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

Unit 62 : Task 1 : Digital Video Production for Interactive Media

Introduction:

Digital Video Production is creating a video product on different king of digital platforms. Before late 2012 the world was watching their television feeds off of Analog, after the late 2012 the United Kingdom switched over fully to using Digital signal. The reason that there was a switch from Analog to Digital was because Analog was a much weaker signal and wasn't as good of a quality as Digital signal was, thus showing films and television programs in a much better definition and quality. Below is a image that shows what the two types of signals are portrayed and their differences. 

Over the long period of time we have had film and television there has been huge leaps and bounds in the development of the quality of the footage. The first ever video created back in 1888 by a man called "Eadwerad Muybridge" shows now how much the industry has grown and how the quality has become considerably better.

Designers and film makers are using digital formats more and more nowadays because of the following:

• Short Films
• Promotional Material
• Film Trailers
• User Generated Content
• Advertising
• Virtual Reality Tours
• Games
• E-Learning Platforms

When films where first featured in the United Kingdom it was extremely expensive to be able to actually go and watch them in the cinemas. Only people that had a lot of money where able to go and watch films, compared to today it is very different. Almost everyone in the United Kingdom owns a dvd player of some sort and owns various films or box sets of television programs. The change in prices for films comes from the development of the industry and the ways in which the films are platformed to be distributed to our homes.

Short Film:

In our modern and rapidly developing world, we don't actually have to leave our house anymore to be able to have access to video content, if you have access to the internet then you are able to stream videos and movies of websites like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, NowTv etc. However, if you don't have access to the internet but do to a DVD player or even a Blue-Ray player then you can watch films and television programs at your leisure. Another platform that you can watch all of these videos on are your mobile phone, this opens up so much more of what you can do because you can watch videos on the go. You can buy films off of the mobile phones store, or even download streaming apps like YouTube and watch videos off of them. 

A few years ago if you where to go to the cinema to watch a film, you would expect to find a couple of short films that would be created to promote a film. Unfortuntely, short films aren't as common anymore because of the lack in demand by the public. Although short films aren't being as largely produced anymore, you can still find many of them online on websites like YouTube where random people have uploaded them for other people to be able to enjoy. Here is an example of a short film that people may have seen when visiting the cinema. It is a short film for the Pixar animation film of Lifted. 

In more recent years, short films have made a slight come back on social media platforms like Facebook where young aspiring directors can create these short 5 minute films for their portfolios. They can also be found again on places like YouTube. Another reason people may create short films because they are cheap and fun to create. Here is an example of a short film created that was on YouTube. 

Film Trailers:

A really good place for young aspiring film directors who have created a film trailer and want to show it off to the world is by posting it onto YouTube for everyone in the world to see. YouTube is the number one video sharing site in the world and it grows to be better everyday. When a film director is creating a video and wants to put it on YouTube they will need to be cautious of the file format they export their video in. This is important because YouTube will accept the majority of the file formats available but wont convert them into a stream-able format. Therefore if you where to upload your video in a high quality then the person on the other end trying to stream the video would be streaming in that high quality. If the person who is streaming has bad internet like many people do then they will struggle to be able to watch the video without buffering. The reason that film companies create trailers for their films is for advertisement for their upcoming films. It is a really good way to promote and show off what the content of the film may be, however some trailers shown make the mistake of showing way to much of the content of the film and could be taken as a short film. A good example of this would be Taken 3's trailer.

Streaming Methods:

There are various types of methods of streaming, they can be delivered in different elements like video, audio, or information. They use a very basic HTTP and HTML protocol, examples of different streaming methods are listed below:

Streaming - 

The definition "Streaming" is when the button that plays the video is clicked the video will start to play instantly. This happens by the data rate from the encoded file from the video is smaller than the streamers bandwidth capacity. If it wasn't this way than the streamer would constantly have a buffering video and would be unwatchable. Unlike progressive downloading the video that is being streamed it downloads but wont stay on the computers hard drive and unnecessarily clog it up. Buffering also happens if the streamers home internet isn't very good and struggles to keep up with downloading the video, this would cause the video to be unwatchable because of the infamous buffering symbol.

Progressive Downloading - 

HTTP web servers are what would deliver a progressive download instead of streaming from an online server. This means that the video would be downloaded and stored on the computers hard drive so that the video can be played. 

Compression:

Lossless and Lossy compression are two terms to describe what happens when someone uncompresses a file, and if the all the original data can be recovered to its original state after said compress.

Lossless Compression - 

Lossless compression is when every piece of the data remains after the uncompression has happened, all the information would be completely restored. This is the technique of choice for many because if you were working with spreadsheets with lots of important numbers you wouldn't want some of those numbers going away and losing what you had worked on.

Lossy Compression - 

Lossy compression is where the file permanently deletes certain pieces of information in the file, that could be redundant information. Once the file gets uncompressed, only certain bits of the original file is restored. This technique would be used for videos and sound because the small amount of information loss would be hard for people to hear or see.