Task 1 - Video for Interactive Media: What You Need to Know

Video for Interactive Media: What You Need to Know

(Understanding Principles of Digital Video Technology in Interactive Media)

With the development of technology allowing for digital video to be used by anyone with access to the web, a mobile phone/tablet/computer or with a disk (CD/DVD/Bluray) and video is no longer limited to just TV and cinema. This means that they can be used in a variety of different ways and accessed across a variety of different platforms. Technology has also developed in a way that has allowed for videos to be sent through emails, embedded on web pages and put onto DVDs/CDs to be sold.

Applications

Videos for interactive media can now be accessed across a plethora of different platforms to allow for a flexible experience for the user. One use for interactive media is in the form of short films. The idea of the short films is to provide a short piece of entertainment so the best quality to export this in would H.264 as it would then be able to be played on multiples different devices and platforms. Interactive media might also be used as part of promotional material or film trailers. These will also need to be played on multiple different devices and platforms so H.264 would be best to maintain quality. The home of film trailers and promotional material for films is the website IMDb where you will find clearly labelled trailers for upcoming films to give you a sense of what the film is about.

Another use of interactive media is for user-generated content such as videos that anyone can make and upload to the streaming platforms YouTube or Vimeo. These platforms are used as massive entertainment platforms ranging from a home for music videos to a home for cooking tutorial videos or videos of dogs riding on skateboards. YouTube requires users to upload in a certain file format, size and resolution. The formats are: .MOV .MPEG4 .AVI .WMV .MPEGPS WebM. The resolutions range from 240p up to 4k so the resolutions are: 426x240, 640x360, 854x480, 1280x720, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160. YouTube also allows up to 128GB file sizes to uploaded, but if it is larger than 128GB then it will be compressed using the H.264 codec. Interactive media might also be used as a part of advertising, when a company is trying to promote a product or service, they might include short videos or adverts on sites that will be in the eyesight of the viewer. For example, YouTube now allows for advertisers to slot their adverts in before a YouTube videos starts (provided the video is monetised). Interactive media can also be used for virtual reality tours available online for people to get 360 degree views of rooms for hotels or a new house they plan to buy. This allows for people to view locations and get an idea of decoration and size before visiting them to help save time travelling between places. Interactive media is also used for video games, which can now be found on almost any smartphone or can be bought online to play on consoles or computers.

The platforms that open up these uses of interactive media range from the worldwide web, email attachments, kiosks, DVDs, CDs, presentations and mobile devices. Ideally to maintain a larger coverage, you want your media to be available on all platforms, or at least the most common ones: on DVDs, on the web and on mobile devices. With almost all types of interactive media (YouTube videos, films, trailers, music videos etc) being easily accessible on the internet now, it is reducing the need for DVDs, presentations and kiosks to offer access to media because the internet is much more convenient for most people.

Technology

Digital video capture: Digital video capture is done on a digital camera rather than a camera that uses an analogue format such as film reel or tapes. These videos are usually capture onto an SD card and are able to be immediately read by a computer using an SD card reader. Using digital video capture greatly speeds up the process of capturing and logging footage due to it being readily available on a computer as opposed to recording footage from a tape onto a computer.

Compression: Compressing files allows you to make the file size smaller and therefore allows it to take up less space on your hard drive. Smaller files make for faster file transfers (EG faster uploading onto a streaming website such as YouTube) so it is usually recommended that you compress media files before sharing/uploading them. There are two types of compression: lossy compression and lossless compression. Lossy compression is generally considered the worse type as it can result in a loss of quality. It works by removing the useless/unnecessary parts of the file but sacrifices the quality of the original image/video. Most would prefer to use a lossless compression as this works by rebuilding the original file and turning it into a smaller version, without any loss of quality.

Digital file formats and media players: With there being so many different video file formats, it is hard to say which one best suits the situation. However there are some that are most common and can suit multiple uses. .WMV .AVI .MP4 and .MOV are the most popular formats for video as they can be played a large number of media players. .WMV (Windows Media Video) files are usually used for windows computers and the main use of the video format was for ease of streaming/sharing as the files are so small in size. This files also usually run naturally off of Windows Media Player. This does mean they have forfeited quality for a much smaller file size. .MOV is more of an apple video format, as it is suited best to Quicktime Player. These files are usually very high quality but also quite large file sizes, meaning they would benefit from compression. The best media player for covering all sorts of file, audio and picture formats in my experience is VLC Media Player. This media player allows for you to play any (that I know of) video file type without any issues, and also offers an inbuilt file converter to allow you to change a video from .MOV to .MP4 for example.

Streaming methods: Streaming has become such an important part of consuming media these days that it is imperative that the media is at the best quality, whilst also being a smaller file to prevent draining mobile data or speeding up streaming speeds. The largest streaming company in the world is a media website called Netflix. Started as a company that used to mail copies of the film/TV show DVDs to the customer, who would then watch them and promptly return them within a time limit to avoid a charge, they then developed into an incredibly successful media streaming site with a large library of current shows and films. It is likely that streaming sites such as Netflix, BBC iPlayer, ITV Catchup etc all use a lossless form of compression to maintain the quality of the original videos, and maximise user experience/enjoyment.

Aspect ratio: The aspect ratio of a video refers to the ratio of the width and height of the video. The most popular aspect ratio nowadays being 16:9 meaning that the video’s width can be divided into 16 equal parts and the height can be divided into 9 equal parts. 4:3 was the standard aspect ratio when TVs were invented, as it made a near enough square image. 16:9 is best used on TVs at that is the size that the screens these days usually come in. However with recent developments in screen quality technology, TVs now allow for up to 8k resolutions, and therefore run through different aspect ratios. 21:9 is the cinema standard aspect ratio, as it makes for a wide image, meaning it would leave black bars above and below on a screen not designed for this resolution.

DRM: DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and it concerns the legal rights and ownership over a piece of interactive media. Those who own the rights to a particular piece of media are usually copyright holding companies that aim to control the use of the media outside of their restrictions. Often DRM is used to prevent piracy, as it prevents users from copying and pasting a version of the original file and sharing it to friends. DRM works by scrambling the file’s data so it is completely unreadable by any computer that doesn’t have the key to unlock/decode it.