Rich Media Studio: Video and Sound in Flash - Softcover

Bhangal, Sham; Bodur, Murat; Dalhauser, Martin; Diogo, Jorge; McLeod, Alex; McDermott, Doug; Mackay, Robin; Ogle, Alex; Tucker, Mike; Turner, Jerome

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903450640 ISBN 13: 9781903450642

Publisher: friends of ED Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

So, you've seen Flash, you've learned a little about it, but your work is beginning to seem a little stale now. You need new ideas, new paths.

Think about the best sites you've seen recently. What do they have in common? Very little, if they're any good. Except that they're probably designed in Flash and probably feature some Rich Media - sound and video - content.

What's the way forward on the web? What's going to make you stand out? The answer is simple: cutting-edge sound and video content. The application is less simple: sound and video elements have to fit through the limited bandwidth offered by the web, and Flash itself wasn't designed with all these uses in mind.

This book solves these problems. Divided into two comprehensive, separate sections on video and on sound, it uses the expertise of top professional web designers to show you how to design bandwidth friendly rich media Flash sites.

This includes comprehensive coverage of using Flash with the third-party technologies available for web sound (Cubase, Acid, Sound Forge) and web video (After Effects, Wildform FLIX, Flash Turbine, QuickTime, RealVideo, Premiere, Final Cut Pro).

This material is illustrated by fully worked case studies throughout, backed up with comprehensive video, audio and Flash files on the accompanying CD.
Whether you're interested in preparing or recording sound for the web, filming video for the web, Flash, or web design in general, this is a bold book that you can't afford to miss.

About this title

From the Publisher

With its low bandwidth and tiny file sizes, it is often wrongly assumed that sound and video can never achieve a really high level of sophistication in Flash animations. With competitive motion graphics techniques rapidly evolving, there is a constantly growing demand for the next stage in sophisticated design - video and sound.

This book will do exactly what they said wasn't possible by illustrating how video and sound can be integrated into your Flash presentations, placing you at the extreme edge of creative web design. The application of such tools as AfterEffects, QuickTime, SoundForge and Wildform test the boundaries of Flash and suggest ways to take sound and video beyond Flash and into the realms of Shockwave. Showing you how to break your site down and incorporate video and sound, the techniques covered in this book capitalise on the capabilities of Flash whilst tackling its limitations head-on. It will then look at how to take web ideo and sound a step further with Shockwave presentations.

Flash's tiny .swf files are great for quick-download animation, but adding more bandwidth-heavy sound and video elements has been seen until now as prohibitively difficult. Nevertheless, some of the top Flash designers have been breaking new ground by incorporating carefully optimized video and sound, streamed in to minimize download time. These designers, and their sites, have quickly stood out from the chasing pack of aspirant motion web designers.

There are a number of affordable third party pieces of software that can ease the use of video in Flash and Director and it is anticipated that this book will include tutorials that cover Wildform FX, AfterEffects, QuickTime and Beatnik amongst others. Rich Media Studio acknowledges the limitations of Motion Graphics packages and, using advanced tutorials focussed individually on sound and video, shows you how to work around the problems.

About the Author

This book brings together a powerhouse gathering of some of the best video and sound web design talent around - whether they be professional designers (Murat Bodur, Doug McDermott, Robin Mackay, Darren Smith, Mark Welland), video professionals beginning to use the web (Martin Dalhauser, Mike Tucker, Jerome Turner), acclaimed friends of ED Flash authors (Sham Bhangal), pioneers of web video (Alex Ogle was involved in the cult Jonni Nitro web series), software developers (Jorge Diogo), ex-skateboarders (Fred Faquette), or active members of the web community (Tania Aleo and Kevyn Smith of peelinteractive.com, Keran McKenzie of studiowhiz.com, and Kristian Besley of pilipala.co.uk).

Murat Bodur is a designer as well as the founder of muratdesign - his own design studio in Boston. He works with a range of clients helping them to bridge interactive, advertising and branding by creating synergies between online and offline mediums.

Murat's work is diverse, including brand & identity design, advertising, film & video design, motion graphics & type design, music video, kiosk, web sites and recently an ATM machine.

Murat's work has been recognized by numerous publications such as I.D. (International Design), Communication Arts, Graphis of NY, Web Design Index as well as the The One Show and The Hatch Awards in Boston.

Murat has been involved with projects from all around the world helping his clients to transform and evolve their brands for today's converging world.
Jerome Turner has spent most of his life trying to put his home town of Leighton Buzzard back on the map. He was eventually forced to leave in order to study Media Arts with Visual Arts at Plymouth University.'

Since then he's been living in Poole, Dorset, working as a freelance new media producer. Most of his work is video based, creating productions for a number of companies. In conjunction with this, he has been using Flash in his design/animation work, based at jerometurner.co.uk. He also works on film and TV productions, most recently with the BBC.With a classic Software Engineer training, he has been involved on the Internet Industry since the beginning and has also worked on other fields, most notably Video Games, Wireless Internet and Performing Arts. Under the belief that software design is an Art form, he tries hard to be a good artist.

Acknowledgements: I'd like to thank Susana and my parents for the continued support, as well as to all my cats for being, well, cats.

Sham Bhangal came to web design via Engineering. The times spent during dinner breaks doodling ideas for motion graphics became far more interesting than the day job, and a new career direction soon followed. His working life is now just one long dinner break in which he doodles and occasionally turns the scribbles into motion graphics via Flash, 3DMax, and Director.

Sham lives deep in the English countryside, and telecommutes to the folks at Friends of Ed and other clients via the magic of the internet. His office is aproximately 10 meters away from his bed, and 8 meters from a fridge full of cold beer.

Unfortunately, his partner Karen occasionally tricks him into doing work, but if he wasn't paid to live like this, he'd probably do it for free.

Kristian Besley was born in Wales, grew up in the same street as Catherine Zeta Jones, and read Media Arts following interests in film and design. To this day his love of all things lo-fi is extended to the pilipala website. In his lack of spare time, you'll most likely find him pushingFlash's duplicateMovieClip command to it's limit, playing 5-string punk rock guitar, experimenting with vegan cookery, or reminiscing about how nothing will ever be as good as the Spectrum 48k. One day he vows to reform his band Ken (named after a greasy mechanic), but a website of their old material will probably come first...

Edition details

• Publisher: friends of ED Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1903450640
• ISBN 13: 9781903450642
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 476