Archive for May, 2008
A New Dimension - Exploring Stereoscopic Imagery for the Web
By Mike Kirsch, Director of DotLot
Trends can be dangerous. The cooler and more obscure a new concept is, the more dangerous it can become. A trend gave us mullets in the 80s. A trend brought us endless examples of bad morphing in the post-T2 world. Trends often cause something that is new and interesting to become tired and old very quickly. 3D film and video is something that has gone in and out of vogue a lot over the years, but it is making a resurgence once again. It can be dangerous to get too excited about kitschy new technologies, because by so doing we risk creating content that becomes comically irrelevant before it even launches. With the knowledge of this danger firmly in mind, it is with curiosity and caution that stereoscopic imagery for the web is worth a look.
As digital cinema proliferates, the production of stereoscopic 3D movies is increasing. Recent releases such as U2 3D and Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert have utilized refined technologies and polarized glasses to make stereoscopic imagery much better as well as more accessible to a wider audience. From a digital creative agency standpoint, this means that 3D is starting to take on a wider presence with potential web clients.
Before we go any further, a definition is in order. “3D” can be a misleading term, since it can refer to several types of images. 3D graphics and animations can be defined as any image that provides the illusion of depth through the use of shading and perspective. Stereoscopic images on the other hand provide a separate image for each eye. With the use of special glasses the brain can combine these images into one picture that has the illusion of multiple planes of depth. Images may appear to break through the screen or disappear into the background.
Maybe the most well known form of stereo viewing is anaglyph, which takes two images and colors them differently; the left eye image is red, the right eye image is blue or cyan. The audience uses red and blue glasses to view the image, which creates an illusion of depth. Anaglyph imagery is probably the most affordable solution where production for the web is concerned. Theoretically, a two camera rig with some special processing in post would allow for the production of stereoscopic video for the web.
The main drawback of anaglyph imagery is that they are composed of overlapping red and cyan images that look blurry if not viewed through special glasses. This means that only users with special anaglyph glasses can watch videos prepared using this process. From a user-end perspective, one solution to this would be to prepare a left or right eye only image with no color treatment for users without glasses. Another challenge is getting glasses into the hands of consumers. This might be achievable with larger clients through the use of direct mail or in-store campaigns, but would be a tough hurdle for many to overcome.
Another 3D process worth noting is Chromadepth, which uses prismatic glasses to separate colors into different planes according to the visible light spectrum. Through this process red will appear in front and blue will fall to the back. The benefit of the Chromadepth system is that images appear normal to the eye without glasses. Design and color palette are affected with this system, though, since images must be composed on dark blue or black backgrounds. This can be quite limiting, but offers an interesting alternative to the anaglyph method.
Creating images with planar depth would help bring a new set of tools to video creation for the online space. It is a concept fraught with problems, but worth exploring. Maybe this new trend of 3D movies will pass quickly and fade away. If the web has taught us anything, though, it’s that true acceptance of any new technology is determined by the web community as a whole and it is only those technologies that are never tried that are destined to fail.
If you have done any stereoscopic projects specifically for the online space, we’d love to hear about them. Please post a comment or send us an email. Over the next few months we’re planning to do some research and testing on this subject. We’d love to include you if you’re interested.
A Winning Combination
Great news from BuddyBlog, the official blog of The Buddy Group. It was announced last week that long-time DotLot and The Buddy Group collaborator Dave Gaw has won the MoveOn.org national contest. He made the best Obama spec political ad as voted by visitors to the MoveOn.org site.
Way to go, Dave!
Sending Up A Red Flag
How to Identify and Solve Web Video Production Problems Before They Occur
By Mike Kirsch, Director of DotLot, The Buddy Group
An important trait of any successful video producer is the ability to troubleshoot problems quickly and effectively. To the end client, efficiency and quality of final delivery is just as important as killer front-end creative. For the online space, “quality of delivery” expands to include visual quality of an online video, speed of download or buffer time and smoothness of playback. When problems arise, quick solutions win the day, but in many cases problems can be avoided altogether if they are anticipated before they occur. Recognizing certain “Red Flags” of web video production is the first step towards making sure they never cause problems at all.
Picking the right combination of settings to maximize the playability of a video means juggling a slew of settings while prepping that clip for final export. It’s no accident that the number of visitors to a site is referred to as “traffic”. The internet is not unlike a freeway. The speed at which a given piece of video will play is limited by the bandwidth of a server (the number of lanes) and the total number of current users (the number of cars on the road). There are other factors, too. “Bitrate” refers to the amount of data encoded in a video file for each second of runtime. Higher bitrates mean better image quality, but the higher the bitrate, the more data there is that must stream before the video can play. In the freeway analogy, this might correlate to the steepness of a hill. As hills get steeper (higher bitrate), it takes more power (bandwidth) to climb at a given speed. Without sufficient bandwidth, you’ll either need to reduce the bitrate of the video or risk sliding backwards down the hill, causing an accident, and wrecking your car (client relationship). Believe it or not there are even more factors than those mentioned above! Resolution, length, frame rate and even visual content all factor in, but the freeway analogy gets more complicated from here, so let’s just talk in terms of general considerations.
When planning a project that is going to involve video, the first thing that needs to be determined is the intended audience. Who is going to watch it? What type of connection are they expected to have? How many users will potentially be accessing the site at one time? Understanding the intended use and distribution of a website and its videos will help dictate the parameters that should be used to prepare the final files. Someone with experience producing and encoding videos for the web should always be consulted when planning a video project, but the following list can serve as some basic Red Flags to help identify issues that will require further investigation.
- Bitrates over 400kbps
- Some videos look fine at bitrates of 400 or less. In instances where there are a lot of smaller textual elements or a lot of quick motion, higher bitrates may be necessary in order to achieve acceptable visual quality. Higher bitrate, though, means longer download times and more bandwidth costs.
- Frame Rates above 15fps
- Video on television typically plays at either 24 or 30 fps (frames per second). For the web, the standard is to cut the native frame rate in half, which reduces file size and bandwidth needs. Tests have shown that higher frame rates place more load on a user’s CPU than higher bitrates, which means that from a user-end perspective, lower frame rates will increase performance dramatically. The drawback is that video looks choppier as frame rate is reduced. In videos with a lot of fast motion, pans or small details, this can lead to strobing and other issues. If a client requests video at 30fps, take note. This could cause a problem later.
- Resolution
- 320×240 used to be the industry standard for web video. As broadband connections get more common, the capability for producers to go live with larger videos increases. Be aware that larger videos mean longer load times and higher bandwidth needs. Always compare requested video resolution to the other involved factors to determine if a video will work at a given size.
- Running Time
- A 10 second video at 900kbps running a 30fps may not pose a huge problem. A 2 minute video with those same parameters will likely not play properly on most computers. If a client is planning a site with a series of videos longer than 15-20 seconds, then length becomes an issue that will have ramifications on video quality.
- Screen Content
- If the creative call for a lot of on-screen textual information, charts, closed captioning or other small details, then the videos will need to be played larger and at higher bitrates in order to be clear and legible.
- Transparency
- Interactive videos that are intended to be laid over other web content using alpha channels are always a cause for concern. Even though the alpha channel information is invisible, it still draws bandwidth and CPU power, not to mention the bandwidth required by all the stuff we see through the transparent layer.
V-CAST and Revver: Mobile Video Distribution
By Dylan Highsmith, DotLot Editor, The Buddy Group
Ok, so we know how best to optimize content for mobile video, but how does the average person get their content distributed? Currently, when you think of mobile video, one of the first names that comes to mind is Verizon’s V-Cast. V-CAST is a mobile network for Verizon Wireless phones that delivers media to its users for a subscription fee. V-CAST typically streams between 400-700kb/sec and streams can be saved to a phone or memory card.
Initially, when V-CAST was launched, it only offered video clips from major TV networks such as NBC, soon after smaller cable networks started to follow. What is most interesting, is the new addition of the V-CAST channel ‘Net’s Best’. This channel provides content from some of the top video hosting sites on the web such as YouTube, Maxim, Break.com and Revver.
YouTube’s deal with V-CAST is currently a limited-time only deal and the content consists of videos from YouTube’s Most Popular tab from its website, so to get on V-CAST through YouTube, your video would have to appear on the Most Popular tab of YouTubes site. Revver however, has a slightly different approach.
Revver, like YouTube is a video hosting site. What’s unique about Revver is that it shares all ad revenue roughly 50/50 with you – it’s content creators. With V-CAST, as mobile video doesn’t include advertising – content creaters share the subscription fees that Verizon pays for access to the content.
What is unique about Revver’s approach to V-CAST is that their content that appears on V-CAST is not simply taken from their most popular tab, but rather picked out of submissions.
In order to be considered for V-CAST, when uploading video to Revver you must opt to participate in the Revver Mobile Distribution opportunities. From there, fifty new videos are chosen by V-CAST each week. Revver’s website has a few basic guidelines of what kind of videos they are looking for:
Videos should be between 30 seconds and two minutes long.
- No pornography
- No copyrighted music (not even in the background)
- No depictions of crime or drugs
- No advertising or prominent brand logos
- Only videos in English can be accepted.
- Videos shot at a distance won’t be accepted — it needs to be decipherable on a small screen!
- Watch out for text — that screen makes small text really really tiny.
- Please avoid mentioning religious or political views.
One thing of particular note is that Revver and V-CAST don’t seem to like branding. They are looking for media that is purely entertainment. As the content on V-CAST is paid for by users through a subscription fee, this makes sense – and is an extra thing to keep in mind when creating content that you may want to be distributed through mobile media.
