TechMedia

A recent large fire at the Yellowknife landfill had the city all a twitter with advice (“keep the windows closed”) and Twitpics of the huge cloud of black smoke that could be seen across the city, such as this series posted by Val Pond.

There was plenty of information on Twitter, but the city was silent.
There has been talk in council of using Twitter (for a full list of councillor social media links, check out Kyle’s listing.) I think that’s a good start, and keeping its website up-to-date would be another avenue.

Nanaimo's website features emergency warning registration form

For instance, the city of Nanaimo website features a prominent Emergency Notification link on its homepage. You register with a form and can receive emergency notifications via telephone or email. The phone/email you receive will detail the nature of the situation and give instructions on what to do.

This is a great idea, I think Yellowknife should adopt it. How about you?

As a still photographer who developed an interest in video later on, I appreciate both mediums. So after NNSL staffers Mike W. Bryant and Cameron Ginn grabbed great shots/video of the recent fire at the Yellowknife dump, I was excited about the opportunity to combine the two.

But how?

I mulled over which software to use for a long time … InDesign? It has some fun interactivity (for instance, you can make navigation buttons and embed video), but it wasn’t designed for motion graphics.

Moving on to Flash. But how to combine the photos and video? I tried using the timeline, but when I selected Import Video>Embed FLV in SWF and Play in the Timeline, it wouldn’t accept the F4V format (and I thought they were interchangeable).

I did attempt to find Action Script code to help, but it wasn’t free. Jquery makes great slideshows, but couldn’t think of a method to combine that with the video. Final Cut Pro was a possibility, but I am not fond of its poky effects tab.

So by process of elimination, I used After Effects. I love its easy-to-keyframe timeline, and found it a great tool for this project.

What software would you have used for to combine photos and video into a motion piece?

I love how BooneOakley.com used YouTube videos – linked together through annotations – as its website.

It is fun, simple and perfectly gets the message across. The site uses a URL redirect into YouTube and all navigation is done within YouTube. Even the ‘contact’ option uses YouTube mail.

YouTube gives several interactive options.

(Thanks Adobe Edge and its Edge of Flash article for tipping me off to this site.)