Production Log Blog

Task 1 - Video for Interactive Media: What You Need to Know

Explain how digital video technology is used on different delivery platforms 

Within digital media there are many platforms, programs and file types used to show different types of media. Examples of this come in many different shapes and sizes quite literally. From disks that are played through cd players to files that would be made up of small bites. However over the last 10 to 15 the internet has found a home for websites to share videos that can be seen from all over the world. Websites such as YouTube or even Facebook are great ways to share videos with people. The birth of internet video sharing has allowed almost anyone to share whatever they like to an audience which 15 years ago was almost unheard of. This has given anyone with a camera and internet access a platform to entertain and also make money through ad revenue. As Im already venturing along the lines of entertainment platforms such as YouTube it would make sense to talk about one of the leading platforms Netflix. Netflix a streaming service which allows paying users 1000s of hours of movies and television shows at their disposal. Netflix has been heralded as a revolutionary service which many people be believe to be the new television. This comes because Netflix has such a huge subscription count and television ratings are going down at some decline.

However, with streaming services you will always have issues that traditional television will not. Firstly buffering, this for many people is one of the most annoying things to happen when watching something online. The term 'buffering' means that the bandwidth between the streaming service and the users internet speed isn't at the required speed needed to continuously play the video, therefore it will pause and wait. This is will never happen on a TV as it is not run like a streaming service but is ran by satellite.  

This is just one of many ways that you can share media. Spotify is widely regarded as the biggest music streaming service available with one of the broadest music libraries. For a monthly price the user has access to whatever music they want on the platform. This has lead to the music industry changing, this is because artists nowadays would much rather focus commercially in music streaming than CDs because it is financially a lot more lucrative. This is another example of how CDs are in many ways dying out and streaming services are flourishing. As well as Spotify another example of a music streaming service would be sound cloud, sound cloud is very different to Spotify one of the biggest differences is that its free, Sound cloud allows users to create music and share it on the internet. This has given birth to many now very successful artists that started making music on the platform.

Another and maybe the most prominent when it comes to sharing presentations or work to clients would be through a hard drive. A hard drive can be classed as many different devices and sizes. A good USB or hard drive can allow the user to transport huge amounts of memory, which is unlike anything else, take email for example which you cant transport files any bigger than around 1g and that' s if you have a lot of time on your hands because it will take sometime to send.

Applications-

TV catch up is a revolutions tool that comes with most television sets nowadays, an example of catch up TV would be BBC I player, this was introduced in 2012 and is available via app or on the BBC website, the app allows anyone living within the UK who owns a TV license to watch anything that has been shown on BBC over the last month. This has changed the game when it comes to watching TV as you can now you don't even have to record the program you want to view before it airs, which leads onto the next application sky Go, Sky Go allows the user to download a specific program even after it has aired and can no longer be recorded. The download will be completed using Wi-Fi from an internet source and depending on the speed of your download it should only take a couple of minutes for a 30 minute program to be ready.

Many applications have been made illegally for live video or film streaming, these can been found within the apple app store however are more prominent online. Sites like these are very illegal as the people who run the sites are literally copying the live feed from the channel i.e. Sky box office, it is said that sky sports lose over 30% of sales with box office events because people are streaming them for free and the public don't have to pay anything.

After a video project has been completed you will need to render the project and then export it to a certain file format. For example, after you complete a video the most prominent file would be MP4, an MP4 file is used for video, most platforms can export in mp4 and it is used prominently because it can also include audio. An example of a file that only exports in audio would be MP3, MP3 files compress the video project and make it smaller so it is easier to upload to the internet or share around hard drives.  Standing for Audio Video Interleave, a file with the AVI file extension is a commonly used file format developed by Microsoft for storing both video and audio data in a single file. Depending on what software you use to export a project you may have a choice to export in blue ray or DVD. This is useful for when the user wants to burn the files on DVD. Files that have been made smaller is called compression. Compression occurs when an export has been complete and the user would possibly want the file to made smaller, this could be as they may want to move the file onto another hard drive.

However when compressing files you may find the quality of it to get significantly worse. An example of this would be files that are in 1080p these files are normally a lot bigger than say 720p or 480p and that's because the quality is greater.

Aspect ratio is the length and width of the picture which is being played on the monitor (TV). As seen from the diagram to the right the aspect ratio gets greater the higher the quality of the picture. When working on a project you must always make sure that you take into consideration the aspect ratio, this is because you may be filming on the wrong ratio. This will lead to the clips being out of frame and will ruin the look of the final edit. If you encounter black spaces on the edges of the clip you are producing it may well be because the aspect ratio is not right with the clips.