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 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
Interactive Kiosks
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.
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
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.
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;
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.
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.
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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.
Media Players
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.
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.
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