Interactive Media

Introduction-
In this essay I shall be talking about the interactive media of today and how it is used. Firstly what is interactive media, well interactive media is a form of media which can be interacted with for example the red button on your television, or user generated media all of these platforms, uses, and technologies will be explained thoroughly in this essay

Platforms-
A platform is simply a stage for interactive media to be placed on or within over the many years platforms for media have grown considerably where there was once only one or two platforms there are now tons all of which give us access to varying kinds of interactive media text.

Possibly the biggest platform at present is the World Wide Web, the Web has proved itself extremely popular with the youth of today and is also reaching older generations aswell, quite simply the internet is a fantastic tool for the media industry. Most anything can be viewed on the Web from video hosting sites to catch up TV players the Web is fantastic and has allowed many people to become famous through such video virals which I shall come to later.

Another popular platform is email attachments which can also be tied in with the Internet as without it email would not exist. An email attachment is often a web link or file which when clicked opens on a website or computer video player for example windows media player. Email attachments are sent from one person to another abit like an online text message.

DVD’s are in a disc format but are now becoming a dying platform for media, the reason their popularity is on the decrease is because of the sale of Blu-rays, blu-ray is to a higher quality than DVD and is now beginning to take over the market, however despite this the two are basically the same thing they usually feature a film along with a menu containing extras such as director interviews and behind the scenes, DVDs are normally played on a television but can also be played on a computer.

The next platform I wish to talk about is CD ROM a CD ROM normally contains educational information and fun interactive games usually to be used in schools to get others educated in a more exciting and memorable form, a CD ROM is played on a computer as it is in a disc format.

Now we are moving on to a considerably smaller platform, which I believe is on the rise, this platform is kiosks. Kiosks are generally situated in large towns or cities to provide information such as maps and nearby attractions, kiosks are extremely useful for anyone who is in a place they have never been before as they have easy access to anything they need to know about their current location.

Presentations are a similar platform to CD ROM’s however presentations are saved in files on a computer rather than a disc, a presentation is normally used in education to direct pupils, but is also poplar for many other things such as business meetings and lectures.

A more recent and extremely different platform is the TV click through or as some refer to it as the red button, this allows us to access information about the show we are watching and is becoming more and more interactive for example you can now vote on programmes such as the X-factor just by pressing the red button. The red button has also been used with quiz shows so you can play along while watching the quiz show, in my opinion the red button is one of the most playful platforms for interactive media.

Mobile Devices such as phones, PDA’s and games consoles are yet another recent platform, one of the best examples of this would be the iphone with is app function, apps are small programmes containing games or information and show how versatile a product can be for interactive media, another fantastic example would be the xbox 360 and its function to watch sky TV via the games consoles. Mobile devices are now becoming more than just a phone or console they are becoming unique platforms for interactive media all within themselves.

So as you can see here there are many platforms for interactive media, and also you can see the different genres of interactive media and how they merge next I will be moving onto talk about different uses of video within interactive media.

Uses of Video in Interactive Media-
The title of this section n sums it all up these are the genres and uses of video within the interactive media all of which are very dominant in their own way.

Short films have grown in popularity over the years, where once ago a director may have created a short film and left it on a shelf to collect dust they can now host it all over the web, this is also a useful way for up and coming directors to get recognised possibly resulting in feature films. Many people however have become online celeberaties or favourites via their work people such as David Firth the creator of the hugely popular Salad Fingers series which has reached a large amount of hits on video host sites.
Here is an example of David Firths work with Salad Fingers.


Another similarly popular form of video is promotional material, this could be anything from an advert for the latest chocolate bar to a music video, and once again the internet has proved a helpful resource, we do see adverts on TV of cause and also music videos but now these adverts can be uploaded to the online database forever so rather than music videos getting old or adverts being forgotten they can remain just as popular on the internet for long periods of time.

Film Trailers are closely linked to promotional material and are strictly the same thing however trailers have few more places they can be hosted. A popular platform for trailers for example is DVD and blu-ray they are often place on these discs as extras to add a little bit more content to the disc.

Now we come to the most recent form of video in interactive media, this is of course user generated content, this is content made by ordinary members of the public and is most commonly and currently only found on video host websites such as youtube. One of the most common user generated video genres would be vlogs, these are basically video blog or online diaries that people keep to let others all over the globe what they have been up to. User generated content is my favourite style of video in interactive media as it shows that anyone can produce fantastic work in terms of a short films or video virals.

Video Virals are one of the oddest forms of video in interactive media the most popular being the famous Charlie bit me clip which has reached over 1 billion hits on youtube alone. Virals can often however turn out to be marketing, this is called viral marketing, a fantastic example of this would be the bike hero video which was just a fun idea by a group of friends but in a way it promotes guitar hero as the video carries the themes used in the popular game.
Charlie Bit Me the biggest video viral of all time shown below.


Advertising is another more common form of video but not just in the form of hosting on video sites, advertising can come in banners on a page to help promote the product, banners are small boxes on a page which contain an advertisement. But as we have mention already there are many more forms of advertising such as viral marketing and promo videos.

A slightly different type of video within interactive media is games. Personally I debate whether this is a video genre or something completely different, however despite this it is highly interactive as you take control of everything that happens particularly on console games such as halo or gears of war. Games can also be on the platform of the internet though under flash games. Flash games are short simple games designed to pass the time, another online gaming presence is MMORPG’s this stands for massive multiplayer online role playing game possibly the most successful being world of warcraft where players can not only interact with the game but also other players from all over the globe.

Finally an educational video use this is known as E-learning, E-learning can be anything from a website such as bitesize to a fun interactive educational flash game. E-learning is slowly growing in popularity some sites have proven worthy of improving pupils exams scores and so on, the internet is a wondrous platform and tool for anyone.

There we have it listed there are just a few of many styles and genres of uses of video in the interactive media, these show the wide spectrum we are working on from viral clip to world of warcraft all of it is included in the uses of interactive media. Next I shall be talking about video in interactive media technologies.

Video in Interactive Media Technologies-
This title is more complex to understand this simply means the technologies used in the interactive media world things such as bandwidth and codec’s all come under this heading.

One technology that is very help particularly for user generated content would be Video Compression. Video Compression is where the quantity of data in a video is reduced so that videos can be uploaded more efficiently to the internet, video compression is also common for TV.

Codec’s are another technology used when sending or purchasing video a codec is like a key as you need the codec to decode the video when it is receive but you need to encode it when sending. However no compression of the video takes place during the sending of a video attached with a codec.

We now move to answer a question that perhaps you have always wondered the difference between streaming and downloading. Well streaming is listening to or watching video online via a site such as youtube. Downloading however is where the video is taken from the internet and saved as a file.

Talking about files there are many file types the four most common however are MPEG, AVI, MOV and WMV all of which have their own uses and properties on a computer MPEG for example deals with DVDs and other larger files it stands for Motion Picture Experts Group as this is the group of people responsible of creating the MPEG format.
AVI or Audio Video Interleave which is simple the basic file types for video on windows much the same with MOV which is primarily used on apple Macs. Finally WMV a very popular file type and the easiest to use when uploading video WMV more commonly known as windows movie video is a compressed media file used by Microsoft and will on work on media players associated or created by windows.

How does your computer decide how long it takes to download a file well that is down to bandwidth this is the speed in which data is transmited between two devices most commonly this is measured in kilobytes or megabytes per second.

Much like data transfer video has its own speed to play at this is called the frame rate it is expressed as FPS frames per second, for example a slow motion clip will have a smaller frame rate than a sped up clip.

The quality of the video all depends on the resolution, a resolution is how many pixels are in the video or image HD television or video clips contain a humungous amount of pixels to maintain there high quality standards.

And of cause the size of a video is determined in KB, MB, GB or possibly even TB all of which are measurement of file size. To put it simply there are 1000 KB in a MB 1000 MB in a GB and so on.

Picture ratio is the size of the video most common is 16:9 however ratios such as 4:3 and 3:2 are also used these determine the size of the viewing window it mean 16 something by 9 something, it can be to any measurement inches, metres, centimeteres anything counts as long as it is within the desired aspect ratio.

Now how do we watch or play these videos, well certain files work with certain media players, DVD is even a media player as it is a platform for MPEG files to play on, another slightly different media player would be an iplayer this is essentially online TV, it is used for anyone who has missed a programme on TV to catch up with it a very useful and popular tool for both user and industry. QuickTime, Windows Media Player and Real are however on the computer there they are not streaming or being played via disc these are just three examples but I’m sure there are thousands of media player out there capable of supporting many file types and sizes.

Finally Embedding and Tagging, Embedding is the process of taking an HTML code from the internet and pasting it somewhere else this could be another website or maybe even a presentation on the computer, tagging is how the video is found for example if I tagged a video as viral clip when someone searched the term online or on youtube my video would be likely to appear.

Conclusion-
As you can obviously see the interactive media is huge and ever expanding but what will be the next big thing we have already seen viral clips or motion recognition on the Wii. What could the next thing possibly be, I personally see it as 3D video, 3D is now common in cinema and I feel that soon enough it will move into the internet and user generated world possibly with special cameras to record 3D, but who knows we can only wait and see what the interactive media has in store for us next.