Web Animation

Web Animation Article

In this article for the Burnley College News Blog and I am going to discuss Web animation. I will discuss different areas such as the uses of web animation, the history of animation and discuss the different types of animation such as cell animation and stop motion. I will also discuss the file formats that are used for animation and go over vector and raster animation. Finally I will discuss the software in which animation can be played.

Uses of Web Animation

How and where is web animation used? Well, it is used in a variety of things across the Internet. For example it is use in banner ads, linear and interactive animations, promotion, information and entertainment.

Web Banners

A web banner or a banner ad is a form of advertising on the Internet. This is when you place a banner that has an advertisement placed on it, onto a webpage so that everyone who visits that website can view it, therefore it will attract more people to buy the product or whatever is being advertised. These web banners usually use some form of image weather it be a GIF or a JPEG file and they will also incorporate some form of animation to grab the attention of the viewers.

These specific advertisements make money from people clicking on the banner and viewing the advertisement.




Linear and Interactive Advertisements

Commonly known as linear and non-linear advertisements. These are basically how the advertisements look. For example if the advert has no interaction, then it would be a linear advertisement. So basically the advert has a seta action that will occur every time you see the advert. However a non-linear advertisement, allows the user to change what happens in the animation by interacting with the banner.








This image shows a linear advertisement at the top of a web page. This has no user interaction and is just simply showing the advertisement.




Entertainment

I am going to discuss web animations that are made specifically for entertainment purposes. The majority of web animation is now mainly in the entertainment sector such as short animated films or animated games. There are many different websites that are dedicated to these specific web animated products. Animators can also use the web to promote there own specific animations on websites such as YouTube to make their animations more popular.

















This video just shows how popular videos can become when placed on YouTube. This could give the animator further opportunities for making animations just like this one.


A History of Animation

In this section, I am going to discuss basically, where animation started and some of the early inventions that were used to produce animations. I will go over some of the major inventions in the history of animation. Below I will produce a timeline of the dates of when these products where invented.


1872- Eadweard Muybridge started his photographic gathering of animals in motion.















1889- Thomas Edison announced his creation of the kinetoscope, which projected a 50ft length of film in approximately 13 seconds.















1892- Emile Renynaud, combining his earlier invention of the praxinoscope with a projector, opens the Theatre Optique in the Musee Grevin. It displays an animation of images painted on long strips of celluloid. In the praxinoscope there was pictures inside the outer cylinder and each picture was reflected by one of the mirrors on the inner cylinder and when the device span around these reflections gave the impression of a moving picture.















1895- Louis and Augustine Lumiere issued a patent for a device called a cinematograph capable of projecting moving pictures. This was better than some of the other devices as it was available for a larger amount of people to view it.





















































1896- Thomas Armat designed the vitascope, which projected the films of Thomas Edison.

































































1906- J. Stuart Blackton made the first animated film which he called "Humorous phases of funny faces." His method was to draw comical faces on a blackboard and film them. He would stop the film, erase one face to draw another, and then film the newly drawn face (stop-start technique). This technique would create an image where the characters facial expressions where changing.



















































1910- Emile Cohl, French animator created the first paper cutout animation. The advantage of this technique is that you don’t have to re draw each frame. You just have to re position pieces of paper that have already been designed.










































Stop Motion






Stop motion (also known as stop action) is an animation 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. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Motion animation using clay is called clay animation or clay-mation.
















Cel Animation






Also known as traditional animation, this is animation in which every frame is drawn by hand. This form of animation was very popular until the introduction of computer animation.

















































































Computer Animation






This is process used to animate images using computer graphics. Computer animation is essentially a digital successor to the stop motion techniques used in traditional animation with 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations.




So, as you can see, we have gone from basic, cel animation in which all the frames are hand drawn to computer animation The disadvantage of cel animation is that it will take a lot of time up having to capture every single frame whereas in computer animation, you can draw your images digitally and it isn’t as time consuming, however you cannot create images with such detail as if they are hand drawn.






Frame Rate






Also known as frame frequency, frame rate is basically, the amounts of frames are shown each second. So if for example, in your animation you have a high frame rate, then your animation is going to be faster than an animation that has a lower frame rate.






Key Frames






A key frame in animation, is basically, the points that determine, the start point and the end point of a specific movement. They are called "frames" because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film.






Tweening






Tweening is when the programme creates frames between two images that are in different positions. This makes it look as though one image is moving smoothly into the other image.















Vector Animation






Vector animation, is a type of animation that uses vectors instead of pixels, so it uses mathematical equations to create the animations. These types of animations allow for a smoother image. The most popular vector based animation programme is Macromedia Flash.














Raster Animation






Raster animation is the simplest form of computer animation. This method involves creating an image and then using the computer programme to make the image move. The most common programme for raster animation would be Adobe Photoshop.












































.fla- this file format is a movie or animation that has been created with Adobe Flash. Often saved as a .SWF file for use on the Web; the FLA file is the editable project file saved by the Flash development program; the SWF (or "swiff") file is a compressed format that is viewable in most Web browsers with the Flash plugin.


















































.swf- This file time is an animation created with Adobe Flash, they might contain text, on top or vector and raster graphics. Files with this file format will play in any web browser that has the flash plug-in.

















































.gif- this is an image file that might contain up to 256 colors. color palette may be a predefined set of colors or may be adapted to the colors in the image; lossless format, meaning the clarity of the image is not compromised with GIF compression. GIFs are common format for Web graphics, especially small images and images that contain text, such as navigation buttons. However, JPEG (.JPG) images are better for showing photos because they are not limited in the number of colors they can display.










Web Animation Software


Real Player




RealPlayer is a 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. Real player was very popular in its early days. However bigger companies such as Microsoft and apple have now over taken it with iTunes and windows media player.


































QuickTime Player


QuickTime, developed by apple, is another multimedia player that is capable of playing back various different forms of video, sound and images. It can be run on most windows and mac OS operating systems for free.


Some of the file formats that are supported by QuickTime are;


· AVI


· MPEG-2


· MPEG-4


· Quick Time Movie


· JPEG








































Conclusion


And that’s the end! I hope these articles have been helpful to you in understanding digital graphics, web animation and video in interactive media. There will be more blogs to come soon. Thanks for reading!

Video in Interactive Media

Video in Interactive Media Article

In this section of my blog I am going to discuss how video is used in interactive media, the platforms on which it is used, compression and file formats and which devices use specific file formats, streaming methods and different types of media players. Interactive media is used every single day, through a variety of sources.

We will discuss three topics in this article, these topics are: applications (how video is used), platforms (what platforms on which video is used) technology (the different compression and types of digital video file formats, including the various methods for playing the videos).

Introduction

Nowadays, you don’t just see video in the cinema, or on your television screen due to big changes in technology. With people now being able to view and even download movies and television from the Internet. Even mobile phones can now record and playback video technology at the click of a button. Video technology is everywhere you look and is used in the majority of things you use throughout your daily life.

Applications

How is video used in interactive media? How is applied? Well, it is used in many different things that you come across daily life in a range of different things such as; promotional material, film trailers, advertisements, viral marketing, games and e-learning.

Promotion material

What is it? Well, it is generally a short video clip or image that has a main purpose of advertising an organization or product. These generally include the key points of the product or organization that will attract people to these specific things as much as possible. These videos can be placed on to many different places, such as television and on the Internet, to make sure they have the most people viewing this promotion as possible.

Advertisements

Advertisements are seen everywhere across the internet nowadays and the majority of them use interactive media to allow you to interact with the advertisements. Some will take you to the companies website, some will allow you to play a game on the advertisements. Youtube is a big example of advertisements using interactive media, playing before most youtube clips and allowing you to view the product that is being advertised.

Film Trailers

Film trailers are mainly made up of video nowadays and are a big part of the film industry. I mean, if the film looks good on the trailer, then your more likely to go to the cinema and watch it, right? However, if the film looks poor on the trailer, then less people are going to watch it. So video plays a big part in helping film companies to make money!

 

Viral Marketing

Viral Advertising is a technique that using social networking websites to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales). It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, eBooks, brandable software, images, or text messages.

Games

I will be going through the games that can be played on Internet browsers such as safari, Firefox and Google chrome. Java and flash games have become hugely popular around the world on several different online gaming websites, this is due the whole new level of video, audio and user interactivity. As Microsoft started to include flash as a pre-installed product on Internet explorer. The flash/java games became easy to access for anyone surfing the web.

 

On websites such as www.miniclip.com there are hundreds of flash games on offer and many are new updated versions of classics from the 80’s and 90’s.

Platforms

I am going to discuss the different interactive media platforms on which video is used. For example the Worldwide Web, e-mail, attachments, DVD, CD, Supermarket Checkouts, Mobile Devices (phones, games consoles, MP3/MP4 players) and presentations etc. all of these appliances are used in all of our daily lives.

Web Content

This content can be accessed from quite a few different places, not just the standard desktop computer in your home. Also can be viewed from other sources such as mobile devices, TV’s, broadband and wireless networks. From these sources, you can access almost everything that is available from the Internet. Which is basically everything.

The web can be accessed very easily on Wi-Fi enabled phones and laptops from anywhere around the world, providing they have a wireless network which allows people to connect to the internet even if they don’t have a signal on their device.


Interactive Kiosks

They come in many different formats, such as ATM cash machines and self-checkout machines in the popular supermarkets across the UK. Nowadays, almost everyone will have used some form of interactive kiosk.

What do they do? Well, these machines allow you to draw money out of your bank account and check your balance providing you provide correct access details. These machines have proved to change the way people do their banking.

 

Another interactive kiosk is the self-checkout machine at supermarkets. These allow shoppers to scan their shopping, place in bags. Then pay for it via debit or credit card or even cash. These machines are very helpful for those people who only want to pick up a few bits and don’t want the hassle of cueing for a long time.

These sort of machines are also seen in train stations across the country, these allow the traveller to collect pre-booked tickets and also buy tickets. The advantages of the machines are that it makes everything that bit quicker so you don’t have to queue for long amounts of time. The advantage for the companies is that they don’t have to use as much staff to work on tills.

Gaming

Another platform which video is used in, is gaming. On many different consoles such as the Xbox, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii etc. All of these provide video gaming content on a range of different genres. All of these consoles, allow gamers to interact online and play against people from all across the world, while also being able to chat with friends in a large group party.

 

Technology behind video

In this section I am going to discuss the technology behind video in interactive media. I will go through things such as;

Compression

·      Video File Formats

·      Streaming Methods

·      Various Media Players

Compression

In digital video, the size of any video file is very important as they take up a lot of space up on your hard drive. Therefore they must be compressed (made smaller).  If you compress a video file, you make it a lot easier to store on your hard drive. Also, you can compress a digital video file, without it having any major impact on the quality of the video file, as the only parts that are compressed are the parts humans cannot detect. However, if you compress a file too much, then the changes in the file will become a lot more noticeable and the video could become nearly unrecognizable.

 

The two main forms are compression are lossy and lossless compression.

Lossy Compression

Lossy Compression is a type of file compression that compromises the quality of the file in order to make the file size smaller. Lossy compression is the most commonly used file compression type for multimedia data (audio, video, still images). This type of compression is good for streaming online, as the file sizes have to be smaller to make the streaming quicker.

Lossless Compression

Lossless Compression is a compression technique where none of the quality of the image is lost from the file. Lossless Compression basically copies the original file data, but in a more efficient way. The disadvantage of this is that the file types are much larger than if those that used lossy compression.

File Formats-

Just like in images, videos have their own different file extensions. These generally determine on what platforms and devices that they can be viewed on. Some of these different file extensions include;

.mpg- (Moving Picture Experts Group) is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting (DAB) possible. Today, MPEG-1 has become the most widely compatible lossy audio/video format in the world, and is used in a large number of products and technologies. Perhaps the best-known part of the MPEG-1 standard is the MP3 audio format it introduced.

This type of file extension is viewable across various platforms such as Windows, Mac OS and other portable devices as well as Apple QuickTime Player, Microsoft Windows Media Player.

.mp4- (MPEG-4 Part 14) The MPEG-4 video format uses separate compression for audio and video tracks. Video is compressed with MPEG-4 video encoding. Audio is compressed using AAC compression, the same type of audio compression used in .AAC files. Many video programs and various hardware devices, including the Microsoft Zune portable media player, support MP4 files.

.mov- this file format is most commonly associated with a QuickTime Video Clip, a multimedia container file format developed by Apple. 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. This file format can be used across various operating systems and programmes such as Windows Media Player and Quick Time Player.

.avi- (Audio Video Interleave File) is a Video container or wrapper format created by Microsoft; stores video data that may be encoded in a variety of codecs; 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) is a video file based on the Microsoft Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container format and compressed with Windows Media compression; similar to an .ASF file and contains video encoded with one of Microsoft's Windows Media Video (WMV) proprietary codecs. These files can be played on the latest version of windows media player and also can be used by mac users.

                                                                    Streaming Methods

Well, first of all, 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.

So, now we know what it is we can now discuss, where do we find it?

Well first of all, the biggest example of streaming has to be YouTube, nearly everyone has streamed a video from this website and in 2009, people watched more than a million streaming videos a day on YouTube. Another method of this, would be the BBC iplayer, this was brought in to allow people to view programmes that they had missed previously, on the Internet without breaking the law.

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                                                                      Live Streaming

 

This is pretty much the same as normal streaming, however the broadcast that is being broadcast, is live. The most common programmes that are streamed live would be football matches or any other major sporting events, news and political debates.

How does this work? Well, it is the same as normal streaming and starts with the camera. Which is then placed onto a special piece of software and encoded to broadcast onto the streaming server. It is then streamed as other content to the user via the Internet. These live broadcasts can also be viewed on specialist phones such as the Apple IPhone.

Progressive Downloading

Progressive downloading is when the user begins to play a certain video before it has completely downloaded and it continues to download as the video is being played. This type of streaming is used when watching television online using websites such as iPlayer and YouTube. 

Streaming

Streaming is multimedia that is being constantly received by a user and is being sent by a streaming provider. With streaming the data cannot be viewed unless the entire file has been transmitted to the user. Streaming is very popular worldwide and can be used to watch live football matches, live television and a whole host of different products can be viewed using streaming.

                                                                       Media Players

What are they? Well they are computer software for playing multimedia files. Most of these players will be able to playback various different file formats including audio and video files. For example Microsoft Windows comes with Windows Media Player pre-loaded and Mac OSX comes with Quick Time player and iTunes pre-loaded on it.

Windows Media Player

As already said, Microsoft develops Windows Media Player to playback audio and video files that are running a Windows operating system. It gives the option to playback video, audio and pictures. You can also fast forward and rewind. If you have files in a playlist, you can skip past them without them being deleted.

QuickTime Player

QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and later operating systems. A more recent version, QuickTime X (10.0) is currently available on Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Mac OS X Lion.

Conclusion

In this article, I have discussed the many uses of video in interactive media, the platforms on which it is used. The file formats that it can be compressed to. I also discussed the different streaming methods that are used across the Internet. Also the different media players that all of you use to play your various media files on your computers or other devices.

Thanks for reading.