Video in Interactive Media

Hello again, today I am going to talk about Video in Interactive Media. We use video in interactive media to do these things because it is an effective way to transfer information.
Applicants
More and more developers look to engage viewers to their material, video in interactive media offers the ideal platform to connect the audience resulting in further understanding of the sale of a product.

YouTube has also started advertising in between parts just like television. This never used to happen before as YouTube was only used for music but now it is used for literally anything. You could catch up on episodes you have missed etc. without any ad breaks however now they are now introducing advertisement breaks. YouTube has always been user controlled; the industries had to get on board due to its popularity. It is so easy for someone to get a camera and upload a video.

Film Trailers, try to include as much information as possible without spoiling the plot, but details like what the makers of this film have previously done, who is starring in the film and what date  the film is being release. They also notify the viewers of credentials, like age rating. Trailers link with the rules of Television and Cinema, anything the general public would come across. So for example, a horror trailer which has an age certificate of 18 would not be showed on daytime television, or at the Cinema where the film has a Universal Rating.

 

 

 

 

Platforms:

There are many different interactive media platforms for video.

Things like DVDs, Mobile Phones, and Interactive Television and streaming platforms such as YouTube, is designed to have multiple options available to the user. Platforms like this are regularly updated by the companies that own them for all the latest devices. They are designed for (apart from making money from them), CDs for listening to music, DVDs for watching videos/films, Mobile Phones to access the internet, phone/text people, Interactive Television to watch a large selection of channels,  and YouTube to watch short/long videos that are entertaining, educational etc.

 

 In self-checkout systems, the customer is allowed to scan the barcodes on their own items, and yourself identify items such as fruits etc. This is usually with a touchscreen display, which is then weighed. Once weighed you then place the items into a bagging area.                              

 

Video on phones is useful for sharing and exchanging with friends etc. 
Television: With the advent of Sky and Virgin Media etc, interactive menu’s now offer a space to advertise on and allow the viewer to interact with them.

Video files are among the largest files there are.  They fill up your hard disk, slow down your PC, get too big to be copied to other computers, and can be almost impossible to distribute over the Internet. Though the Internet bandwidth available is always increasing, and storage options like large hard drives and DVDs become less expensive every year, a typical video continues to occupy 'too much space’. There are a wide variety of file formats out there that can reduce file sizes.

Lossy

A compression technique is something that does not decompress data back to 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.

Lossless

The term lossless means “no loss of data.” When a file is compressed in a lossless fashion, all the data is still there. You can save lossless video without any loss of data compression. It puts all the 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.

Technology: File extensions:

.mpg:. MPEG Video File, developed by MPEG (Movie Pictures Experts Group) and is an extremely common digital video format that incorporates audio and video compression, and this found often among movies that have been created to distribute across the internet. An example of programs what use .mpg is Apple iTunes, Apple QuickTime Player and Windows Media Player.

.mp4: Movie or video clip that uses MPEG-4 compression, a standard developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG); commonly used for sharing video files on the Internet. The MPEG-4 video format uses separate compression for audio and video tracks. Video is compressed with MPEG-4 video encoding. MP4 files are supported by many video programs and various hardware devices.

.mov:  Common multimedia format often used for saving movies and other video files; uses a proprietary compression algorithm developed by Apple Computer; compatible with both Macintosh and Windows platforms.
 

.avi: Audio Video Interleave File: Video container or wrapper format created by Microsoft; stores video data that may be encoded in a variety of codec’s; typically uses less compression than similar formats such as .MPEG and .MOV. AVI files can be played by various video players, but the player must support the codec used to encode the video data.

 

.wmv: Windows Media Video File: Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 was the last version of the Windows Media Player developed for Mac OS X. However, Mac users can use Flip4Mac WMV (also known as Microsoft Windows Media Components for QuickTime) to play WMV files.

 

.swf: Shockwave Flash Movie: Animation created with Adobe Flash; may contain text as well as both vector and raster graphics; also may include interactive actions written in ActionScript; plays in Web browsers that have the Flash plug-in installed. Macromedia SWF files have now become a standard means of publishing compressed Flash content on the Web. Therefore, the SWF abbreviation has been changed to mean "Small Web Format" as well.

 

.3GP: Designed as a multimedia format for transmitting audio and video files between 3G mobile phones and over the internet. Quicktime, RealPlayer, VLC can all support 3GP.

Streaming Methods:

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and open to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider,
Live streaming is basically the same as normal streams, however the data you stream is being broadcast live.  More specifically, live streaming is the technique of constantly sending and receiving content over the Internet. The difference is usually applied to media that are given over broadcasting networks, as most other delivery systems are either basically streaming which is radio, television or essentially non-streaming which is either books, video cassettes, audio CDs.

Basically, a higher resolution and frame rate makes the video clip play clearer etc., but this leads to higher file sizes. The problem with this is that it is slower transfer due to the big files.

Media Players
Most software media players support a selection of media formats, including both audio and video files. Media players use libraries, this helps organise your music for example into categories. Good examples of media players with libraries are, Windows Media Player, iTunes, RealPlayer etc.

Windows Media Player: A digital media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video etc on personal computers running the Windows working structure.

iTunes (Quick Time): This is developed by Apple and is skilled of handling many formats of digital video, picture, sound interactivity etc. The latest version is QuickTime X (10.0) and is currently only available on Mac OS X v10.6.