The Multimedia Ninja

I’ve been looking into online presentation tools over the back few months, and have decided to do an organized spreadsheet for you all.

Hopefully it’ll help you decide which tool is best for you, I think you’ll be surprised at my findings.

Yes, I’m here…in Austin, TX….rockin’ it and sparking it sideway! Best Interactive conference in the world.

I’ll be blogging on knowledge I’ve acquired later.

So here’s the deal everybody, as you probably already know….I’m not a “pop the hood” kind a guy, I’m a driver baby!  Well, not literally, I suck at driving..anyway, I digress.  Want to race?  I’m talking about things like…programming as opposed to coming up with the ideas or working on the user experience (you know the fun stuff).  I enjoy designing, making videos and music, etc. but I do need things to work and I love interactive projects.

One of my pet peeves is re-inventing the wheel.  Also, maintaining sites is not on my list of things I like to do.  The client should do that themselves, don’t ya think there tough guy?  It’s their voice and it’s there business, not mine.  So I like to empower them to update their own content withOUT having to know code.  Just some basic computer skills and some training on a CMS (content management system) and bada-bing…they’re on their way and they’re not calling me to change the “there” to “their”.  Making sense there Tiger?

With that said, what kind of CMS do I recommend?  Well, the free kind of course.   It has to be good, free (preferred) and easy for them to update their site with.

There are many CMS engines out there but the one I have fallin’ in love with … well, not literally you freaks… what?  I like Wordpress because it’s got a community that seems to be endless.  Thousands of plug-ins to soup up your content and how it’s delivered.  The back-end admin is extremely well-done and they are improving it all of the time.  I still can’t believe something this powerful is free.

Go here to see what I’m (and everyone else is) talking about:

http://www.wordpress.org

Now, you could puss out and go to wordpress.com and sign-up for a blog, but don’t do that.  What you want to do is install it onto your server.  That way you can install what you want and have total control.  Your own theme (look-and-feel), templates, plug-ins, widgets…whatever.  Now if you don’t know what those things are, I recommend you research what Wordpress is, what is does and how it could help you save a lot of money.

For those of you who already have Wordpress and need to figure out how to update your new site or blog, then I recommend watching this video.  Also, you can send it to your clients to watch after you’ve install Wordpress on their server and charged them too much.

There are a crap ton of these “how to” vids out there, but this one seems to make the most sense and is easy to follow. Got it? Good…start watching .

NOTE: I recommend clickin gon the HQ button to watch it in High Quality.

OK, now this may seem like a simple process but it’s not if you don’t have the code. I’m not a programmer there tough guy…don’t claim to be one, don’t want to ever be one…in fact, the less I program the happier I am.

The days of making apps without calling propeller heads who are typically socially hard to deal with, are over my friends (anyone remember Director?).

Yeah, I said it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love programmers…let me say that again, I love me some GOOD RELIABLE programmers. Rare you say? Well, yes actually.

But I hate depending on people, and also don’t like paying someone if I don’t have to. Importing an FLV into Flash and saying “loop” shouldn’t be that hard, right? I literally banged my head against the wall trying to figure it out but I’m here to tell all of you fine people how to do, to save the walls of the world, and the heads.

1. OK, first thing’s first Tiger. Compress your video into FLV format.

2. Import it into your library, use “progressive”

3. Place it on your stage and name the instance “vid”

4. On the same frame, or on your “Actions” frame, add this code:

var vidList : Object = new Object();
vidList.complete = function() {
vid.play();
}
vid.addEventListener (“complete”,vidList);
stop();

5. Save and publish.  Then commence the high-five tradition with the office.

_____

I use this technique for looping backgrounds, to online Flash banners. I hope it finds you well…..before insanity hits.

Good luck and may the force be with you young grasshopper!

–MN

With the ample amount of free services like YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler to showcase videos and movies, I’ve been asked several times to help explain how to prepare one’s video for upload.  They all have size limitations, but as we all know, video can be extremely large in filesize.

Hopefully this “how to” tutorial will give you the right steps in getting your video ready for uploading.

Hello my young grasshoppers, welcome to my dojo.  I’ll be posting tips, tricks and my professional, and no so professional opinion on Multimedia Development.

Stay tuned!