Flash Catalyst, now in Beta at Adobe Labs, is described as:
A new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating expressive interfaces and interactive content without writing code. Create interactive portfolios, product guides, microsites, site navigation, interfaces for RIAs and more.
You can download Flash Catalyst beta 2 at the Lab’s microsite. The beta 2 release adds support for video, sound effects, motion easing, AIR and more.
Adobe Flash is a fantastic product for video and interactive design, but coding in Action Script can be daunting to the novice user. Catalyst aims to give non-coders the chance to work on some interactive design and prototyping.
This product will be used to create projects for the student design competition at the Reynolds Journalism Institute.
One of the things we’re trying to help them figure out is how to more cost-effectively make more immersive, more interactive content that people will want to pay for or sponsor.
It will be interesting to see what the final projects when they’re presented at Adobe in May.
This Yellowknife municipal election website I have been working on for the past couple of weeks required shooting/processing and uploading 19, 5-minute videos. Since Flash video is installed in all modern browsers and accessible to the largest audience (99 per cent), it is the way to go for online video.
Making the videos is easy in the Flash interface because you are guided through the process. Go to the menu: File>Import>Import Video. The first question is: where is your flv file located. If you want to test video locally, you can browse to the video on your desktop. But if you do this, you will need to go into the Component Inspector later before you publish your Flash movie, and change the file path to where the flv is on the server once you have uploaded your flv video.
Component inspector - change the file path to server here if you used local file.
So the best way is to avoid using local files and instead have your flv file already uploaded so you can point to the path.
Best to have FLV file online and select its path on import so you don't have to readjust later in Component Inspector.
You can still test locally by pressing Cmd, Return (Control>Test Movie), but once you publish you won’t be able to test the swf/html files created until they are uploaded.
This is the only tricky step. The rest is just picking options for your Flash skin: colour, under or over video, which controls do you want. Then test and publish (checking Publish Settings to make sure the file size will be OK for your audience.
Once you hit “Publish,” three files will be created: swf, skin swf, and the html code you will need to add to your page to run the Flash. Integrate the html into your page, and upload all three file (because the flv should already be up!)
That’s all there is to it!
Reading an article in this month’s Adobe Edge got me thinking again about augmented reality. I blogged about augmented reality back in March, so I was fascinated to see a tutorial on how to customize this technology yourself.
Augmented Business Card from jonas on Vimeo.
Reading this sparked me to research the topic further, which led me to an interesting site for the creation of augmented reality business cards
that can:
- let clients can easily get in touch with you via phone, SMS, E-mail or various social networks directly in the application
- let clients know what you are up to using various social networks (e.g. Twitter)
- show your portfolio
- let users navigate through images/video/3D models using gestures
The site says that a front-end tool for creating the presentation files is still under development, but the potential uses for this technology has got me thinking about how this might be applied to other areas.
For a more advanced tutorial on this augmented-reality technology, watch this 22-minute long Introduction to Augmented Reality video which lets you learn the basics of creating an AR application using the FLARToolKit.
But it comes with the warning: Not recommended for beginners.
Another jaw-dropping technology is Layar, the world’s first mobile augmented reality browser.
Can’t wait till they make a version for Yellowknife, but I guess it could be a while so I will try to be patient.
I have been working on a portfolio site for my URL www.ehargreaves.com, and have now uploaded a home page. I used the menu from my After Effects/DVD project, exported the clip as an FLV file, then imported it into Flash.
Once the FLV file was inside Flash I added invisible buttons over the DVD navigation. These buttons all link to external sites – my YouTube and Flickr streams, and this blog. The “_blank” tag on the button links cause other tabs to open (the intended effect), but this also causes the Flash to become deselected, so then the buttons don’t have their sound/roll over effects again unless the Flash document is clicked on 
That means I have to get going on the inside pages. Once I have these pages to link to, I will remove the “_blank” tags because my links will lead to internal sources.
My plan for these inside pages (which I will create in Dreamweaver) are to add:
- a video page, using my YouTube content as embeds
- a photojournalism portfolio in the big-photo style of Boston.com
- a new ‘About’ page, which will link back to this blog
WordPress site upgrades also needed
I will also continue to make changes to this site. A prominent RSS feed button would be nice (the text version gets a bit lost), and eventually a custom theme. I will be picking the brains of other bloggers at two upcoming conferences: WordCamp Whistler and 2009 Northern Voice.
Still mulling Twitter options. I like having the update feature since my tweets are mostly about technology, but if I get too busy to blog for a few days, then Twitter takes over. I would welcome suggestions 
Even before the Flash-animated movie Waltz With Bashir took home a Golden Globe for foreign-language film prize, I had been interested in seeing it. After all, it rated an impressive 95 per cent Fresh Pick on rottentomates.com
The New York Times has a thought-provoking video interview with the movie’s writer/director Ari Folman in which he discusses how Waltz With Bashir was animated in Flash using 3,500 keyframes, giving the film its unique, graphic-novel style look.
Preview for Waltz With Bashir
You can check out more details on Folman’s innovative techniques in studiodaily.com’s story.
The team used photographs to build realism into the environments, then added the background details.
Waltz With Bashir was made for two million dollars, and took four years to complete. Animators would slave a whole day over a second and a half of footage. That’s dedication, but it looks like their toils were well worth it.
