MAX Unawards: Behind the scenes (part 1)
I love playing around with video… and I love playing around with Flash. When you combine the two you can create some really cool stuff. That was my goal when I first started working on the MAX Unawards application. This is the first in a series of blog posts in which I want to give you a bit of insight into how it was created. The challenge was to create something out of nothing–and you can take that literally. As with last year’s widget, I needed (but also wanted) to create the application with an almost nonexistent budget in the shortest possible time with the smallest possible team. Even though some of my experiences are pretty common I hope this series gives you some ideas on how you can save money/time and how Adobe’s tools and the Flash Platform can help you with that.
Green key
Soon after the storyboard for the application was approved I started looking for a green key studio. It is very important to work in a well lit and professional studio if you want to start working with green key footage. A well-lit studio will save you a lot of time and headaches when you start keying your video footage in After Effects. There are plenty of small studio facilities with green key sets around. We shot the footage for the MAX Unawards application in Hilversum in The Netherlands. Hilversum is the heart of the Dutch TV industry, so there is a lot of affordable studio space available.
We shot the footage on a Panasonic P2 in the highest possible quality. By choosing the highest quality and resolution I could play around with the framing a little bit later in post production. We also recorded most shots in both close and wide angle. The P2 saves its files on a memory card and that again saves a lot of time. Instead of having to capture the footage from tape, I could just copy the files from the memory card. The P2 uses its own proprietary format but Premiere Pro CS5 has no problem dealing with these files. It can even play them without having to render them, which is again a huge time-saver (starting to see the pattern here?). After adding all the P2 files to the Premiere project I started skimming through them looking for the best takes. This may sound strange but if you have a project on a budget and time limit, make sure you record as much as you can in your one studio day (or half-day in this case). It’s better to have too much footage than to later realize that you forgot something and that there is no time or budget left to go back to the studio! It’s also a good idea to be well prepared when you go to the studio. The storyboard really helped a lot and I also had a clear idea of what the host was supposed to do and say. The actor, Wim (who is actually a Flash developer and not an actor), added his own flavor to it, which I think worked out nicely for this video/application.
Because of the uniform lighting in the green key studio, keying was pretty straightforward. I keyed one segment in After Effects using the built-in Key Light plugin. Thanks to the uniform lighting I could then just copy the Key Light settings onto the other video segments and with just a few tweaks I was able to key all the footage in record time. In After Effects I also resized the footage to the correct size and used QuickTime’s Animation codec to export it to the QuickTime format. The Animation codec in QuickTime makes the files more manageable while keeping the quality and the alpha channel. Back in Premiere, I stitched all the segments together to create the main video. There are actually two different videos. The host’s dialog changes depending on whether you are male or female.
In the next post (on Monday), I’ll explain how the personalized video segments were done and how I added/matched them to the video track. While you wait for that go and give yourself a MAX Unaward!
CES summary: E-Readers, 3D TV and internet-connected TVs
E-Readers, 3D TV and internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. That pretty much sums up CES 2010.
E-Readers
I have a Kindle and I absolutely love it. But I love it because it is so easy to use and even easier to buy books straight from the device. The same goes for the Nook, which directly taps in to the Barnes & Noble store. At CES, there were dozens of companies introducing their E-Reader… But I wonder if they can survive. None of them are connected to a certain store, which is both positive and negative. Like I said, I really like the fact that my Kindle makes it so easy to buy new books straight from the device. I don’t have to be near a computer to do so. All these other E-Readers don’t have that advantage.
The Entourage Edge E-Reader did jump out though. With its two screens (one e-ink and one color LCD) it definitely stands out.
3D TV
This was all over the place… All the big manufacturers were showing their versions of 3D TVs both with and without the awkward glasses. The ones I saw that didn’t need glasses failed to impress me though. I found it very hard to find the sweet spot to get the best picture and it wasn’t anywhere near the picture you get with the glasses. Panasonic showed a 3D version of the Avatar trailer on one of their new TVs. While you did need to put on the 3D glasses, the image quality was really amazing. I can see this technology working for movies but I’m not sure about “regular” TV shows and I’m not even sure this would work with sports. DirecTV is teaming up with Panasonic to offer a 24/7 3D pay per view channel focused on movies, documentaries, music and sports.
Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes
These were everywhere… And I can really see this working. I wouldn’t mind having a news widget on my TV that pops up whenever there is breaking news. Or how about a Twitter widget that shows relevant Tweets of whatever you are watching? How about a weather widget that pops up when you switch on your TV/set-top box? Or maybe even live stock quotes while watching your favorite TV shows? Or how about making it even easier to watch YouTube or Hulu videos on your TV? This is exactly what interactive TV platforms have been promising for years. Sadly, the interactive TV platforms have failed to bring this type of interactivity and/or information to my TV. I believe this is partly due to the fact that these platforms are closed. With Internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players, you as a developer would be able to build your own widgets or applications and distribute them via the application stores or catalogs available on those devices. By allowing you to build those applications with web technology like HTML, JavaScript and yes even Flash, it’s a lot easier to build these types of apps and we may finally see interactive TV taking off!
Personal highlights
Boxee Box
I’ve been a user and fan of Boxee for quite some time and was really excited to see the Boxee Box in real life. It’s amazingly small and the new interface has made a giant leap forward. I’ve used a DLink MediaLounge and Apple TV before but they don’t even come close to what Boxee has to offer. The hardware specs look amazing and it even runs Flash Player 10.1 with hardware acceleration so it has no problem playing HD Flash Video. I’m not sure about the Boxee Box form factor though. While it may look great as a standalone device, it certainly would not do well in a rack setup.
Sony Dash
The Sony Dash is basically a Sony branded Chumby. The screen is a lot bigger though and it certainly is more polished than the Chumby but the idea is exactly the same. It even runs all the Chumby apps. I’d love to see this running Flash Player 10.1 in the future though.
Intel Infoscape HD wall
This was very impressive. These 2 meter tall multi-touch high resolution screens were displaying hundreds of Tweets, photos and other information with 3D graphics. According to Engadget, “The entire installation was powered by a single Core i7-based machine with Intel’s own graphics, and it was seen rendering 576 links of live information.”
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