One of the most exciting innovations with Flash over the last couple of versions is the improved integration of video. As video content and the Internet continue to con- verge, Flash will no doubt be a primary vehicle for video delivery in the foreseeable future. You’ll find many benefits to choosing Flash for delivering online video con- tent, the most practical being compression. FLV compression has been simply the most flexible and dependable video format for the file size out there—and it just got a lot better with the On2 VP6 codec available in Flash 8. Flash video is now also one of the best video formats for deploying online video because of its improved import workflow. Designers and programmers alike now have complete control over video content in Flash, and that gives us the freedom to produce just about any interactive video concept for web deployment. Couple this new freedom with the versatile array of design resources available, and you can see why we as interface designers are being enlisted to shoot, edit, and animate for the video format. It’s pretty common now for a Flash interface designer to use After Effects, Final Cut Pro, some flavor of sound design application, and Flash all in the same day. In this chapter, you’ll see how to leverage all these new capabilities to enhance your design work and help make the Flash interfaces you create even more enjoyable and immersive experiences.
In case some of the video-oriented terms in this chapter are unfamiliar to you, I’ve included a glossary at the back of this chapter. Terms appearing in the glossary appear bold on first mention throughout the text.
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Figure 8-1. Interactive video of a product on the Find Furniture site
The product shoots I’m referencing in the pictures and examples, like the one you see in Figure 8-1, come from a series I did for a furniture company to use on their website. For each piece of furniture in their catalog, Find Furniture wanted a video of each product to be interactive on the site. Users can spin each piece around to view it from every angle, along with measurements and a short description of each piece. This chapter explains my video production process for distribution of this type of con- tent and more in Flash.
Video content for Flash
For many of us, “video producer” is a new hat to wear, and one that we’re willing to try on. Much of the Flash video I see online tends to be tutorials or tours. These productions typically put talent (or the actors/spokespersons) over a single color (usually white) background and have them attempt to sell you one thing or another. This type of experience exemplifies why I get so excited about the pos- sibilities of interactive video in Flash. It reminds me that we’re still at the ground floor of possibilities for Flash and video. These types of experiences affirm to me that there is a next BETTER thing; and as Flash interface designers, we’re perfectly positioned to create it. There are many parallels between the tools of Flash and video production such as using timelines, keyframes, movie clip management—the list goes on. As a Flash designer/animator, you’re already primed for working with video. With a solid understanding of basic video productions and some practice, you can create and deploy professional interactive video solutions in Flash starting from the ground up.
Shooting video content for the Web: A basic guide
As visually creative people, interface designers are very observant. If put to the task of creating a video, most would no doubt reflect on what they have seen in movies or television and generate workable concepts to shoot. I encourage that type of creative spark. Combine this with basic proce- dural video production knowledge, and your next interactive project will teach you volumes about the
USING VIDEO IN FLASH power of video presentation on the Web. And it might even be the most compelling Flash piece you’ve ever created.
Equipment basics
You don’t need extremely expensive equipment to generate professional video for online broadcast. The realities of video compression coupled with the advances of digital video technology create a pretty even playing field when considering what equipment is best for you. In fact, interactive video is a great medium for getting your feet wet doing video productions for just that reason. Since it doesn’t have to cost a mint to get the basic gear, you can wean your way into doing professional video proj- ects. As you learn more about video productions, there will very likely be a project in your future that will justify making additional purchases. Before you know it, you’ll have a full production outfit ready to produce any number of professional videos.
For many of us, a decent digital video camera isn’t too far out of reach, if at all. Following is a list of basic camera features you should keep in mind when considering purchasing a camera for shooting web-bound video:
Format: There are many new high-definition digital video (HD DV) cameras on the market that
are nice to have but not absolutely necessary. MiniDV is a must. You can use Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, etc., to capture MiniDV format with little instruction, and the tapes are inexpensive and easy to find as well. If you get a HD DV cam, you will most likely need special tapes to utilize that feature—meaning you can’t run to the corner store for an extra tape if you need one quickly. Use 3CCD cameras—they are more expensive but well worth the extra money. The quality in color and resolution (especially for camera pans and arcs) far surpasses lesser CCD cameras.
Design: When I was starting out, it was important for me to have something small enough to
store easily in a compact bag, and this might be a consideration for you, as well. Many “pro- sumer” cameras (professional-quality cameras under $2,000) that fit this requirement don’t allow for professional audio equipment, so make sure you purchase something that you can hook a microphone up to. Another important consideration is having an LCD panel. Chances are that unless you have a crew to help you on your shooting engagements you’re going to play the role of camera operator, director, set grip, gaffer, etc. If you can’t get a camera with an LCD panel, consider purchasing a small, cheap, portable TV so you can see what you are shooting without getting stuck behind a viewfinder.
Lens: You will want at least a 10✕ fixed lens or greater and optical image stabilization. It is pretty common to find affordable cameras with 20✕lenses. Interchangeable lens systems are nice to have, but not necessary.
Connectivity: The sound you capture is likely just as important as the video you’re shooting,
so you will need at least one microphone jack. If you anticipate needing more than one micro- phone at a time, you can purchase an inexpensive dual-microphone kit with lavaliere mics and regular mics that work with most single-mic prosumer cameras. Make sure there is a head- phone jack to do sound checks.
Having a decent tripod for pans, tilts, arcs, and other steady camera movement is absolutely neces- sary—there is no way to fix a bumpy video pan in postproduction.
Figure 8-2. The basic three-point lighting positions
stuff unless it’s all together. When you get your bag, get one a third larger than you need to fit all the extra scripts, pens, tapes, etc. I got my first camera bag at a Wal-Mart for $30. It was a pretty good deal considering similar bags at camera stores sell for $90 to $150.
As I stated earlier, sound is extremely important. The ideal microphone for capturing dialogue on a small production is a wireless lavaliere microphone, or lav mic. These mics are easily hidden in the col- lar of your subject’s shirt, and you don’t have to pack around cables. Lav mic kits can be purchased for $150, and they are well worth it. If you use the directional (or shotgun) mic that comes on your cam- era, your biggest sound problem will be ambient sounds you will pick up. You can try to edit this stuff out of your sound, but it’s a long, tedious process and isn’t always a consistent or reliable fix. Another important investment is a basic lighting kit. Many kits are available with numerous combina- tions of lamps, stands, bulbs, etc. The basic video lighting configuration to achieve base light (even set lighting) consists of three different lights: back light, fill light, and key light. A basic affordable light- ing kit that will serve your purposes should contain a spotlight (or hard light), floodlight (or soft light), and a broad (usually with barn doors) lamp complete with stands, gels, lighting cables, umbrellas,
clamps, and other general rigging equipment. These types of kits are available for as little as $700
online.
Figure 8-2 illustrates the basic three-point lighting positions. The main idea with using this combina- tion of lighting is to create pleasant contrast on the subject and also an even base light over the whole scene. If you are intending to use an editing program to “knock out” your subject from the back- ground, purchase some green screens to place behind and under the subject. In lieu of having green screen, I’ve blasted walls with light behind my subject and used a high-contrast setting on my camera to shoot the subject against an artificial white.
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Figure 8-3. Standard camera handling techniques for shooting takes
USING VIDEO IN FLASH Figure 8-3 shows a variety of standard camera handling techniques for shooting takes: arc, dolly,
pan, pedestal, tilt, and truck.
A practical (and free!) necessity for your video projects is a shot log, like the one you see in Figure 8-4. This is basically an itemized list of all the footage captured during a shoot. It’s common for the camera operator to call out the time code of a shot before recording footage and as soon as the camera stops recording so that someone can accurately record the quality of the take. Once you are ready to start editing footage, you can use the shot log to skip over all of the “junk footage” and spend your time capturing/saving the good footage. This saves a lot of time during the editing process.
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If you haven’t already, this should get you started piecing together the basic equipment you need to do professional video productions for the Web. Through my own research, I discovered that a begin- ner wanting to put together a basic equipment list would spend around $3500. And remember: you can always rent lights and other equipment if you aren’t able to splurge on all of this gear. The most important thing is to get a reliable camera and do more research before making any of these pur- chases. A search on Google for “digital video equipment” will provide you with ample information for online research. Do your homework and good luck!
Shooting and editing basics
There are many application options when it comes to editing digital video. I prefer to use a combina- tion of Final Cut Pro and After Effects. I use Final Cut Pro because it makes logging and capturing footage and editing that footage together easy. Whatever program you decide to use for your editing, make sure it has a batch capture option for capturing your footage from the camera and saving it digitally to your computer. This will literally save you hours during the editing process.
After Effects is great for creating every type of video animation, even effects that can be used in Flash, but it is also a really great keying tool for knocking out green screen. This provides an even solid color in the background that makes keying out the subject much easier. Keying is a technique used in video editing applications to cut out people or objects based on the color around them. This is very similar to using the wand tool in PhotoShop and deleting the selection. If you plan on keying out your back- ground and utilizing the new alpha channel capabilities in Flash, make sure that when you shoot your video, the background of your subject is blown out with plenty of light to save time keying it out. Be
Production Title Shoot Date Scene 1A 1A 1A Take 1 2 3 In 01:03:26 01:06:00 01:08:15 _ _ : _ _ : _ _ _ _ : _ _ : _ _ _ _ : _ _ : _ _ Out 01:05:56 01:08:14 01:11:03 _ _ : _ _ : _ _ _ _ : _ _ : _ _ _ _ : _ _ : _ _ Notes
Shutter and skipped line
False start
Perfect turn—best take OK
X NG X
X
Figure 8-4. If you are shooting talent (people), it is recommended that you keep a shot log to help you get through the editing process more efficiently.
USING VIDEO IN FLASH careful, though, because lots of light also means a lot of color spill on surfaces of your subject. I have had good results using the DV Matte Pro plug-in for After Effects, which is shown in Figure 8-5.
In the past, excluding art films, editing professional video consisted of three basic main narrative ele- ments: beginning, middle, and end. There are variations on this, but that’s pretty much the rhythm. The video boom created by amateur video enthusiasts, offline and online, have turned that standard on its head. I attribute online video to being more like the Choose Your Own Adventure books I grew up with. In these books, you would finish a chapter and select an option from a key at the bottom of the page, which would tell you the page to flip to in order to complete the story. One short book was full of dozens of different stories because it was interactive. Today’s online video experiences are very similar. The narrative possibilities are extensive when creating an interactive video project, and under- standing some traditional fundamentals will most likely enhance your final product.
Planning for continuity is one of the most basic things you should keep in mind while shooting video. This means making sure clothing, props, subject, and location are consistent throughout your filming assignment. This way if you decide you want to edit in a clip of your subject from day 3 of your film- ing to a clip from day 1, you don’t have to worry about something like the subject wearing colored pants for one cut that are different from what the subject is wearing for the rest of that segment. Also, always keep the narrative of your video in mind when considering transitions. Flash is a great delivery tool for interactive video because you can plan to animate transitions in Flash instead of in your video editing application, or use a mixture from both. Planning continuity starts before you edit, but you will feel its impact most when you are sitting in front of your editing station trying to put the final piece together.
You don’t need a degree in video production to create great video for online consumption, but hav-
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interested in learning more on the subject of video productions as it relates to Flash, I recommend
Foundation Flash 8 Video by Tom Green and Jordan Chilcott (friends of ED, 2006). I strongly encourage
you to also research online so your final product is as good as possible.
Final Cut Pro basics
I am a huge fan of Final Cut Pro, and I use it as much as possible to edit my digital video projects. It’s a typical Apple application: it’s easy to use, works well, and looks great doing it. I have also extensively used Adobe Premiere to edit video on a PC, and the good news is that Adobe Premiere now looks and behaves a lot like Final Cut Pro. Unfortunately, there are still hard-to-find presets that drive me crazy, but Premiere will do in a pinch. My point is that you can take much of the knowledge from this sec- tion and use it for both applications, but the following is done in Final Cut Pro.
Batch-capturing video
Once you have all of your footage and your ins and outs marked on your production log, it’s time to capture your footage so you can edit sequences or even key out the background. When you are log- ging and capturing your footage, it is important to note that the time code of the DV tape in your camera is the backbone of this operation. This impacts the logging and capturing process deeply. For instance, if you have 10 minutes of tape with recorded footage on it, and then for some reason you
zeroed out the tape before continuing with the remainder of recorded footage during your shooting,
Final Cut Pro will get confused when trying to find specific times before and after the point where the tape is zeroed out. To avoid this happening and having to relog your footage, you can take a couple of preemptive steps. First, you could record black on each DV tape before using it on your shooting assignments. This basically means recording dead space on the tape, typically done by letting the camera
A note on format and standards
Every video editing application was created for editing and exporting video format for TV and movies. And thus, the standard digital format for video has traditionally been NTSC and PAL. NTSC is the standard in the Americas and Japan; PAL is used in the EU and in Asia. These formats differ from web-standard formats in that they utilize rectan-