The Pocket Video Community Project

Project:

Overview:

Imagine a community of cultural “after dark” artists engaged in developing pocket videos that run on mobile devices using the built-in video players. This project provides them with a context in which they can explore the creative dimensions of this new medium. In order to explore the creative dimensions of the new medium, the artist also has to come to grips with the technical aspects, such as the implications of a tiny screen, a noisy environment where the video is playing, the ability to instantly share the video in a social context, the need to compress the video to a 1 megabyte size, the problem of getting the video into distribution (MMS, Bluetooth, cable to PC, over the air from the carrier deck).


results: 

Mobile Video Shorts for Still Image Artists (Part 2)

In this first part of this series, we showed how Photoshop can be used to generate fixed sized frames for an animation.

In this tutorial we take things a step further, using a vector program (in this case Illustrator) to create a character face, then importing it as a Smart Object in Photoshop. The advantage of Smart Objects is that the character face remains resolution independent, and you can go back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop. You can re-size the Photoshop file larger or smaller and retain crisp edges. You can size up the character for a poster, or size him down for a mobile video. You can distribute the character in videos made for a variety of different devices, from HD television to iPod videos. On top of that you can easily combine the character with bitmap graphics, using Photoshop's extensive manipulation and processing capabilities. We begin by reviewing how Photoshop layers are used in animation.

Mobile Video Shorts for Still Image Artists (Part 1)

It may come as a surprise to some people who use such tools as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop to create illustrations, retouch photos, create montages or develop single images from scratch that these programs can also be used to create animations for mobile media. I have written this tutorial specifically for still image artists who want to enter the Pocketcine contest on Renderosity.com, but do not use animation programs like Macromedia Flash. I will show you how to create simple and even complex animations without leaving Photoshop and its companion animation program, Image Ready.

Compression Software for Mobile Video

Compressed videos are produced by codecs, which is a word that combines the two roles they perform: compressing and decompressing video or audio. The process of compressing video is often called "encoding," and the process of decompressing video "decoding." 

Compression standards like MPEG do not actually specify how a video should be encoded. That is left up to the codec. Creators of encoding software are free to implement the encoding algorithm whatever way they like. As long as the compressed video or audio complies with the standard, software developers can implement the actual codec with whatever features and user interface they want.
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