Digital Video - June 2008 - (Page 40)

CLICK TO PLAY BY NELS JOHNSON AIR SPACE ADOBE’S NEW TOOLSET TRANSFORMS YOUR DESKTOP INTO A MEDIA CENTER. S o what exactly is Adobe AIR (and what has it done with the Flash Video Player)? At least two answers present themselves, depending on your role as user: 1) A downloadable, installable, third-party system enhancement (like the ubiquitous Acrobat and Flash Player) with which to enjoy Flash video on your desktop as opposed to in your browser, and 2) A runtime environment (like Sun’s Java for Windows IE) for which developers can build killer Flash applications that take over desktops — in a good way — without requiring separate installations (assuming the AIR runtime is already installed). Videographers will likely be more interested in Answer 1 while Answer 2 has significant implications for Web page designers and engineers. Before we get into detail, please note that, despite the curve required to learn and exploit the AIR studio, FLV video production remains essentially the same and does not require investment in AIR dev tools such as Flex Builder. In other words, FLV files exported from, say, QuickTime Pro will render just as well in AIR desktop apps as from browser-launched SWF files. If you’re a Microsoft Silverlight developer, please substitute WMV for FLV and Expression Studio for Flex. A general analogy, but useful for setting context. Figure 1: Click a show (any show) in Adobe Media Player. THE ADOBE MEDIA PLAYER Like the venerable media players before it, AMP wouldn’t mind being your one-stop solution for desktop video. It does not, however, compete directly with the basic (standalone) QT, WM and Real players. Rather, it antes up at the same high-stakes table as iTunes, Windows Media Center and whatever Real now calls its suite of media services. If you want to play individual FLV clips, you can keep using CS3’s Flash Player, for example, or your favorite free third-party app. Figure 1 depicts the home view of AMP 1.0, which requires AIR and will prompt you to install it or upgrade if necessary. Like iTunes and Media Center, AMP is designed to run full screen and organizes your media into various lists including a catalog of available TV shows sorted by genre, network, recommendation, etc. All your local FLVs show up in your Personal Video list, not all of which may actually play in AMP, based on my experience. Unlike iTunes, AMP does not rip CDs (or DVDs). Nor does it offer an e-commerce storefront. The help text says some videos will be downloaded but the basic MO is streaming. This is consistent with browser-based 40 dv june 2008 Flash and gives Adobe an edge when negotiating for AMP-based content, as anyone who has tried to capture a YouTube video well knows. If well-produced Flash streams didn’t look so good or start playing faster than the competition, this MO would be much riskier in the real world. Overall, AMP looks and feels more like a combination of TiVo and MySpace than a threat to iTunes. It has few if any mediawrangling capabilities and no apparent scriptability for developers (like AIR itself) yet it does demonstrate the fine work Flash video can do with long-form commercial content. Microsoft may be working on IPTV/Media Room for high-quality WMV streaming on a dedicated slice of your incoming bandwidth, but they are still working on it (and trying to convince ISPs of its merits). Flash is delivering TV shows to your living room — if not your car and laptop — right now. AIR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Not surprisingly, the AIR runtime incorporates WebKit (www.webkit.org), the open-source HTML render engine that also powers Safari. This permits construction of sophisticated, standards-based AIR apps as if you were building Web sites. Such a concept might make sense only to Web developers, but it is powerful and liberating. Plus you can use AIR to deploy Flex programs fueled by ActionScript and Adobe’s XML-based UI language. Also supported in AIR dev space are basic window management, local file system and clipboard access, drag-and-drop www.dv.com http://www.webkit.org http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - June 2008 Contents DV Update My Studio Runners World Brevis Flip 35MM Lens Adapter 4160 Soom Tripod System Century Essential-5 Filter Kit Little Big Disk Quadra Instant Expert DXA-2S Adapter Technology Treasures Making What You See Sound Great Click to Play DV 101 Production Diary

Digital Video - June 2008

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