April 14, 2006

Flash Video FLV Encoders compared

How do you tell if you are using the right Video Encoder to convert your videos to FLV?

For an overview on the various Video Encoders out there I'd strongly suggest you read the "Selecting a Flash Video Encoder" article in this months Adobe Edge Newsletter.

I'm not saying the Flash Video Encoder that comes with Flash 8 Professional isnt good, its just nice to have a couple options out there when exploring various Video Encoders and I think Elliot Mebane summed it up very nicely.

If you do not have time to read the article, than you should at least explore the real-time FLV comparison for various FLV compression settings at Flash Video FAQ.

Thanks Elliot!

Posted by amusselman at 01:41 PM | Comments (3)

March 29, 2006

NAB 2006 and Flash 8

I will be working at NAB 2006 showcasing Flash 8 and sharing my knowledge with anyone that has a question I can answer for them off the top of my head. I'm curious to know what type of Flash demos you'd be interested in seeing if you were attending.

I'm suspecting NAB 2006 will be different than working at MAX 2005 in Anaheim. My thoughts are people will be asking more questions relating to:

• Vector Animation Techniques (Character Design and Animation)
• Flash Video, Pros and Cons. (Are there cons? ;-))
• Cue Points and how they are used within a project
• Converting a Rich Graphical Interface from Fireworks or Photoshop and putting it all together in Flash.
• After Effects Integration?
• SWF/Image Optimization Techniques
• Skinning Components

I could be completely wrong, but thats fine. I want to make sure I have all the bases covered and prefer to communicate with you/community to get ideas.

If you are attending NAB 2006 and read my weblog, please stop by and say hello. It would be great to meet you in person! If you have anything you think might interesting to showcase, please lemme know!

Wanna know more about Adobe and NAB 2006?

Posted by amusselman at 01:11 PM | Comments (4)

December 12, 2005

Need Inspiration? Check the FWA out:

The Favourite Website Awards site is nothing new for those of you that know about the site and explore their carefully selected Flash-enabled sites from time to time, however, I haven’t checked them out in awhile and I was excited to see a fresh re-design of FWA. The new design offers a clean, scaleable and effective way to explore various sites that were judged for various criteria such as:

• Design 40%
• Navigation 25%
• Graphics 15%
• Content 15%
• Personality 5%

If you’re having a design block or just need to get motivated, I'd highly recommend checking the FWA site out for intelligent, creative and innovative uses of Flash and rich graphical interfaces that create wonderful user experiences.

Posted by amusselman at 10:37 AM | Comments (3)

November 23, 2005

You a BAADMMUG?

If you live in the San Francisco / Bay area, then you are most certainly a BADMMUG. I remember when I first went to a meeting and was looking for the office, when I would ask peeps where the room is they would look at me like I was looking for a Hip hop Artist or something with a low rider, gold chains and all the bling and thats simply not true.

This is a unique and highly motivated group of professionals looking for an extra tip and trick here and there.

Not in San Francisco? At least you can watch the live Breeze Presentation:

http://mmusergroup.breezecentral.com/r42726741/

Note: The presentation will begin at 7:00 PM, PST, that is, West Coast time, which is GMT -8.

I would suggest anyone interested in Flash Detection to try and make this meeting. You can find more details on their site at: http://www.baadmmug.org/

Posted by amusselman at 03:09 PM | Comments (2)

September 02, 2005

Add rounded corners to rectangles in Flash using the keyboard

Way back when, I had an issue with having to double-click the rectangle tool to add rounded corners to a rectangle object in Flash. Not sure who told me at MM at the time, but you can simply hold the mouse button when inserting a rectangle on the stage and hold down the up or down arrow keys to adjust the rounded corners *real-time*!

This was back in the Flash 4 days I believe, maybe it was 5, but anyhoo, I was creating a rectangle with rounded corners and a co-worker asked how i did that without using the prompt.

Thought you might find this tip useful! :)

Posted by amusselman at 03:08 PM | Comments (20)

August 30, 2005

The corpse (bus) that almost hit me!

What's up with traffic today in San Francisco? I thought I'd never hear myself say that being from Texas and having to drive *everywhere* in the city, but walking to work everyday has made me look at traffic in a whole new light and appreciate my surroundings.

I almost got vaporized by the 9AX muni bus in San Francisco while crossing the street at Harrison/6th. While in mid-air, I caught a glimpse of the ad on the bus of terror called "CorpseBride" which is Tim Burton's new movie coming out sometime in the near future.

When I finally got home and calmed down a bit, I had to check the CorpseBride site out and see what the movie was about. One of the interesting things to note here is they have a rich graphical interface for the homepage. So yes, me being a freak, I had to peep at the source and noticed they used Fireworks to slice up the homepage elements with an Enter button to proceed to the Flash site.

I could just be used to this type of workflow, but I really like how this site was put together from beginning to end. Im sure they were on a tight deadline and pressured, so what else would you use? If you can tell me of a better workflow/solution than what they implemented for this type of site, then I'm all ears.

This is what I really like about using the Studio apps is being able to create and express my creativity through graphically rich sites. Pay attention to the detail in the Flash site and be sure to roll your mouse over various elements even if the elements look like they wont move...you'll be surprised.

Can't wait to see what they can do with Studio 8!!

Job well done!

Just realized its time for the Open Studio Discussion. Feel free to join in, its from 7-9PST tonight....er...right now!

Posted by amusselman at 06:55 PM | Comments (3)

July 08, 2005

BlueMetal has been accepted as the Site of the Day for NextStep app

Wow, this is something you dont see everyday on the North America Macromedia site:

A good friend of mine, Giancarlo Vargas Legovic's company BlueMetal, has been accepted as the Site of the Day (América Latina MM site) today for a Flash app they developed recently. For those of you that cant read spanish, here is the Showcase article in English.

Bluemetal is an interactive company, with presence in United States, Chile, Spain and Peru, specialized in the development of solutions for internet and digital means. Its work consists in providing to their creative, strategic and technologic solutions based fundamentaly in the good design, architecture, content and navigation.

This fusion of concepts allows to project the image desired in the internet to obtain the desired results.

On the other hand, Bluemetal counts with the exclusive recognization of Alliance Partner of Macromedia in Peru.

Challenge

• Offers to the parents a much better control on the academic performance of their children without occupying too much time in movements.
• Much better communication between the parent and the profesor.
• Automate the internal management of the school.
• Provides the pupils the tools to control their development and improves the communication with their professors and school mates.
  

Solution

• Flash MX 2004 Pro
• Dreamweaver MX 2004
• Fireworks MX 2004
• FreeHand MX
• FlashComm
• SQL Server 2000
• ASP.NET
• SQLXML

Benefits

For the System

• Scalated solution, meaning, permits the system actualization, adding improvements without cost for the school.
• Solution with high security standars to maintain in safe keeping the school information.
• Counts with an intuitive administration platforms and easy access.
• Permits the access to the information the 24 hours of the day and the 365 days of the year.
• Support on line 24/7
• The solution works under five access levels, meaning, the information shows to the director cannot be seen by the rest of the users, equally form for the parents, professors and pupils.
• Permits to obtain in the time several management modules (optional modules), in accordance with the necessities of each school.
• Solution has been developed with the latest technologic for the internet.

For the School

• Improves and facilitate the communication and coordination between the community members of the school: Directors, professors, parents and pupils.
• Availability of the required information very quickly and simple at any time of the day.
• Assists in the creation of an exclusive community of the school, offering to their members interaction by means of information and resources.
• Place the school amongst the most advance in the implementation and introduction of the new technologies of the management and education.
• Does not require investment in costly servers, exclusive personnel to handle the system nor developments that takes much time and money. It only needs acccess to internet and computers.
• Saves money in impressions, copies and shipments.

For the Parents

• Permiting kept informed on the children activities, in the learning evolution and performance in the school.
• The parents can organize their timetable in accordance with the chronogram of their children and so combinng them much easier.
• Parents will get a more participation in their children education from theis offices and homes: revising notes and assistances, notifications, replying communications, access to the school calendar and much more.

For the Pupils

• Improves communication with the professors and schoolmates.
• Permits a better learning of the new technologic in the internet, knowledgement used in all the spaces, such as studies, work and daily living.
• Promotes the participation of the pupils in the different classes, including in wich have difficult to participate. . Helps to be informed about the educative process and their performance in each stage of the school year.
• Allows to access and request consultation at any time of the day from and computer on activities, works, notes, between others.

For the Professors

• Facility in the communication of the school activities as: events, evaluations, excursions, academic performance, conduct, etc.
• Improves the communication with the pupils, parents and directors of the school. . Permit to insert the professor in the fields of the new technologies.
• Allows the storage and transference of the information, such as files, documents, informations, works, etc., with the pupils and the rest of the community.
• Allows the professor to make agile the classed with the pupils, improving the teaching time.

Good job BlueMetal!! Keep up the excellent work!

Posted by amusselman at 03:36 PM | Comments (1)