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MillimeterNonlinear web authoring
May 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Frank McMahon
Getting video and multimedia content to the Web has always been a multistep process that usually involves several software packages. You shoot the video and edit it in your desktop editing program. Then you compress it in another program. After it is tweaked and looking good, you open up a web-authoring program and import the media.
But these days the line between these programs is starting to blur. Web-video software is getting more and more robust. Not only can you complete more of the tasks within the HTML program, but you can actually do your nonlinear editing and tweaking from within the software itself. We'll look at a few programs that are making it easier to create multimedia content for the Web and also see how you can “edit” from within your web-authoring program.
Going live with Adobe
A prime example of this convergence is Adobe's GoLive 6.0. A dense and extensive web-authoring program, this new version includes a host of updated features as well as new options for direct deployment to wireless devices. But what video producers will be most interested in is GoLive's full-featured QuickTime editing system. The editor works just like any other desktop editor, with a timeline based on frames, seconds, and minutes.
The program imports just about any flavor of QuickTime file, and it's as easy as dragging in a QT icon and dropping it on the line. And since this is a timeline, you can slide movies around and have them appear at specific intervals and in a certain order.
But you're not limited to Quick Time movies — you can just as easily import MPEG clips or add music in the form of MP3, WAV, or any number of audio file types. Or, for a demo reel made up of specific clips, you could insert images: graphic titles in between each clip on the timeline.
A QuickTime-based timeline also offers the added bonus of all the features Apple has built into the file format. For example, a chapter track can grant DVD-like control. Add a text track for titles to include some info that was not included in the original video. Effects are drag-and-drop functions that insert everything from a blur to a color style — or adjust brightness, contrast, and tinting on the fly. Also available are options to sharpen and to add lens flares, fire, clouds, film noise, and more.
What about cross-dissolves? No problem. Designate two or three clips at a time and dissolve back and forth between each. In fact, you can go far beyond fades with alpha wipes, gradient wipes, implodes, slides, and zooms.
The HREF Track in QuickTime is used to trigger webpages to load at time-based intervals. If you intend to employ a lot of this type of interactivity, you may want to explore the SMIL features in GoLive 6.0. SMIL is a script-based multimedia language that's very easy to use. It allows timing audio, images, and movies — just like the QuickTime timeline. The key difference, though, is that SMIL is more extensible as far as control and options, while the QuickTime timeline features more built-in drag-and-drop effects. In addition to its common elements with QuickTime, SMIL allows adding to the timeline MIDI music, streaming audio and video clips, a 3D object, or a solid-color graphic.
After your movie and all the elements are assembled, what's next? There are a couple of options. The first is to flatten the movie and move it right over to your GoLive HTML webpage. The program flattens the QuickTime movie so everything is contained in one file for web publishing. Otherwise, pointers to various file formats and content could be very difficult to manage.
As you might expect, this can create a large file for a downloadable Quick Time movie, so be careful what you include. A great solution is to export the movie as a streaming file. Then the length and content won't matter much, as it plays as it downloads. Just go to File/Export/Movie and select your compression and streaming options.
You can even export on a track-by-track basis. Also, there is nothing tying you to exporting to QuickTime: AVI and DV are alternatives. Say you had a RealNetworks streaming server and not a QuickTime server. Simply assemble everything — images, movies, effects, dissolves, and sound — and then export as an AVI file. Load the AVI file into your compression program, such as RealProducer or Cleaner, and you're ready to rock.
What about Flash? Oh yes, it's in there. You can include multiple SWF tracks in your QuickTime movie, and GoLive 6.0 nicely dovetails with the new Adobe LiveMotion 2.0. Once you import a Flash file created in Live Motion, you can edit it on the fly as often as you like by selecting it from inside GoLive. Adobe always rates high on cross-product integration, but it raises the stakes with the recent GoLive/LiveMotion Pack.
LiveMotion 2.0 provides further evidence that desktop web authoring is getting closer to desktop nonlinear editing. For example, the new version of this Flash-creation program borrows several advances from Adobe's After Effects. LiveMotion offers a nonlinear timeline that mimics that of After Effects by not only incorporating collapsible tracks for adjusting effect parameters, but also by throwing in track controls such as shy tracks (for toggling off and on by group), locking, and setting tracks to implicit lengths.
Also refined and taken from After Effects are the nesting and grouping commands. The real power of the timeline-based program manifests itself when you can introduce animations within animations or create something once and multiply it a dozen or so times in the same production. LiveMotion 2.0 also shares many features found in just about any nonlinear editor, so if you think it'll take a different mindset to produce Flash animations, think again. Because — like video work — it's really just about content plus time.
Flash back again
Macromedia has fired back at Adobe with the release of Flash MX, the newest version of its program for creating Flash animations. Having a several-year head start over LiveMotion, the program has a rich feature set, but each new version has come with a different interface design. Here's hoping the company sticks with the new one and refines it to eliminate the learning curve for dedicated users.
The big news for video producers is the direct support for video in Flash MX, with options to play, manipulate, scale, rotate, and animate clips in formats such as MPEG, AVI, DV, and QuickTime. As with LiveMotion, Flash MX is set up like a nonlinear editor with a timeline and endless possibilities for making all these elements dance together in compelling presentations.
Getting dynamic
Another web-video authoring option worth mentioning, featured in Macro-media's Dreamweaver as well as Adobe's GoLive, is the DHTML timeline. Dynamic HTML, combining content with motion for web graphics and text, is finally hitting its stride for a few reasons. It hasn't been used widely in recent years because only the newest browsers support it. But with each passing year, older browsers are replaced by advanced versions, and the successful launch of Internet Explorer 6.0 and the impending chance that AOL will swap over to Netscape 6.0 mean there's suddenly a large audience that can view the animated effects of DHTML.
And chances are good you have seen it already. If an ad or graphic ever pops up and “flies over” your webpage, it's probably DHTML. It too works on the nonlinear editing metaphor that we video pros have been using for years, so it's not a huge leap to mess around with a DHTML timeline and create some compelling productions. Sure beats hand-coding source files.
Web-development programs have advanced to include time, and now is the time to jump in and apply those skills you have fine-tuned in video production. The software has never been more advanced, and the base of users who can experience the results is larger than ever. If you look beyond animated GIFs and even beyond Flash animation, you start to see “content + time” on the Web as a vast environment for telling stories. And as video producers, that is what we do best.
Frank McMahon is a media artist specializing in directing, editing, animation, and graphic design. He can be reached via his media company at www.fmstudio.com or via Portland Media Artists at www.mediaartist.com.
