Here are a couple of videos I enjoyed during the last months. Innovation is probably one of their common factors.

Toshiba Timesculpture Advert [YouTube]

If A Song Could Get Me You [YouTube] – Marit Larsen [MySpace]

One of the first videos shot with the MK5ii. By Vincent Laforet and his team.
Riverie [Vincent Laforet blog]

2008 Pop-songs in single mix [YouTube] – United State of Pop 2008 – djearworm

(Via Lifehacker)

A Year in Two Minutes [YouTube] – Eirik Solheim

Link: Eirikso.com Photo/screenshot: Eirik Solheim (Also check out A year in 40 seconds [Vimeo])

In the name of design I started my practical (home) exam in Mulitmedia-journalism a Tuesday morning in December. Inspired over the years by a number of slick and shining splash-screens, I knew that I wanted to design a cool hoover (vacuum cleaner) illustration.

Our assignment was to design a website and fill with content for the support group: Menn mot hybelkaniner – Men against dust collecting at home. We had to interview people, come up with tips and techniques for keeping the house clean. Check out a copy of the webpages here on stepheno.net .

I am sorry that all the pages are in Norwegian, and as this was my first Flash video conversion I am not sure how fast they load.

Adding some multimedia content to the more traditional webpages using interactive accessible video. The pages were all designed in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 (which also kept me stuck at school for the software) since I did not have time to code it all raw. (I normally prefer raw-coding instead of WYSIWYG, since I feel you have much more more control.) Considering the site was created in less than I week I am quite pleased with the result, although doing it all over, or with a couple more hours of time I would have made a number of changes.

Joost is another online TV solution. It combines both software and content, with a dosage of advertising.

In April I gave Joost beta my first try. I tried it on a relativly fast PC’s with more than enough bandwidth. But I was constantly disappointed with the CPU usage and bandwidth the program required. Their content then was rather limited, still promising. Not personally owning a machine that managed to use Joost I forgot about it for a couple of months. Now for a couple of weeks I have had access to an Intel Mac and re-downloaded Joost to see a real boost in content and functionality.

The Mac remote works nicely with Joost and really gives the Joost feeling. Being able to provide the wide and impressive content obviously costs, and the ads in between every song or show proves this.
I could quickly now sit hours in front of the Joost-set. With the remote functionality it enhances the TV-feel, and allows you to relax. However I am still figuring out how to customize the content I believe that we will see a lot more of Joost to come.

At a first glance I found Joost’s featured selection more entertaining than Miro’s. With Joost you can’t download anything, but this is not a problem as long as the content remains searchable and accessible. Joost’s main downside for me atm is some of the lengthy advertising, I am find with splashscreens and short ads. But when I start to doubt whether this is an ad or a rogue channel this pulls down the Joost experience. Another Joost negative is the quality, although much better since April, they still have a way to go considering what you see is all transferred more or less “live”.

The “internet tv” and video player Miro, previously known as Democracy has caught my attention lately.

I tried Democracy for the first time more than a year ago. My first impression was OK. Considering the fact that I can’t afford to keep up with the latest hardware updates, I tried it on a little older Mac. This proved the program rather CPU intensive. The concept behind Democracy was a good one however. Being able to subscribe to channels in a podcast type of manner has evidently become a winner.
Being able to “store” the channel material is an advantage over more “live services” such as Joost, since you can pause any time you want. You skip the ads and if you do have low bandwidth you can download the whole episode/show before viewing.

That same success is what Miro has has expanded on. You can obtain HD material which is becoming more in demand.
Miro also offers a BitTorrent service. (Because of rather limited bandwidth I seldom use BitTorrent, but gave it a try with Miro.) The first torrent in Miro worked impressively. Though afterwards I had to pause a download to be able to use my bandwidth for necessities and when I resumed it started downloading from the beginning. In other words it restarted instead of resuming. A quick search online on Miro’s forum proved that others had this problem, and it was not yet resolved.
My main challenge to Miro is help the users find the content, in an even greater manner. I find myself using the content I find in the applications more than outside subscriptions’. Therefore my guess is that if the content is more accessible people will stick to the application. Another Joost-joy I am missing is being able to control Miro via remote.

For Miro’s slightly biased comparison of Miro vs. Joost check out their comparison.

I first heard of Zattoo via TechCrunch, but I did not try it before a couple months ago. With Zattoo, as with some other services I have tested, I believe in trying the application a little more in depth over time before I give a verdict.
There is something about watching TV, next to real time – and not needing a tv-box and traditional receiver. After being introduced to Zattoo the TV in the living-room is only turned on mainly for movies, TV is now watched infront of the computer.

NRK2 live on Zattoo.

Their interface is simple, and offers you Audio and Video P-2-P (Peer-to-peer). The quality varies. Though on the 1.8 mbit/s ADSL line, the picture is decent most of the time. (A couple of mpeg like jolts and pixelations every now and then). As far as content goes, I would be willing to pay for more channels, so I hope Zattoo will be working on a service in that direction.

Apparently since none of the stream/material is stored, they do not run into many of the restrictions that would apply. In addition Zattoo restricts channels geographically. That rises my question what happens if I wanted to access NRK while overseas?
As the activity on Zattoo’s forum demonstrates Zattoo is in high demand and countries around the globe are hoping to have their channels be the next addition. (Øyvind Solstad, working for Norwegian Broadcasting, NRK, met the guys behind Zattoo in Switzerland(?), who told him about expanding Zattoo to Norway to include NRK1 and NRK2. I was overjoyed.)

Another of NRK’s employees’ “inventions” is the multi-camera server recorder.
Normally when capturing video material you can just capture one camera’s stream to the computer/hard disk at a time. So previously when I wanted to capture two cameras live I had to route each camera to a different computer, and then synchronize with TC (timecode). It works, but is a hassle and well for every camera you need a computer with TC and video capture capabilities. (This setup is part of the racks and network we have available at the University, nothing easy to take with you.)

(Video-mixer – for mixing the show live. From POTW 02 2007)

With this invenstion, instead of backing up each video-camera’s content to its own tape, they backup all of the cameras (up to eight – from what I understand) directly to their servers. This way they can see “on-the-fly” whether the backups are being saved as they should. This solution saves them a lot of time and even a whole position while out “in the field” (transportable?). Previously they always needed a person responsible to check that all camera’s were being correctly recorded to the tape decks, the VB position. See the original post at NRKbeta.

Basicly creative use of hard-disk video recorders/servers (EVS?).

A funny and ingenious use of 3d to portray (an imaginative?) reality. This ad for Wilkinson is constructed in the same manner as a recongnizable movie-trailer. And they have followed the “trailer” up with a site familiar to that offered by a mainstream movie. Exploring the characters, goodies, even a downloadable game. The French became a slight barrier for me (Babelfish can’t translate Flash embedded text yet?), but I it does look entertaining. See it here (flash – mov available here.)

Cropped screenshot from the movie-trailer.

(Via Ventilate)

Years ago you perhaps had casett tapes of Genesis and enjoyed their music. I did at least. A couple of months ago in one of our sound production lectures one of the examples our teacher used I beliave was this very Phil Collins song to demonstrate how (noise) Gate was applied to the percussions. This ad is one of my favorites this past half year. View the video at Glassandahalffull (flash – WMV version here.)

Cropped screenshot from Glassandahalffull.com

From a photography and storytelling perspective I think that the creators manage to build a suspension and make the climax unexpected and at the same time fulfulling. Focus and depth of field is used actively in the beginning to establish the atmosphere and reminds me a little of on-the-fly reality zooming/focusing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

DJ Missbeat posted this video a while back. If you enjoy a mixture of good old classics with the new turntable and dj’s this live turntable performance might fascinate you. Usually I am not normally such a turntable supporter, but I liked the beginning of this mix.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The clips are apparently from the C2C DMC team world champions 2003/2004/2005.

Although some music videos are good old classics when it comes to visual effects and motiongraphics there is always a chance that you, like myself have not see them all. So I am going to try and dig up some older music videos that I enjoyed.

This first one, I first saw three or four years ago in Cornelius’ music video for the Fit Song. The video is from director Koichiro Tsujikawa.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Thanks to CDM for reminding me of this music video.)