBC application allows users to view a live news broadcast when connected to some form of WiFi, regular data streaming via the network doesnt work as the information streamed it too great for a network to handle to many devices simultaneously.

How does it work?

This is the same process are normal streaming, however there are a few added steps to the process as you can see from the diagram below

As with all live broadcasting, it starts off with a camera, the image is then transmitted to a specialised software package on location or close to the location.

This data is then encoded and broadcast to a streaming server.

This is then streamed as other content to the user via either a local network or via the internet.

The users device ( I say device, as live streaming can also be delivered to various mobile devices, such as the Apple iPhone) then decodes  the data using a special codec downloaded prior to viewing the stream

Why stream when you can download?

We have established the various methods of streaming, now we need to determine the preferences between streaming and downloading. Essentially the end user experience with downloading is similar to streaming media, however the digital file is downloaded to a physical drive on the end user's device, the digital file is typically stored in the temp folder of the associated web browser if the digital media was embedded into a web page or is diverted to a storage directory that is set in the preferences of the media player used for playback.

HTTP Progressive download opens digital media to piracy in that it can be saved and shared by the end user. Due to this unrestricted access to the digital media file, entities concerned with piracy and security of their data opt for streaming based solutions that create a small buffer in order to initiate playback; however at no time during a streaming media session is the entire file downloaded locally as it is in the Progressive download scenario.

Data Transfer Rates

What is Data Transfer Rate? It is the movement of digital information from place to another. Typical data is transferred to and from a computer system. Data transfer can be done using the Internet as well as devices that can connect to a computer. When a data transfer is occurring, the amount of data being sent and received is called the data transfer rate.

It is comparable to traffic flow. In theory, the wider the highway and the higher the speed limit, the more traffic moves through. Just like traffic flow, which can be affected by obstructions, accidents and poorly designed highways, data transfer rate is subject to problems as well. Basic definitions, units, typical data transfer rates and comparisons will help define what factors make up a data transfer rate.

There are various factors that determine how fast data will transfer, these are outlined below

File Size

This is the big one, although there are many factors that contribute to higher file size, the end result is the same.

Streaming video and audio files are compact and efficient, but the best ones start out as very large, high-quality files often known as raw files. These are high-quality digital files or analog recordings that have been digitized, and they haven't been compressed or distorted in any way. Although you can watch a streaming file on an ordinary tv, editing the raw file requires lots of storage space and processing powerThe total reduction in quality depends on a number of factors, including the bitrate, or the speed of the transfer from the server to a computer. For example, the bitrate of a television broadcast is about 240,000 kilobits per second (Kbps)

Someone with a reliable broadband connection with lots of bandwidth can watch high-bitrate files, but The basic idea is to encode a file that's large enough to look or sound good but small enough to work with the available bandwidth. Some codecs let you create files that will stream differently at different transfer rates, accommodating different connection types

So how does a file size affect the transfer rate? Think of the file you are wanting to take, either downloading or streaming. Imagine the file is hundreds or thousands of cars travelling down a motorway, now imagine the motorway is your internet connection. The more cars (or the bigger the file size), the slower it will be for all cars to get to the end, however even with more cars, the wider the motorway (the faster your connection) the faster the file will get to the end.

 Resolution

Essentially, a higher resolution and frame rate makes the video clip play smoother and clearer, but leads to higher file sizes, leading to the problems seen above, slower transfer due to bigger files. Compression helps a lot with lowering the file size by removing unnecessary particles and shrinking the file down as mentioned in the technology section above

Media Players

This is a term typically used to describe computer software for playing back multimedia files. Most software media players support an array of media formats, including both audio and video files.

The producers of these players usually focus on providing a better user experience as they are specifically tailored toward the media type, such as audio and video.

Some operating systems come preloaded with media players:

Microsoft Windows comes with pre-loaded Windows Media Player. The latest is Windows Media Player 12, which is bundled with Windows 7

Mac OS X comes pre-loaded with Quicktime Player for playing Quicktime movies and iTunes for playing a variety of media formats. Winamp supports Apple iPods and other portables like Creative's Zen while also supporting audio and video playback.

Linux distributions come pre-loaded with various media players including Amarok, VLC, MPlayer, Xine, and Totem.

Many media players use libraries. The library is designed to help you organize, or catalog, your music into categories such as genre, year, rating or other. Good examples of media players that include media libraries are: Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, RealPlayer, Amarok and ALLPlayer.

This section of the blog will focus on the types of media players, and where these can be found, giving a brief description on each

Windows Media Player

 As detailed above, this is a  digital media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Windows operating system.

What does it do?

It gives the function to playback audio, video and pictures, along with fast forward, reverse, file markers (if present) and variable playback speed (seek & time compression/dilation introduced in WMP 9 Series).

Items in a playlist can be skipped over at playback time without removing them from the playlist.

It offers support for any media codec and container format using specific filters or Media Foundation codecs (Media Foundation codecs only in Windows Vista and later).

It can activate DVD and Blu-ray playback functionality with support for menus, titles and chapters, parental controls and audio track language selection if compatible decoders are installed. DVD playback features minus the necessary decoders were integrated into Windows Media Player 8 for Windows XP. MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital (AC-3) decoders were included beginning with Windows Media Player 11 on Windows Vista (Home Premium and Ultimate editions only).

The current version, Windows Media Player 12, is only available on microsofts newest operation system, Windows 7 and has the ability to stream media from select sources

Quicktime

This software is developed by Apple Inc., and is capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. It is available for Mac OS classic (System 7 onwards), Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The latest version is QuickTime X (10.0) and is currently only available on Mac OS X v10.6.

QuickTime is integrated with Mac OS X, but it was once an optional component at install for earlier versions of Mac OS. 

QuickTime for Microsoft Windows is downloadable, either as a standalone installation or bundled with iTunes.

QuickTime is available free of charge for both Mac OS X and Windows operating systems. Some other free player applications that rely on the QuickTime framework provide features not available in the basic QuickTime Player. For example:

• iTunes can export audio in WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless.
• In Mac OS X, a simple AppleScript can be used to play a movie in full-screen mode. Since version 7.2 the QuickTime Player now also supports full-screen viewing in the non-pro version

 What file formats can be used in Quicktime?

There are various file fornats that are supported in Quicktime, including many audio and picture formats, however in terms of video formats, some of the major ones supported are listen below

• 3GP and 3G2

• Animated GIF

• Audio Video Interleave (AVI)

• DV

• MPEG-1

• MPEG-4 Part 2

• QuickTime Movie

• QuickTime VR

Real Player

RealPlayer is a closed source cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.

RealPlayer was a popular streaming media player during the early years of the Internet, but in recent years it has been surpassed in market share by Windows Media Player, and, since mid-2007, Apple's iTunes. Many users would have initially encountered RealPlayer as a plugin to watch streaming video or listen to streaming audio, e.g. the BBC's websites at one time used this almost exclusively

 What can Real Player do?

The Media library function allows organization of media through track tagging and editing. The Premium version adds a function known as Audio Converter to convert between RealMedia, MP3, AAC, Windows Media, and WAV formats, and others. 

The LivePause feature allows users to pause streaming video clips without having to stop the buffering. 

Video Download - version 11 for Windows and OS X allow users to download Flash Video files from sites such as YouTube. MP4 files can be downloaded but require either the premium version or the free versions of other players such as Winamp or VLC media player to play them. 

Video Sharing (SP) - This allows users to post videos to Facebook and Twitter directly from the software

What file formats can Real Player play?

As with other media players, Real Player can play various formats, the most prevolant of which are:

 

•  MPEG 
• .mpg
• .mpeg
• .mpe

• AVI
• .avi
• .divx

• Windows Media (Required Windows Media Player 9 or 10 to be installed on the machine to be used)
• .wma
• .wmv

• Quicktime (Requires Quicktime Player to be installed)
• .mov
• .qt

• Adobe
• .swf (requires Flash of Shockwave Player installed on the machine to play)
• .flv

• Standard DVD format

VLC Media Player

This player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.

 

VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various formats

It is a cross-platform media player, with versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, GNU, Linux, BeOS, BSD, eComStation and iOS

The default distribution of VLC includes a large number of free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. Many of VLC's codecs are provided when downloading the software.

The variety of platforms available to VLC makes it a favourite among many users, including added functionality on portable players, such as a specialised application for Apple's iPhone, granted it uses the same type of OS as Mac's, however the versatility of having it on such a popular handset allows for greater interactivity.

 What files can be used on VLC?

In addition to many Mp3 formats, VLC Media player can play a wide range of video formats, including, but not limited to the following: 

• MPEG-1,2 and MPEG-4

• RealVideo 3 & 4

• WMV

As you can see, many media players exist, some to their own unique operating systems and some cross system players. The basics of these players remains the same, they allow a user to play multiple formats of media, from audio to video, even allows streaming for some types of videos.

Digital Rights Management

For all forms of media, be it audio, video, gaming or even ebooks, there is a limit to what can be done and limits to where it can be used. This type of control is known as Digital Rights Management, this is essentially technology that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to limit the use of digital content and devices. The term is used to describe any technology that inhibits uses of digital content not desired or intended by the content provider. The term does not generally refer to other forms of copy protection which can be circumvented without modifying the file or device, such as serial numbers or keyfiles. 

It can also refer to restrictions associated with specific instances of digital works or devices. Digital rights management is used by companies such as Sony, Amazon, Apple Inc., Microsoft, AOL and the BBC.

The use of digital rights management is controversial. Supporters argue it is needed by copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work, either to maintain artistic integrity or to ensure continued revenue streams.

Some opponents, such as the Free Software Foundation that copyright holders are restricting the use of material in ways that are beyond the scope of existing copyright laws, and should not be covered by future law

So, how does DRM work?

First-generation DRM software sought merely to control copying. Second-generation DRM schemes, on the other hand, seek to control viewing, copying, printing, altering and everything else you can possibly do with digital content.

A digital rights management scheme operates on three levels:

• Establishing a copyright for a piece of content

• Managing the distribution of that copyrighted content 

• Controlling what a consumer can do with that content once it has been distributed. To accomplish this level of control, a DRM program has to effectively define and describe three entities -- the user, the content and the usage rights -- and the relationship between them.

DRM must also set a precedant to what is known as 'fair use' which essentially details the things a customer can do once they have the content, Fair use however is not necessarily something that's easily determined.

Many companies have taken desperate measures to "plug the hole" of digital content flowing over the Internet, eliminating any right on the part of the consumer to make decisions regarding the content he or she has purchased. To many, more recent DRM schemes have crossed the line from copy protection to hog-tying the user. 

A common DRM encryption scheme provides an encryption key that works forever. In this case, the key must be tied to the ID number of the user's machine. The key will only decode the file when it's accessed from the computer it was originally installed on. Otherwise, the user could simply forward the key along with the encrypted software to everyone he knows.

Some products, like those protected by Macrovision SafeCast or Microsoft Product Activation use a Web-based permission scheme to prevent illegal use of the content. When a user installs the software, his computer contacts a license-verification server to get permission (the access key) to install and run a program.

If the user's computer is the first to request permission to install this particular piece of software, the server returns the key. If the user gives the software to his friend and the friend tries to install it, the server will deny access. In this type of scheme, a user typically has to contact the content provider to get permission to install the software on another machine.

The DRM-provider Macrovision used an interesting approach in one of its recent DVD-protection products. Instead of making a DVD uncopyable, Macrovision RipGuard exploits glitches in DVD ripping software to prevent copying. It's a piece of code in the software on a DVD, and its purpose is to confuse the code known as DeCSS, a small program that allows software to read and rip encrypted DVDs. 

Macrovision programmers studied DeCSS to discover its flaws and then built RipGuard to trigger those flaws and shut down the copying process. DVD consumers have already found ways around RipGuard, though, mostly by using ripping software that doesn't employ DeCSS or by tweaking the code in DeCSS-based rippers. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 makes disabling a DRM system illegal in the United States, but many people actively seek and publish methods to bypass DRM restrictions.

The end, at least for another week! 

I hope this weeks blog has been informative, if a little bit much to take in! Hopefully, in combination with last weeks blog regarding digital graphics it arms you with more information to enable you to fully understand all types of digital media, join us next week where we will aim to give you a better understanding of the basics to web animation, and the technology that makes it happen!




The Video below is the compressed video

Evaluation

The original intention of this project was to create a digital video sequence that would work effectively as an integrated standalone news package that would make part of an interactive web product.

In order to do this effectively, I undertook some research into professional standalone news packages like the ones that can be found on the BBC news website. My challenge was to design and develop a structure for this standard news broadcast that would be easily reducible to a stand alone package, when the studio anchor sections were removed.

Throughout this project, three objectives would determine if this had been a success:

1.     To create a standalone news package that can be viewed in a web based interactive environment.

2.     To create an interactive web banner and to create an interactive button with an embedded link to the news package

3.     To determine if the final product has been fit for purpose

First and foremost, the news edit itself has to be edited down in order for it to be fit for purpose as a standalone news package. This included having to edit out the studio anchor section for it to work in its intended format. The edited package had to include enough information within the correspondent section for the audience to understand the nature of the report, and thanks to scripting within the initial broadcast, the information at the start of the news piece was able to hold the package up in terms of understandability.

This ability to be able to function without the studio anchor segment has allowed the first criteria to be met, as it functions very solidly as a standalone piece and in comparison to the format and layout of professional broadcasts such as the type found on the BBCs website, works very effectively as a final piece.

The next stage of the creation was to create an interactive web banner with an embedded web link to the broadcast . The banner itself needs to be fit for its purpose in order for the project as a whole to be successful. The banner design itself had to contain an interactive element in order to meet the criteria of the project and the design and coding of the interactive element was the toughest part of the entire banner creation.  However, after struggling with the coding for a while the web link itself became active, thus completing the interactive element of the banner.

In order to effectively work the link into practice, I needed to compress the final edit into a format that was appropriate for the web platform, this compression in an integral part of the project. Compression itself is always a compromise and there are numerous factors that play an important role within being able to decide which elements to compress and which to leave in.  Compression is where the file size is reduced but at a lower quality product. For my standalone package to be suitable for the web as a format, it had to be compressed in such a format that it would be accessible across multiple platforms while still containing the information that was needed in as higher quality as possible.

The original news master edit was a fairly large size at 322.65mb, this as itself is far too large to be uploaded to the web so therefore a large amount of data had to be compressed, to do this, the video was compressed using a H264 Codec in a .mov format, this reduced the overall file size down to a meager 13.2mb. The actual compression itself altered many properties, including:

Audio

The original audio was encoded using a 16-bit Integer (Little Endian) stereo codec at 48,000khz. This audio itself was very high quality on the original edit, therefore in order to reduce the file size, the audio had to be compressed. Using the same codec as mentioned above (H264), the audio was reduced to AAC Stereo codec, still retaining its 48,000khz properties.

Data Rate

The data rate is a crucial aspect of the final package, and its reducing is a natural by-product of the reduction in size of the overall product. For instance, the original size of the master edit was 322.65mb, with a data rate of 14.87mb/s. When the file size was reduced to 13.2mb, the data rate fell to 800.81kb/s.  

Frame Size

Another method to reduce the overall file size is to reduce the frame size, throughout the compression process, the frame size of my original master edit was reduced from 768x576 to 480x360, this reduction of frame size has not altered the aspect ratio, so the compressed version still is proportionate to the new frame size. 

Now the master copy has been compressed to the new format, it needs to be comparable to a professional broadcast piece from the BBC’s news website to determine if its new properties can match industry standards.

Comparison Chart – BBC vs Own Compressed File

	BBC	Own Edit
Frame Rate	25fps	25fps
Compression Codec	H264	H264
File Size	19.3mb	13.2mb
Audio	AAC+ 96kbs	AAC Stereo 48khz
Frame Size	640x360	480x360

As can be seen from the above chart, the professional format has used exactly the same compression codec to compress the original file for a web-based platform.  This compression codec is used as it delivers a higher quality video at a lower bitrate than standard conversion codec, the only downside to this is that it requires more CPU to play the actual video than standard conversion.

The file size is relatively small for both videos and as the video that was pulled from the BBC’s news website is longer than my edit, this would account for the size difference although when compared to the original file size, the compression process has performed its job to professional standards and has made it appropriate for a web format.

When compared to the professional video, various factors need to be addressed as to whether it has been a success:

Does it meet the criteria of the brief?

The brief states that the creation of the stand-alone news package has to be done in such a way that it reflects near-professional standards. Although the original package certainly met these requirements, I had to use the compression methods that would keep the quality while still reducing the file size.

This required some previous research into professional package quality and the methods they used to acquire the quality they have, having used the same codecs and compressing the video to the same specifications, I believe that this has definitely been a success in meeting the requirements of the brief.

How does the audio compare to a professional media package?

As the final audio settings of the professional package were slightly different, the audio was slightly different however the difference was not entirely noticeable as the final quality of my package was high due to the compression that was used, so in terms of if it has been successful, I believe that the final product can be comparable to the professional package

How much quality was lost through compression and how does it compare to a professional package?

During the final compression of the edit, as mentioned within the evaluation section, a minimal amount of quality has eventually been lost, overall when comparing to a professional package, the colour depth is still within the millions as with the original file and the colour depth can definitely be comparable to the professional package.

On the compressed file, there appears to be no loss of proportion and the final piece can be viewed effectively at a lower frame size, while still preserving the quality of the image.

How does the buffering compare to industry standards?

As the platform for the video I have uploaded is web-based and on YouTube, the buffering is dependent primarily upon the users own internet speed and provider, however the quality in which the user will be viewing the product will also have an effect on the buffering speed, as higher quality (such as 720p) will have a higher file size, therefore affect the buffering speed of the video. The file size does have a prudent impact the final product however, as if a larger file is uploaded to YouTube, it will take longer to buffer than a smaller file, this is where the compression comes into play; as reducing the quality to be uploaded will reduce the file size and eventually the buffering speed.

Could other compression methods be used to create an improved effect?

As the compression codec H264 is used as an industry standard (it used to use a codec known as On2 VP6), and it is the same codec that has been used for my video that the compression method for my video has been the best codec to use as it is built to reduce the amount of quality that is lost throughout the process.