I just completed a web production class at UW-Stout. One of the projects was to build a narrative web site, which you can see here. One warning though, a modern browser with HTML5 capabilities must be used. Internet Explorer will NOT display the site correctly! Current versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari work fine with best results in the latter two. I decided to incorporate HTML5 video because I had been looking for an excuse to play with the code. I also decided to use Mozilla’s Popocorn JS JavaScript library to add interactivity between the video and the page. My original ambitions were much greater for this project, but I still like how it turned out. There are a lot of things that could be improved, but it was a good learning experience. The entire video was shot in under an hour, and edited almost as quickly. Luckily, I was not being graded on my video production skills.

I will be posting some more video work on the blog very soon. I am in the process of finishing up a commercial campaign project for a video production class. Shooting for the project was a lot of fun. I got to use a new piece of equipment that the university recently purchased, a three foot slider. It looks similar to this one on Amazon.com. In my opinion putting a HDSLR on a slider is a recipe for beautiful footage. I’m looking forward to the post-production.

A slider similar to the one I was using.

Last week I finished a research paper on HTML5, and the transition away from plugins for Web video. The e-book Dive Into HTML5 proved to be an extremely valuable resource. It covers everything from browser support for the HTML5 video tag, to supported codecs, and falling back on Flash in older browsers.

The research led me to take serious notice of some other emerging Web multimedia tools. As momentum builds for using plugin-free designs in favor of Flash, new software is being developed for those of us who do not have a coding background. Adobe is in the early development stages of an application called Edge that uses HTML5 and JavaScript for animation and interaction design. The development team has made a preview version available for download. So far it looks pretty familiar if you have ever used After Effects. That means it will be easier to learn, which is really exciting. Sencha has a product called Animator that uses CSS for animation in WebKit browsers. While I haven’t had an opportunity to try it yet, I did download it for free from Sencha.com. The last tool I wanted to mention is Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker. This application is being developed to make Mozilla’s PopcornJS JavaScript library more accessible to people who don’t know JavaScript. It’s still in the very early development stages, and my first attempt to use it was a complete failure. I suspect that was more my fault than the software though, so I will try again at some point. For now, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.