Evaluation and Analysis

In this unit, I have learnt alot about the different aspects of streaming media. The most important subject I learnt about was the factors that affected the streaming media, as before I took this unit, I took videos off websites like Youtube for granted, and didn't think of the factors that affect the streaming of these. I realised that encoders are useful for producing different quality videos, and learnt how to do this using Sorenson Squeeze. I feel I benefited from this unit, as it has taught me alot about the theory side of the media, but also loved working on the practical side, and producing our own website and video, which all seemed a hard task at the start. Looking at the website and video now, it has come a long way, and I have learnt the production and design process needed to create them. I am pleased with the video and website, and I am glad I am part of it, and the fact that it can be sent to the council to use for education resources. By learning the theory behind streaming media, it now makes me concientous of how much work it takes to get a working video, and to please and be accessible for all audiences. If I ever come to creating a video myself and uploading it online, (for example a portfolio site), I will now consider the factors that not everyone can have easy access to watching the video, and alternate links may need to be provided for people that don't have bandwidth, or the right specifications for their computer. I believe that Adobe Flash Player will be the default player for playing videos in the future, even though a download is to be made, even though we couldn't use Flash Player to host our video.
Streaming media is used everywhere, and in the future, more and more content will be streamed online, reducing production costs, and making it cheaper for businesses everywhere. The quality may even become higher of broadcast television. Streaming media is the future.

Survey Monkey Testing

As well as the paper questionnaire for the testing of our artefact, Helen also produced an online questionnaire that users could fill out, marking how long or how easy it took for them to get to a certain location or complete a task. 10 people were tested.
This image shows the results:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8026/surveymonkeyresultscopyea6.jpg
The first task tested users how many clicks it took for a task to be completed. According to the results, all 10 people managed to complete the task in the correct number of clicks, which shows us that our website navigation was simple, and it was easy to navigate to the correct place. This is good, as it shows that new users entering our website, are most likely to find their way around our website easily.
The second task asked users to rate how easy it was for a task to be completed. This task seemed quite tricky for the testers. Most users found the task easy or almost easy, whilst others found it quite hard to find what to do. The percentage of those who found the tasks hard, was little, and so meaning that new users that come to our site, will mostly be able to complete the tasks, and only a few may find it challenging. It is hard to try get 100% of users to be able to use the site easily, but since there is an email, they can always email us if they have any problems.
Both these tasks, challenged users, but in the end, it showed a positive result for our website and video, showing that most users will be able to find their way around the website. We hope that if our website is ever hosted online, then users should be able to find it simple to navigate, and enjoy our site.

Video Size

When determining the size to use for our video, when uploaded to our website, many sizes can be used. The main decision to use the size we used, as because we wanted it a similar size to Youtube. http://www.youtube.com. Since Youtube is so popular with watching video, we all agreed it is a good size to display a video. The user can also make the video full screen if they wanted, as the video will be displayed in Windows Media Player, due to the fact we couldn't use Flash, as the server wouldn't support it.
Because we filmed the video using a widescreen mode on the camera, then we had to get the correct dimensions for the video to look right on screen. I also found that other websites use a similar video size to this as well. Sites like http://www.videojug.com use a similar size screen size to youtube (a bit smaller), but the dimensions are nearly the same as Youtube. http://www.metacafe.com use slightly bigger dimensions for their videos, but again, these websites all use similar dimensions. If we play about with our dimensions around this average size of videos, then it will suit the users needs. Too small, the user cannot see the video, too big, the video may start to lose quality. We will experiment and see what size is best.

Testing

Since me, Becky, and Jon were busy with other tasks, Helen had the responsibility of creating a testing questionnaire. This was a list of questions used for our class to answer based on our website and video. An online survey was also created as well, determining how many clicks it took to get to certain pages of the website.
This survey was carried out in the final class lesson, with other members of other groups in our class. The website and video was uploaded to the J drive we had been given to host our artefact.
The results proved that our website was very easy to navigate, and all of the expected results we wanted, were the actual results when tested.
The comments recieved were:

LUCAS -

Video: music plays through right and speech on left side.

(This was because the University computers do not have speakers, so headphones had to be used. When testing it on a home computer, we found there were no problems)

video does not pop up if already clicked.

(This would not matter, as the video is already in a pop-up box)

Could not see that PDF was a button - did not realise the pick download button!

(Instructions were a bit small, and Becky would change this asap)

Accessibility link is rather small for people reading it.

(Again, Becky would change this for the final version)

Contacts page is hard to see big text, small text underneath.

(Becky would also ammend this page)

Like colour scheme and logo

(This agreed with my thoughts on the colour scheme, which meant the site was likeable.)

Love graphics on map

(This also agreed with how good Helen's PDF's were, and proved they were really useful)

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TOM -

Well laid out and clear. Maybe make accessibility options a little more obvious?

(As this was the same point with Lucas, it was agreed that Becky would sort out the accesibility options)

Video control - Fine. Might be nice to have video embedded in the site layout rather than open in a new window.

(Since embedding a video clashes with accesibility, we decided that it was not a problem to have the video in a pop-up, as it wasn't too much hassle.

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This proved that overall our streaming artefact was a success, which was good news for us, as it meant we had a fully functioning website, and good looking video, which in future, we could always send to the Council, for them to use as advertising recycling in Portsmouth.

50's Music

The final task for the video was finding a piece of music that was free to download and for us to use. I thought this would be a simple task, as it would be like finding the images, and searching that way. I searched on google for royalty free music, but the websites that came up, had the music, except they were only samples, and to download the full track, a purchase had to be made. This was annoying as it wasn't FREE at all. Most websites had this, and it was a struggle to find any website where the music WAS free. The group decided that we wanted cheesy music, or 'lift' music that you hear in a lift, to be used, as this would match the cheesyness and quirkyness of our video, and also match the 50's style, as we were trying to recreate a 50's educational film. When I researched 50's educational films, they all had cheesy music, and I had to find a piece similar to them. When researching into 50's educational films and lift music, I found the category of music was jazz or swing. This type of music was popular in the 50's so the aim was for that. After days of researching and getting no where, I finally stumbled across a site: http://incompetech.com which I found by searching 50's swing. I found this site actually produced FREE to download music, as long as the artist was credited, which would be simple to add in the credits anyway. By searching 'Jazz', the website produced a few results, which I listened to and rated them. I came across a piece called 'Hot Swing': http://music.incompetech.com/royalty-free/Hot%20Swing.mp3 which seemed perfect to use a backing track. The only problem was that it only lasted 50 seconds, so was not long enough to cover the whole video. I sent this to Jon, and he had an idea to use the piece in the opening and ending credits as it fit perfectly.
I then listened to the other pieces on the search of 'Jazz' to find a track long enough to cover the whole of our video. I managed to find a piece called 'No Good Layabout': http://music.incompetech.com/royalty-free/NoGoodLayabout.mp3 which was the perfect length for us to use, and this was the final piece chosen to go in our video. I sent this to Jon, and it was used as the audio, but the volume of the piece would be reduced as to hear DR Colm Beeny.
I was pleased in the end with this website, as there are hardly any websites out there where music is free to download. Kevin MacLeod was credited for the music pieces.

Final Tasks

Since the video was nearly completed, a few tasks remained. These included creating a simple flash 'FACT' animation, and creating the list of all the recyclable and non recyclable materials to be displayed. The FACT animation was simple, as it included one animation of the word FACT to be zoomed in. This was to be placed after the real fact was read out by Dr Colm Beeny, and so the audience knew that this was a real fact, and not a fake that he had made up. I originally created a NOT FACT as well, but since it did not work, me and Jon decided just to write a simple disclaimer on screen when the false fact was told. This was exported in the same way as before and sent to Jon to add to the video.
The other task was to find an old image of paper and to write out the recyclable and non recyclable materials. To do this, we were told we wern't allowed to use any copyrighted images, so royalty free images had to be used instead. A simple google search produced a list of websites with free images I could download. After browsing through a few of these sites, I came across http://www.imageafter.com which has a wide collection of images to use. A search of 'paper' ended me up at a perfect image. http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?image=b14themabina180.jpg This was good as it looked like an old style paper scrapbook that would work brilliantly with our film. It didn't matter with the colour so much, as a black and white effect would be added to the film, to create a 50's style. This image was imported into Flash, and rotated, where text would be added on top for each material. Once this was done, it was easily exported in flash as a JPG file. This was then imported to Photoshop to invert the colours so the effect of a black and white look was created. This was done simply, by clicking the Invert option in the Adjustments panel. The image was then saved again as a JPG file, and sent to Jon to add to the video.
All that was left to do was find music to go in the background of the video.

Becky and Helen's efforts

Since me and Jon were busy working on the video, Helen and Becky were concentrating on other things. Becky worked on the design and creation of the website. She brought in website designs/layouts ideas for the group to look at, and decide if we liked it. After we had chosen a design, she started work on producing an html version. When she had finished creating this, she showed the whole group, and asked for their approval. We all really liked it and was impressed with the colour scheme and how much had been put in towards the site. I was impressed because she seemed to do alot, and i didn't expect it. After testing the site out myself, I was happy that it was a fully functioning website, that exceeded my expectations. When the website was originally planned, I thought it was going to brief with little information, but seeing Becky's final piece, it had much more information, and I found it really useful.
Hel had created the PDF's, and the process had worked out the same, she had worked on designs, got them approved, created them, and got our approval. I was impressed with Hel's PDF's because my expectations were little as I thought it was going to be simple, and not much information, but when seeing them, there was much more than I expected, and they turned out to be more useful that I imagined.
Hel also designed the testing, which would happen on friday.

Server Space

Because we are working on a specified University server given to us, we have been given alot of space to work with, and so can easily put alot of files on there, as alternate links etc. But if we were to host this site ourselves, we would need a large server to make our video as accessible as possible. This can add to the cost, meaning a sustainable site is expensive at the start but benefitial in the long run.
I have found that once you export an AVI or MOV the size of our video, the file size is usually massive, meaning space on a server is limited, although with the program of Sorenson Squeeze, which can compress the video into any specified format. This is useful for us, as you can also compress to a certain bitrate as well, creating our high, medium and low quality files. The size of the file after it has been 'Squeezed' or compressed is usually very low, meaning we do not have to worry about the space we have been given on the server.

Export Settings

When it came to thinking what formats we would put on our websites for users to choose from, we thought back to the first lecture we had when we exported videos to different qualities.
We agreed that we should produce a high quality version of 1mb (which will be the default), a medium quality version of 512kb, and a low quality version of 256kb. This will users to choose a different version if the version they are trying to watch takes too long to stream. Obviously the quality will be reduced, but it will mean they get to watch the video.
We finally agreed on using Adobe Flash Player to stream our video, but would also provide other links to watch it in other players incase users didn't want to or didn't have flash player. We would provide a download link for Adobe Flash Player anyway. The other players we would provide would be Windows Media Player and Apple Quicktime Player, one for each computer user. If they didn't have Flash or didn't want it, they can access the right video quickly. This means we would not force users to have to use Adobe Flash Player, meaning there is a variety of choice.
By users viewing our video in Adobe Flash Player, even it means they have to download it, it is not as if they are not going to need Flash Player again, because many other websites are switching to Flash Player nowadays, and if it means they use Flash Player to watch our video, it means they can watch and view so many other videos etc on other sites, so it works out no matter what.

Flash Animation

I was given the task of creating a flash animation for one scene in our video, as we did not have time to film it with the University cameras. This scene was the lounge scene, with Dr Colm Beeny in the lounge giving a recycling fact.
The task was pretty simple for me as I had animated using Macromedia Flash 8 before. To create the image of Doctor Colm Beeny, I thought it may be simpler to use a picture of him taken from when we were filming, and to add flash effects to it. I cropped the picture using Adobe Photoshop, and imported to Flash.
When it came to drawing the sofa and television, I wanted to make them pretty basic and old, since it was meant to be an old fashioned 50's type film. Although a 50's grain film effect would be placed on using Avid later on. Because I am not very good at drawing, my drawings were basic and boring. I showed these to my group members and they did not like it. They told me not to use a photo of Colm Beeny as it did not fit in place, and that my drawings looked too basic, and not like the real thing.
So I decided to trace over Colm Beeny in flash, giving him more of a cartoon look and making him fit in more with the scene. This effect looked good and worked pretty well. For the sofa and TV, I decided to use images from google, and trace over them, meaning it looked like i had drawn them, when infact I had just traced over the top. I made sure I followed the colour scheme, and where there was shading, I used shading too.
The animation looked good at this stage, and the next job was to work on the TV image. I decided to use a movie clip as it'd be easier to work on animation inside a clip, but when it came to exporting the final animation as an AVI, I realised that it did not show the movie clip. Me and Jon met to discuss final video work, and we decided just to use a simple rotating recycle logo, with the words: + 3 hrs written on, to explain the fact of: One Aluminium Can saves enough electricity to power a television for 3 hours. I ended up creating this on the timeline, exported it as an AVI, and this time it worked perfectly.
The only problem was that the quality settings for exporting as an AVI didn't allow to create a high quality image. This didn't look good for the video, and so I did some researching using Google, and found a program, Magic SWF2AVI, which allows users to import the SWF, choose a f0rmat to export in, whether it be, AVI or MOV etc. and choose the quality. After a few times playing about, exporting as AVI's and MOV's, I found the best quality image produced was in a DVD MPEG format, as the settings meant it exported to be placed on DVD. I chose settings of NTSC mpeg Normal (1.7 hour), which produced a clear image to be imported to AVID. I sent this to Jon to add to the rest of the footage.