Breaking Out of the QuickTime Box

One thing to be careful about though is usability. In the Mexico case the designers were responsible and provided accompanying video controls. One of my biggest pet peeves concerning video in flash is that I have no ability to pause, rewind, or fast forward playback.

Sacrifices such as these shouldn't be made for a visual effect.

It looks great on their site (I hadn't heard of the movie before but I'm definitely seeing it now), and I can't wait to see more creative examples of how flash and qt can work together. Although, the hairline scratches and marks floating above the video got to be a little bit annoying after a while (especially when the content below kept changing from light to dark).

Clearly, there's some room opening up to feed the "video as design object" space (as opposed to the "video as video" space). Personally, I think this is a fine thing and is ultimately a logical extension of what people have been doing with Flash since it was FutureSplash. After all, video is just animation using bitmapped images rather than vectors (ok, that's a simplification, but the point is the same).

While I think there are some creative uses looming on the horizon, I'm equally worried about what the marketers of the world will be doing with this new toy. We're already being bombarded with Flash-based ads, blinking incessently in the corner or even covering the text we're supposed to be reading before we can read it. What's going to happen when video enters this equation? We've already seen one example from the quite creative Ellen site you linked to earlier. While this is funny and creative, it is still an ad. Obnoxious variants are, at most, six months behind.

I'm not bashing Flash here, or Macromedia's decision to integrate video into Flash. I'm a Flash developer, I've used the video features myself. Many of the video uses I've seen so far - like the flyover for the PGA site - have been really nice. I fear that this will only provide more ammunition to the Flash haters that fear Macromedia is turning the web into television.

Back to my earlier point quickly - it seems that online video is dividing itself into two camps. 1. Small snippets of video that can be integrated into the design or help better provide information quickly and 2. longer, more narrative pieces that feel more passive. Flash obviously fits the first role incredibly well and will probably dominate it, I just don't find it robust enough to fill the second niche.

I think it sucks. It may be okay for limited uses, but for delivering video, it's no good. Most of these movies have no real movie controls or just some of the controls. no scrubbing? huh?

also, I've never seen a flash movie that you could save. I don't know if it's even possible. I want to save trailers and stuff to my hard disk so I can watch them again later or show them to friends.

Takes to long to load! After five min of waiting ,on a dial-up connection, and with less than 50% loaded I gave up.

As with most things FLASH it just takes to damn long.

Two things that turn me off are flash and acrobat. They really screw up a sites usabality.

Chuck

I like the built-in effect, and I really think that features will allow designers to better integrate other content with video. Though I've seen a similar effect on games I played over 5 years ago on CD-ROM (Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time comes to mind), it's interesting to note that these abilities are just now coming to the Web. (It makes me wonder if Director wasn't able to do this before ... I never fiddled enough with video in Director to know.)

As Jim Ray said, there is a potential downside but I really don't think that that's a problem inherent in the software. One could say the same things about email ("bombardment" and "obnoxious") because of the over-abundance of mail devoted to enlarging genitals, refinancing homes, and purveying pornography. Personally, I say bring it on - these sorts of features might be the ones that finally draw me away from straight XHTML/CSS design and into the world of the truly interactive. ;)

Of course, I forgot to say the other thing that struck me about the site - it doesn't work in my default browser, Mozilla 1.4 (or at least not my install which does have the Flash plugin). The sidebar never came up on my browser annoyingly enough. :\ "Make it look good, so long as it works in IE." *sigh*

MassiveAttack.com is a great example of how video can be used in flash.

ste... it works in my mozilla1.4
so I don't think it is that kind of issue, as for those naysayers out there...
well personally I like to look at the possibilities rather than fearing the downside...
I recently had to include a bunch of TVCs on a website and did them all in flash, I used a component to give controls (similar to quicktimes) and each video was a separate movie hence downloadable.
But about downlolading... well naughty you anyway, the copyright police will be banging on your daw any moment now!

I love to see things like this! For one, it pushes more people towards getting high speed cable, making it easier for designers to create more complex, interactive works. And it gives potential clients some interesting ideas so maybe I can stop doing the boring stuff I do now and stretch out... although when they find out how much work (read $) it takes to do it well they usually chicken out anyways.

I like that I can see a apaprent color palette off to the side of the page that Todd linked.

Don't be breakin sites out of their intended frames/detection!

You'd hate it, too!

Re playback controls: The designer can insert them if desired. (Very easy in new Flash; quite possible in previous authoring.)

Re taste: Always an issue when viewing a presentation, regarldess of medium. (Even text is subject to poor use.)

Re saving: Usually true. Browsers don't usually offer this for plugin content, and Flash doesn't manipulate the local file system. Depending on browser, you can View Info and find the file address or View Source to get this.

Re load times: Flash streams, but its video doesn't without server support (same as other video formats). Big stuff is still big stuff.

Re requiring plugin: True. Easier than other video systems, but still true.

Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Support

You could also use a QT skin which changes the shape of the player and use embedded Flash for control.

I hate Flash, long live Flash. Too much transition and building in most Flash. It's a designer problem (or lack thereof) not necessarily Flash.

Couldn't care less about Flash and video, but thanks for pointing me to this movie! Desperado was one of my favorite films and I had no idea they were even making a sequal (I guess techically the end of the trilogy). Can't wait to see it!

I didn't know it was a sequel to Desperado. I just thought it was completely copied off Desperado in every concievable way.

"it pushes more people towards getting high speed cable, making it easier for designers to create more complex, interactive works." Sorry, but this sort of thing is not worth $750+/year for most people. This doesn't push people to get faster connections, it pushes people to become even more frustrated with the web.

Where do you live that web access is $750 a year? High speed is $480 here MAX. Bandwidth is expanding. High speed is obviously where the net is heading.

Just like (almost) any other technology, when Flash and video are used correctly they can be very successful in enhancing user experience. Embedding resources, whether it be video, audio, 3D or otherwise allows users to obtain all aspects of an experience without the distraction of opening new windows or changing focus.

The success of a project is determined by content, concept, execution and meeting users' needs, not by technology or lack thereof.

For my money and bandwidth is the best use of an interactive unorthodox flash video yet. In this format, which is plain presentational, does its' duty. Flaush iz Goode!

Sorry! This site http://www.sigroup.co.uk/SI/

One issue, besides the usual flash disadvantages, is how difficult it is to focus on a movie clip with all the surrounding page. I would almost rather have a new broswer window with a black background so i can concentrate on the video.
Or what nintendo did for their gameboy advance site»
http://gameboyadvance.com/sp/home.jsp where video loads into a iframe in a div tag (i think that is how they did it) and the background fades out. I am sure it can be replicated in flash but my point is that the nintendo designers realized that watching video with a bunch of surrounding noise is like looking at art with bad frames.

there's a firm in my town (http://www.tubatomic.com/) that's getting a lot of coverage for this very thing...Apple awarded them runner up for best QuickTime content delivery, or something like that - 1st place was BMW...

see also: http://www.movtv.com

Well, I've never seen skewed video frames before, except for keystoned film projections on exterior walls and whatnot, and of course my first question is HOW THE FUCK DO WE CAPTION THIS? You can't give people skewed captions, and you can just barely possibly sometimes add captions to Flash video at all.

If people start going all rotated and shit, people in my industry are gonna lose theirs.

Box? Have you seen http://www.eyeballnyc.com