Embedding HD video: YouTube vs. Vimeo

6 July, 2009
the web
3 Comments

In which I provide a link that compares HD video web page embedding options.

The design of this blog means I can’t show how large HD video embeds can be on web pages you control can be. This (non-designed*) page on my site compares size and quality between YouTube and Vimeo HD video.

The maximum embed size for YouTube is 853 by 480 and the service is free. If you pay $60 for the Vimeo ‘Plus’ service, you get 25,000 HD embedded plays at 1280 by 720.

a_yard

A still from the HD video embedded on my site using both YouTube and Vimeo.

*I still avoid any HTML features more modern than tables

Six free Final Cut plugins: Transitions with curve controls

25 June, 2009
final cut pro
7 Comments

In which I provide six Final Cut plugins that provide more controls for video transitions.

If you want more control over how transitions start and finish, try these six transitions. Depending on the nature of the effect, you might want transitions to ease in and ease out. In other cases, you might want the effect to start quickly and finish slowly.

Here’s what they look like:

Cross Dissolve + curve
curves_Cross_Dissolve
The graph shows the visibility of the outgoing clip. On the left, it starts at 100%, it initially reduces in visibility quite slowly. The curve is at its steepest halfway through the transition – the visibility is changing the most quickly at this point. The curve is shallower towards the right. That is when the visibility is changing more slowly as it approaches 0.

The curve controls look like this:
curves_controls_1

To display the graph, choose ‘Curve’ from the View pop-up. To change the shape of the curve, click the ‘+’ next to the point you want to change, then drag in the Canvas.

For example, these settings:
curves_controls_2
…produce this graph. The dissolve will happen quickly initially, then slow down:
curves_Cross_Dissolve_2

If the ‘Green’ point (the control for the angle at which the curve approaches the end of the transition) is changed, the transition will start quickly, continue slowly and finish quickly:
curves_Cross_Dissolve_3

Cross Zoom + curve
curves_cross_zoom

This version of the built-in transition ‘Cross Zoom’ adds controls so you can choose which parts of the incoming and outgoing clips are zoomed into and out of:

curves_Cross_Zoom_controls

Which produces results like this:

Spinback3D + curve
curves_spinback3D

There is also an extra control to choose a custom background colour for the background of the transition.

Spin3D + curve
curves_spin3D

Swing + curve
curves_Swing

Zoom + curve
curves_Zoom

Download Alex4D Transitions with curves
To use this plugin, download the ZIP document, copy the ‘Alex4D_transitions_+_curves’ folder to

Your Startup HD/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins

(Your Startup HD/Users/your name/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Express Support/Plugins for Final Cut Express users)

All the transitions except ‘Cross Dissolve + curve’ will appear in the ‘3D Simulation’ transition category. ‘Cross Dissolve + curve’ will appear in the ‘Dissolve’ transition category.

Visit my Final Cut home for more plugins and tips
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FCP users: “Doesn’t Apple want our money?”

23 June, 2009
editing, final cut pro, User interface
6 Comments

In which I show evidence that Apple hasn’t given up on Pro Apps, and suggest why they aren’t in any hurry to update them.

Given recent upgrades for other editing software, Final Cut users have been increasingly frustrated with a lack of news of updates from Apple.

Today’s announcement of a very minor update for Final Cut Pro (to version 6.0.6) will be the main topic of conversation on the web and user group meetings in the weeks to come (such as the London SuperMeet on Thursday).

Some are saying that Apple have given up on editing software, and want to spend more time being a consumer products company.

I think that is unlikely. It is more likely that Apple isn’t releasing a new version until it is ready. As they don’t consider any other editing software as competition, they are letting technology trump marketing this time around.

In the 90s I used to beta test Director for Macromedia. It was long enough ago that we would get a care package every fortnight with 15-20 floppy discs. These would unstuff to be a new version of ‘Spike’ or whatever the codename was for the beta of Director 4, 5 or 6 we were testing. Every time we thought the programming team had only a couple of months left to squash the bugs we’d pointed out (as opposed to needing to sort so much that they’d never get it done), they’d send us a letter saying “Thanks for your help, we release in three weeks; please find a T-shirt enclosed.”

Macromedia needed to release at the next Macworld, or NAB or Comdex or whatever. The bugs were going to be fixed in version X.0.1 or 0.2.

But what is the evidence that Apple is still invested in Pro Apps such as Final Cut?

Apple is still looking for people to shape the future of Pro Apps

If you go to jobs.apple.com and search using ‘Pro Apps’ as the keyword, you get four listings:

Software Development Engineer Posted 9 Jun ’09
Sr Human Interface Designer, Pro Apps Posted 13 Jan ’09
Sr Visual Interface Designer, Pro Apps Posted 13 Jan ’09
Video Editor Product Designer, Pro Apps Posted 18 Nov ’08

These job descriptions tell a tale: The features and user interface of the next version of Final Cut were locked in November 2008. While the beta programme and bugfixing continue, it was time to hire an editor who knows about software development to join the team. He or she would be the person with real-world experience to communicate with the programmers the ways people in post production work up until now.

They didn’t find anyone who was quite right for that job, so they created two new job descriptions based on the previous one, but each looking for someone with more formal human interface design training [“Degree in interaction design, human factor and/or visual design (or equivalent).”]

Those jobs are still open, but on the 9th of this month, they posted the job description for someone to continue to develop the software behind the Pro Apps documentation system. A good time to hire someone new would be once a load of documentation for Final Cut Studio has changed.

Apple is working with external plugin makers on developer mailing lists

Although they can’t comment on unannounced products, if you follow the postings, they imply that version 6.0.6 will not be the last version of Final Cut.

For example, someone from the Apple team wrote this:

Sometime in the last year or two, I surveyed FxPlug developers and asked about which features they’d like to see, and one that came out near the top was “create windows in the UI.” If this was a feature you were looking for, can you remind me what it is that you need from it?

Although this might pique the interest of Final Cut users, I wouldn’t advise wading through the mailing list for nuggets for future features. You won’t find anything specific – certainly nothing committed to or worth basing your plans on.

Software development isn’t like pregnancy. It takes a different amount of people every time. This time it has taken a lot longer because Apple have had a ton of work to do. The current assumption is that Final Cut has had to be re-written from the ground up. Code written back in 97 and 98 has to be junked to get rid of the rats nest of additions and modifications over the years.

What about new features? I want them now!

I’ve already blogged about a great feature to add to Final Cut Studio which wouldn’t depend too much on existing or new code. You can bet that any feature that extends and re-enforces the Apple Pro hardware and software ecosystem will get priority.

The place to contribute to Final Cut Pro 7.5 and 8, therefore, is on user group sites with a lot of history. If you go the the LAFCPUG forum, they have a sticky topic that’s been around for years: ‘FCP Feature Requests’. If you think you have an original idea for a feature, read all the posts there first. If it hasn’t come up there, add a post on the end…

I don’t think Apple have given up on Pro Apps. The only problem they (and we) have is that they don’t consider Avid and Adobe proper competition any more. Premiere will forever be associated with enthusiastic amateurism, and Avid has only just passed Final Cut 6 feature-wise (in the eyes of FCP users) – which isn’t good enough for people to switch. If Apple felt more pressure from them, maybe we’d get new versions sooner. Competition is the only thing that will make Apple move more quickly.

Remember: Final Cut Studio is to high-end Macs what iTunes is to iPods/iPhones. Why would a few million dollars a year in software development not be worth all that hardware margin?

Inertia vs. Killer Apps

19 June, 2009
Apple, iPhone, Multitouch
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In which I consider whether platform defining software is more powerful than the inertia of a complex ecology of developers, software, hardware, support and marketplace.

The iPod system is an ecology that all competitors have found impossible to replicate and compete with. Better hardware features on mp3 players haven’t been enough, nor have different models for buying music, or involving social networks. These factors and more apply to iPhone. As well as the iPod factors, there is also the ease of application development, and a market for distributing applications.

The fact that the iPhone can be used to make and receive phone calls is just a way for Apple to make sure you always have their hand-held computer with you.

The inertia that competitors will have to fight against will be the comfort that people have with the user interface, the integration with their PCs and Macs, and the specific functionality of the apps that they’ve downloaded.

Over on geek.com Christain Zibreg says

“Imagine Apple losing the multi-touch patent infringement – the whole iPhone empire would be in serious jeopardized.”

It would mean problems PR-wise, and give competitors courage, but I don’t think the whole empire would be in jeopardy. I think that others will still find it difficult to create alternative ‘ecologies’ that match iPhone.

Apple only have to worry when middle-class conversations go something like this: “I hear that someone created an Android app in their spare time that made a million dollars in a few months!” “Wow, I like the idea of that! I need to come up with an app too. I could find someone to help me, upload it, and wait for the money to come rolling in!”

The only thing that Apple need to worry about is a new platform-saving app appearing on other phones as well as the iPhone. The Apple ][ had VisiCalc, MS-DOS had 1-2-3, Macintosh had PageMaker, Windows has Office and Exchange. This was the original definition of ‘Killer App’ – what will the next killer app be for hand-held computing.

What is inherent about BlackBerry, Android, WebOS or Windows Mobile that will make the killer app start on one of these platforms first? If their owners change these systems to attract that killer app first, Apple might get the competition we are all hoping for.

New Final Cut plugins next week

16 June, 2009
final cut pro
1 Comment

At least six free plugins coming in conjunction with the first Annual London SuperMeet for Final Cut Pro users.

They are mainly upgrades of existing transitions – featuring more control and extra features. I might produce a couple of useful generators too.

Come back soon!

Apple’s AppStore – international differences

10 April, 2009
Apple, iPhone
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In which I provide some differing iTunes AppStore charts from around the world, which might signal opportunities for iPhone/iPod Touch developers.

Apple is celebrating the impending billionth iPhone/iTouch application download from the Apple Store with a competition. It is a lottery based on all downloads from today until the billionth download. Each time you download an app (free or paid-for), you get an entry in the competition.

billion_apps

Once the billionth download happens, a person will be chosen at random to win an iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, a MacBook Pro and a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card.

On the competition page they list the all-time top 20 free and paid-for apps. If your country is open to the competition, your local iTunes Store lists the top apps for each store.

Developers might find some ideas in apps that are popular in other countries, by finding some apps in the top 20s downloaded elsewhere. I’ve shown apps that aren’t in the US/Canada top 20s in bold.

While researching this I found that Australia, New Zealand, Spain and France have exactly the same top 20s. Either those countries have exactly the same tastes, or they share statistics, or not all countries have their own charts and this is the chart for ‘elsewhere in the world’.

To see what’s sold in other countries, go to the iTunes Store home, and choose another country from the pop-up menu at the foot of the window. Somewhere on the home page, you’ll see a button showing the current application download count, click it for the top 20s.

store_us

US & Canada Top 20 All-Time Paid Apps
1. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
2. Koi Pond
3. Enigmo
4. Bejeweled 2
5. iBeer
6. Moto Chaser
7. Pocket Guitar
8. Flick Fishing
9. Tetris
10. Texas Hold’em
11. Super Monkey Ball
12. Pocket God
13. Cro-Mag Rally
14. Ocarina
15. Fieldrunners
16. iFart Mobile
17. Touchgrind
18. iHunt
19. iShoot
20. Monopoly

US & Canada Top 20 All-Time Free Apps
1. Facebook
2. Google Earth
3. Pandora Radio
4. Tap Tap Revenge
5. Shazam
6. PAC-MAN Lite
7. Backgrounds
8. Touch Hockey
9. Labyrinth Lite Edition
10. Flashlight
11. Urbanspoon
12. Movies
13. iBowl
14. Lightsaber Unleashed
15. SOl Free Solitaire
16. MySpace Mobile
17. Virtual Zippo Lighter
18. The Weather Channel
19. BubbleWrap
20. Remote

store_uk

UK Top 20 Paid Apps
UK (US & Canada)
1. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D (1)
2. Moto Chaser (6)
3. Virtual Pool (-)
4. Cro-Mag Rally (13)
5. Flick Fishing (8)
6. Koi Pond (2)
7. Monopoly (20)
8. Super Monkey Ball (11)
9. PocketGuitar (7)
10. iCopter (-)
11. Pocket God (12)
12. London Tube (-)
13. Bejeweled 2 (4)
14. Texas Hold’em (10)
15. Real Football 2009 (-)
16. Blocked (-)
17. Fieldrunners (15)
18. Tetris (9)
19. iShoot (19)
20. iFart Mobile (16)

UK Top 20 All-Time Free Apps
UK (US & Canada)
1. Facebook (1)
2. iPint (-)
3. Google Earth (2)
4. PAC-MAN Lite (5)
5. Touch Hockey: FS5 (8)
6. Labyrinth Lite Edition (9)
7. Lightsaber Unleashed (14)
8. Tap Tap Revenge (4)
9. Flashlight (10)
10. Shazam (5)
11. Backgrounds (7)
12. iBowl (13)
13. Crazy Penguin Catapult (-)
14. Remote (20)
15. BubbleWrap (19)
16. Audi A4 Driving Challenge (-)
17. Darts (-)
18. eBay Mobile (-)
19. Last.fm (-)
20. Movies (12)

store_aus

Australia/New Zealand/Spain/France Top 20 Paid Apps
Australia (US & Canada)
1. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D (1)
2. allRadio (-)
3. Texas Hold’em (10)
4. Ocarina (14)
5. iBeer (5)
6. Enigmo (3)
7. Koi Pond (2)
8. Pocket Guitar (7)
9. Super Monkey Ball (11)
10. Flick Fishing (8)
11. WifiTrak (-)
12. Brain Challenge (-)
13. Asphalt 4: Elite Racing (-)
14. Monopoly (20)
15. Cro-Mag Rally (13)
16. Real Football 2009 (-)
17. Moto Chaser (6)
18. Fieldrunners (15)
19. Face Melter (-)
20. Tiki Towers (-)

Australia/New Zealand/Spain/France Top 20 Free Apps
Australia (US & Canada)
1. Facebook (1)
2. Labyrinth Lite Edition (9)
3. Touch Hockey: FS5 (8)
4. Google Earth (2)
5. Shazam (5)
6. Flashlight (10)
7. PAC-MAN Lite (5)
8. Remote (20)
9. iBowl (13)
10. Tap Tap Revenge (4)
11. Free Translator (-)
12. Crazy Penguin Catapult (-)
13. Lightsaber Unleashed (14)
4. Backgrounds (7)
15. Audi A4 Driving Challenge (-)
16. Fastlane Street Racing (-)
17. iHandy Level Free (-)
18. AroundMe (-)
19. fring (-)
20. Sudoku (-)

Free Final Cut plugin: Lower Third

30 March, 2009
final cut pro
85 Comments

In which I provide a free Final Cut plugin that provides more typeface, position and design options for adding text to productions.

This plugin gives you an extra style to use in lower thirds plus a few more extra features.

This how it looks with default settings:

lower-third

Here is what the controls look like. As you can see from the text entry boxes, you can have more than one line of text in each section. You can also add a graduated fill behind the text.

lower-third-ui-2

If you change some settings, the generator can look like this:

lower-third-options

Download Alex4D Lower Third
To use this plugin, download the ZIP document, copy the ‘Lower 3rd – Alex4D.fcfcc’ file to

Your Startup HD/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins

(Your Startup HD/Users/your name/Library/Application Support/Final Cut Express Support/Plugins for Final Cut Express users)

‘Lower 3rd – Alex4D’ will appear in the ‘Text’ generator category.

Visit my Final Cut home for more plugins and tips
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Final Cut tip: Green night vision

24 March, 2009
final cut pro
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In which I show how to use a combination of three of Final Cut’s filters to produce a green-tinged night-vision effect.

Neil writes in:

Do you know a quick and easy way to apply a night vision look to something shot during the day? I am trying to imitate some green night vision material that was shot with an infra red light off the camera.

Take your original clip:
quick-green-night-vision-1

Use the Channel Swap filter to make it display only the red channel:
quick-green-night-vision-2

Add the Bloom filter (from the Glow section):
quick-green-night-vision-3

And shift the colour to green and reduce the contrast using the Color Corrector 3-way filter:
quick-green-night-vision-4

The settings for the filters depends on your source footage. Spend most of your time changing the Brightness and Threshold of the Bloom filter. Then reduce the contrast using the Level control for Blacks, Midrange and Highlight.

Here are the settings I used for the example above:
green-night-vision-stack

Visit my Final Cut home for more plugins and tips
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‘As live’ comments while streaming

24 March, 2009
media, social networking, User interface
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In which I suggest that timestamps of live comments during TV shows could be used to replay them when you catch up with a live event

A few days ago I started to be wary reading blog posts and tweets. I’ve been following the modern version of Battlestar Galactica. I may have not seen every episode, but I’ve enjoyed the most recent series. My social media reticence has been down to the fact that the concluding episode was shown in the US a few days ago. That episode will be on TV tonight. I’m looking forward to seeing it, but I’m off to the London Bloggers Meetup, so I’ll be playing it back later.

In the past I’ve noticed that big fans of some TV shows like to message others while the show is on air. They post messages to forums, tweet, add comments to blog posts in real time – as the episode unfolds.

I’m not that much of a fan to have my eye on a computer screen while watching a great story, but I sometimes like to check out what people wrote once the show is over.

That prompted me to come up with an idea – it might be interesting to be able to follow people’s comments (audio as well as text) if they were optionally integrated into the stream – synced so that they were available at the time they were originally posted.

It would be like having informational subtitles or commentary tracks to a film or TV show – but they could be created by anyone anywhere. If I was selling content, I would provide an option to subscribe to alternate streams (of any content).

This follows on from my post on using a simple tag to extend HTML to allow overlays on everything.

Create a live chatroom with a single click at TinyChat.

Almost time for the Knowledge Navigator

23 March, 2009
Multitouch, User interface
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In which I remind you of Apple’s concept videos from the 80s and suggest it is time for a new one.

In 1987 and 1988 Apple were still facing an uphill battle with businesses when it came to convincing them that graphical user interfaces were better than MS-DOS command-line interfaces. Part of their campaign to show that the Mac way of doing things was the start of the future of computing was to create speculative videos of how computers might evolve in ensuing years.

The Knowledge Navigator video was set in the far off year of 2010. In 1987 John Sculley suggested that if Apple defined an idea future for the Mac, it would be more likely for that future to happen. Commentators have theorised that Moore’s Law, the prediction for the rate of improvement of the amount of computer power at a given price, has galvanized technologists to do all they can to do better than predicted.

The year isn’t stated in the video, but the figures presented only run up to 2009, so I’m guessing this is set in 2010.

It is interesting to see how close we are to this kind of interaction with our technology. In 2003 Jon Udell revisited this video and commented

Presence, attention management, and multimodal communication are woven into the piece in ways that we can clearly imagine if not yet achieve. “Contact Jill,” says Prof. Bradford at one point. Moments later the computer announces that Jill is available, and brings her onscreen. While they collaboratively create some data visualizations, other calls are held in the background and then announced when the call ends. I feel as if we ought to be further down this road than we are. A universal canvas on which we can blend data from different sources is going to require clever data preparation and serious transformation magic.

Last week Stephen Wolfram announced that his next project is an online system that can take your natural language questions and compute answers for you. That reminded me of Apple’s Knowledge Navigator. I imagine it will be able to answer questions like:

“Is there a link between the size of the Sahara and deforestation on the Amazon rainforest?” “What if we bring down the logging rate to 100,000 acres a year?”

It’ll be a while until we have foldable screens, but it seems that if WolframAlpha can be made to work, we might be closer to the Knowledge Navigator, or what computers should be doing for us anyway.

In 1988 Apple made another video, one that is less famous, but much more accurate in its predictions. Which is another way of saying, if we were to make a video today about 2020, this is what we’d be predicting right now.

A OK quality video can be found at http://www.mprove.de/uni/asi/futureshock.html

…or you can stay here and watch it encoded for YouTube:

You’ll see that some of the ideas are still be speculated today.

Microsoft especially likes the idea of real objects interacting with technology (as used in their Surface product). Microsoft has a video set 10 years in the future. It starts off with some impossible to implement stuff in a classroom, but continues with some good ideas:

(about that classroom, it’s all very well having augmented reality ideas (overlaying graphics onto the real world), but they only can work when there’s an audience of one – the display needs to take account of the position of the viewers eyes to line up the graphics in the right place. The kind of classroom telepresence shown at the start of the video would only work for one kid in each classroom at a time. For everyone else, the display would look odd and distorted. For more on this, see an older blog post.)

A much more realistic and specific Microsoft video was made in 2004, and set in 2010. You’ll see that their estimate of what we’ll be able to to in 20 months time:

On the subject of speculative videos, maybe we should start thinking of one for the creative industries. If collaboration is what makes TV and movies so satisfying, how will technology support media production in 2020? Or is the ultimate aim for 3D movies to spring out of people’s heads fully formed?