An interactive video is one that demands your cooperation, it reacts and changes due to your usage patterns. Clicking play on a video, choosing what video or channel to watch, playing a video game; it all requires your input. What you watch then shapes and forms the kinds of recommendations you'll receive. Watching a video on YouTube will trigger the site to feed you similar videos it assumes you'll enjoy. Notice the "Recommended for you" :
This is because of our viewing behaviour in this modern age, we actively search entertainment that's always at the ready for us: I-player, Netflix, YouTube. We no longer watch TV in a linear passive way. TV in it's early days had only a few channels, whatever was on was a treat and a privilege to watch.
There's an enormous range of different platforms and services that allow someone to access a video, either online or on one of their devices.
Firstly, you have the web. Sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Facebook (YouTube specifically) allow you to browse an infinite library of any video you could imagine. Then you have the regular DVD's, CD's and Blu ray discs.
These can then all be watched on a multitude of devices including: laptops, computers, tablets, phones, iPad and TV's.
Of course the TV opens up more options, you then introduce service providers and on-demand television. Services like Sky and Virgin provide a range of channels for you to choose from. If you wanted to watch a movie or series on your tablet, there are no disc slots so it would have to be on demand or via a streaming service.
The first thing to point out would be the internet requirement. Every service mentioned so far despite the discs require an internet or satellite connection service. The quality of the picture and sound would then totally rely on your connection power. Some platforms like Netflix require streaming, this demands a constant connection to the internet.
This is a difficulty you might encounter when watching YouTube videos, a high power internet connection allows you to stream the highest quality picture, something like this:
Where as with a slower internet restricted by a less powerful connection, it'll likely look something like this:
This blurring is due to less pixels in the image. Pixels on all modern screens are little illuminated squares of light, with their previous form on old screens being rectangular. The more of these little lit squares there are the crisper and clearer the image will be.
YouTube's highest quality setting is currently 4K or 2160p, which tops the previous 1080p by a long shot. The P stands for progressive meaning 'progressive scan'. This refers to the way the lines and pixels that make up an image are assigned. YouTube used to utilise a progressive download system, the 'buffer' bar has become somewhat of a staple of the site. It now uses Adaptive streaming, this is similar to what you'd expect from On demand TV services like SkyGO.
Internet and TV services like these are available on the platforms mentioned above, TV, Phone, Tablet etc. Mobile portable devices like tablets are a common device used to access digital video. In this age, people are more commonly for example watching movies on the train to work on their tablet or phone. This arrives with it's own set of problems though.
A phone screen in comparison to an Imax cinema screen is different on an epic scale. This means that changes to the format of the video will have to be made for it to appear a similar high quality on the different screen sizes. The format of the video on a large TV is different to that of a small tablet for example. Another situation where a large screen would be used for digital video is either advertisements or live presentations. Times Square is known for it's cinema sized screens displaying adverts all day.
Trying to play a video designed for smaller screens (4:3) on a large screen (16:9) will 'stretch' it. This is once more due to the pixels, pixels on a larger screen are in much more of an abundance. Simply put, the bigger the screen, the more pixels there has to be.
The number of pixels can also decrease due to different file types. Most videos on a phone for example use a 3GP file, on a phone this would look perfect; you could play a high quality video as if it's on an HD television. But if you play the exact same video on a TV, it's going to be extremely pixelated. This is because the amount of pixels it requires for a high quality phone image is far less than that of a large screen, obviously due to the size.
The difference in screen sizes for all the digital media platforms often determines the content. For example, you commonly see more close ups in music videos these days rather than wider panning shots to accommodate smaller screen size. More and more people are using their phones for YouTube.
This is the kind of shot you can expect:
With less shots of this style:
These performers here are only really going to be visible on a TV screen, far less likely on a phone or tablet.
So why is this important? Showing the artists builds on their personas, their famous personalities. It's important for the business of the music industry that the audience members know and recognise the icons as if they're characters in a TV show. This is a limitation of video on smaller screens, you suffer less detail. You'd never recognise those artists just from shots like the second one above.
Interactive media is developing dramatically, new technologies are constantly brought to life with the objective to change the way we use technology.
Facebook is one example of a platform that's constantly bending and shifting to match our needs as consumers. In terms of interactive video, anyone can share, watch and download videos on Facebook. They appear on your wall in response to your friends activities. They used to appear like this:
Notice the play button in the middle, this prompts the user to click and activate the video. This is different to Facebook today, the current version of Facebook includes no play button. The video will automatically begin. So why is this? Facebook is aware of our usage patterns, we are so used to interactive media where we're given the ability to pick and choose exactly what to watch. So it takes auto-playing videos where we're forced to be passive for us to potentially show interest. We're more likely to watch a video if it's already playing rather than having to activate it ourselves.
Facebook is also pushing the boundaries on what we can do with interactive media, 'Facebook Live' allows anyone to live-stream themselves out to the world. This comes with all it's own problems though, the attention drives many people to do horrible things; there are already multiple cases of gunmen shooting civilians live on camera. With the introduction of Virtual Reality and interactive 3D video; it's interesting to wonder what might come next.
Sites like YouTube are driven by user generated content, so what would they have to consider when creating digital video? This is where digital video file formats come into play. Digital video capture refers to the transfer from camera to video. With a wealth of different video file formats choosing the right one is extremely important, the wrong file format can make the video extremely incompatible, you'll begin to notice problems regarding the audio and picture quality.
After rendering, you'll compress a video file into a nice little package. This turns it into the corresponding file format. Be it mpg, mp4, mov, avi, wmv, fly, sf, 3gp, or ASF as a few examples. There is a very difficult relationship between file size and quality, they are totally in concurrence meaning higher quality equals higher file size and vice versa. This makes for issues in the editing process, larger files are harder to move around and export etc. And may run far slower in editing.
You'd then also need to consider ratio, what kind of screen is your video going to be viewed on? With the ratios being 4:3 or 16:9. 16:9 would fit a widescreen TV. Where as a square TV would be 4:3. The process of compression is known as video codec, this is the software that compresses or decompresses digital video.
When compressing a digital video, a perfect transfer with no errors etc. is referred to as lossless. While a failed compression is appropriately named lossy for it's loss of key elements, the audio and picture quality for example.
So what is Lossy and Lossless? A lossless compression refers to the picture quality remaining exactly the same during the process. Where as lossy will lower the picture quality, but there is reason behind this.
Lowering the picture quality with a lossy compression will remove data to dramatically decrease the file size; making the file easier to move around. A lossless compression will also decrease size in compression, but not as much. A key thing to note would be that with a lossless compression the original file can always be restored, but with lossy once the data is gone it's gone for good.
Some examples of digital images are GIF, JPEG, and PNG:
Gif- A gif (Graphics interchange format) is an 8bit image commonly associated with simple animation. It is unsuitable for high quality images.
JPEG- A JPEG (Joint photographic experts group) is a digital image format that uses lossy compression. It has a higher compression rate meaning it's far easier and quicker to carry out but it drops in quality because of it's small file size. It's a trade off in the complex relationship, quicker compression means less quality.
Put simply, Lossy and Lossless compression are the terms for whether a original file can be restored or not. A lossy file is going to end up deleting data. But lossy files results in smaller files. On some sites like Facebook, there is actually a file size limit. This makes this loss of data potentially worth while.
Here is the results of my own experiments with file types:
Notice that some of the formats are simply incompatible, my overall conclusion was that AVI and choosing to match the key frame settings worked the best. This is what I ended up choosing for the edit of my promotional video.
