A new web technology is promising to do for video what the web originally did for text. Called Popcorn, it brings interactivity to video. It allows features like explanatory text, links to Google maps, photos and other videos to be synchronised to a video as it plays. The possibilities are endless. While something similar can already be partially achieved using platforms such as Flash, Popcorn uses HTML5, which is built directly into the browser.
To explore the potential of the technology, Canadian director Katerina Cizek used Popcorn.js, together with a 3D graphics technology called WebGL, to create a new documentary. One Millionth Tower explores how two high-rise towers in Toronto could be “re-imagined” by the tower residents, architects and animators.
The web-based documentary allows the user to explore a simple 3D environment and click to view one of six narratives. The environment you see is linked to the current weather in Toronto. If the sky is overcast there, it will be overcast on your screen.
The narrative segments are linked to Wikipedia articles and Flickr photographs that update as people upload more photos.
The documentary itself relies primarily on photos provided by the residents of the tower and audio recordings of their comments. The photos are brought to life through animations incorporated into the narrative. It’s essentially a 3D virtual environment, allowing the viewer to control aspects such as the camera angle.
The project was created using entirely open-source tools. The code for the documentary itself is available for anyone to browse and re-use or re-purpose.
We are used to the idea of multimedia environments, especially those based on the Adobe Flash platform. Multimedia documentaries have been created using Flash, but invariably they are static; all of the resources are stored and accessed when the documentary is viewed. Multimedia released in the past as CDs became less popular because the format could readily be achieved using regular web pages.
The problem with Flash is that it is a proprietary environment, the development tools are expensive and most importantly, it is an environment that is not supported on mobile platforms such as the iPhone and iPad. The problems Adobe had with gaining acceptance for Flash on the mobile platform eventually led to it cease development of the mobile Flash Player.
In the same way that hypertext changed the way we interact with text, augmented video has enormous potential in changing the way we interact with media. By 2012, video will account for 50% of Internet traffic. 35 hours of video are uploaded every minute to YouTube alone. More video is uploaded every 60 days than the three major US television networks produced in the last 60 years.
Granted, a sizeable portion of that video is probably porn. But the ability to annotate video and provide context through interactions with other applications and information sources remains a significant advance, and will provide substantial tools for research collaboration.
One of the key applications that can be integrated into video is social media. Sites such as SoundCloud integrate people’s comments as a recording is playing, synchronising to time points in the playback. The same can be achieved with video using Popcorn. This would be especially useful for news reports (professional or citizen generated) where a Twitter commentary could be synchronised to the actual events unfolding.
The real power of this technology, providing the tools are developed to make authoring and hosting content seamless, will be for the general public who upload their own videos and want to enhance that experience.
Unfortunately, even though there is a tool called Popcorn Maker, it still requires a basic knowledge of layout and some web programming. I experimented with a short video of a skateboarder, adding links to Wikipedia, Google Maps and Twitter. The programming interface is very straightforward but in the end I had to craft the page by hand.
Having said that, this is a new evolution in web technology and Popcorn makes it extremely easy for web developers and designers to use. The capacity for researchers to upload multi-dimensional visualisations of their data and to interact with collaborators and other researchers – who can interrogate, manipulate and comment upon those data – could greatly improve the rate of advances in areas such as crystallography, genetics and astronomy, to name just a few.
The use of this technology in a documentary like One Millionth Tower is a turning point for filmmakers, professional and amateur alike.
One Millionth Tower is screening at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.
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Image Credits: One Millionth Tower
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