Flash for a big screen tv

[pagetta]

We have a stand at a major exhibition and the company want to run a 3 minute demo on a 42" tv continually through the day. The idea is to use a combination of flash and video - problem being i'm not very experienced in flash and video!

We have a videographer who can shoot and edit all the relevant clips to import into flash etc etc that bit is fine - but then how do you export so that the video keeps its resolution on a 42" screen?!

I currently have flash mx 2004 - if i have flash cs3 will this allow me to export HD video clips that retain their resolution on a big screen? or can I do this with normal high res video in earlier versions of flash? thanks for your help!

fiona

[ran_dizolph]

Hey Pagetta,

I undertook a similar project a year or so ago, and from the sounds of things had about the same level of experience in flash/video you do.

The thing with TV's is that video does not have to be high res.

Just build your flash project the exact size the TVs res. is, and you'll be fine (for example, mine was on a wide screen plasma @ 1024px X 576px).

I seem to have lost my bookmarks to some sites that had helped me out, but if you do some googling, I"m sure you can find some more info.

Hope this helps.

[Aydin]

Curious as why Flash is needed. I'm sure the videographer could do a great job creating what you need.

[charlierobot]

I made a software to deal exactly with this, its called Instore TV :: Digital Signage Solution : Software - it enables you to play all movie formats, flash, jpegs and powerpoints.

Instore TV :: Digital Signage Solution : Software

[brentan0]

@Aydin
Hey you're really onto something. I'm sure whatever images, text and other resources Pagetta's planning to include in the presentation, she can just print them out, and the videographer can hold each printed page in front of his lens while he plays background music into the audio port.

Developing video content in Flash isn't the ideal environment for every application, but it's a pretty robust platform for integrating video, audio, still images, text and vector graphics. And if the client then wants to repurpose the presentation for the web, it's often an easy translation.

Sure, many video production houses have their own tools to perform the same function. But it seems a condescending question to ask why Flash is "needed." If it's a tool that will get the job done, if it's a platform Pagetta's comfortable with, and if the client wants Pagetta to develop their solution, then it'd be hard to argue that the client ought to seek a different provider just to satisfy your bias for Avid, or AfterEffects, or whatever the preferred video production tool is in Alberta these days.

[ESLI]

We had the same problem at our companies trade shows (ISC). We were using a 52” LCD TV/Monitor and had problems, until! We found the video wall. This is the answer to most of your questions. I have included a link for you to take a look at.

LCD VIDEO WALL

Michael

Hope this helps

[RHunt]

Originally Posted by Aydin

Curious as why Flash is needed. I'm sure the videographer could do a great job creating what you need.

Exactly my thoughts. I've been involved with video production for 35 years. Why flash? If you want the small footprint for web use later, convert it. For a trade show I really don't think HD is necessary...it's content to capture attention (content...that little word that keeps popping up). Although HD is fairly economical these days. If you're shooting from scratch go with HD. If you're using stock footage that may not be HD, don't worry about it. Good luck!

[juliansr]

I cant believe how many people are trying to offer up third party solutions to a question that was answered correctly in the first post...use the TV's resolution. If you are going to run it form a laptop, use whatever resolution the laptop and TV will agree on without aspect issues. You set your flash document resolution in the properties panel at the bottom of the application screen (default).

High-Definition Display Resolutions
Resolution (WxH) Pixels Aspect Ratio Video Format Description

1024×768 786,432 16:9 (non-square pixels) 720p/XGA Used on PDP HDTV displays with non square pixels

1280×720 921,600 16:9 720p/WXGA Used on Digital television, DLP, LCD and LCOS projection HDTV displays

1366×768 1,049,088 16:9 720p/WXGA - HDTV standard format Used on LCD/PDP HDTV displays (HD Ready, HD Ready 720p,1080i)

1024×1080 1,105,920 16:9 (non-square pixels) 1080p Used on PDP HDTV displays (Full HD, HD Ready 1080p)

1280×1080 1,382,400 16:9 (non-square pixels) 1080p Used on PDP HDTV displays (Full HD, HD Ready 1080p)

1920×1080 2,073,600 16:9 1080p - HDTV standard format Used on all types of HDTV technologies (Full HD, HD Ready 1080p)

4096x2160 8,847,360 16:9 2160p DCI Cinnema 4k standard format Quad HDTV, (there is no HD Ready 2160p Quad HDTV format)

You can google or Wiki the rest, i hope.

Anyway...once you make your FLA set to these dimensions, the exported video, etc will be the appropriate resolution. Using the NATIVE resolution of the TV will give you the best picture overall.

As to the "why flash" question...

how do you videotape a powerpoint?

How do you interact with a pre-recorded video?

Flash has more bells and whistles like being able to thread live video through itself while playing a pre-recorded one to give both a live and pre-recorded experience in one screen, complete with the potential for using changes in the atmospheric video (via Bitmap array mathematics) to create live responses in the Flash one, or even just have simple butten state interactions that show guided content based on realtime curiosity of visitors to your booth. Do that with your handicam!

Peace,
Julian Santa-Rita

//who has had to do this for tradeshows too
p.s.
if you e-mail me i'll send you my FLA's for example
juliansr@mwyusa.com

[subsystems]

Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.
I don't have any direct experience with doing exactly what you are asking about. But I have run into issues that could be embarrassing in a public forum.

Make sure the PC or Laptop has more than enough CPU power, RAM and HDD speed to handle the entire presentation without any jerks or delays from one scene to the next.
Make sure the computer is physically secure so that somebody doesn't try to play with it before the presentation. Practical jokes or a small unattended child could be a show stopper and bosses won't be pleased.
Most people struggle with laptop touch pads, go for a real mouse so you can fix things quickly if something goes wrong.
These issues alone may justify burning the presentation to a Blu-Ray or HD/DVD and play it that way. Vastly reducing Murphy's Law. Investors like to see things go without a hitch and that other attendees are impressed. Nobody will care why you have glitches, they will just remember you did. There is something magical about dropping a disk in a player that was computer generated on site that lets people's imaginations run wild as to what was used to create the show. Let them think that it took a room full of computers working for a month to create it. You become the wizard in their minds.

The audio needs to be much louder than you would expect if it is going to fill a large room clearly. When I got married recently I tried to use my home surround sound system to play music in the dance hall. Although the system was loud as heck in our living room at home, the dance hall was much much bigger than we anticipated and at full volume it sounded more like a pocket radio across the room. I know that PA systems can be rented and sized for the room. Since you will want to grab the emotions of the audience you will likely want some musical score in your presentation that is dramatic. You'll want to do some tests before hand to make sure the sound system and music gives you the results you want. Things that sound great on a pair of crappy computer speakers may sound very different on a quality sound system in a different environment. You may also want several speakers placed around walls of the room so that you can have the volume at a decent level everywhere. It can be a problem if you only have speakers located next to the display because they will have to be turned up to excessive volume to reach the opposite end of the room. What sounds like a weak sound system across the room could actually be at hearing damage levels up close. Think about theaters. They place speakers all around the room because if they didn't, nobody in the front row would be able to hear after the movie.

Others may have more specific experience and can guide you better to exactly what you need.

[RegDCP]

Camtasia studio can export movies in any resolution for display as flash or streaming video.

Stills can be intertwined with video and even desktop actions can be captured.

Sound can be added.

Reg

[minorgod]

The first poster on this thread was basically right. If you're bringing in video, just make sure your movie size is set to whatever your TV resolution will be. The resolution of your Flash movie is only important for the video or rasterized (bitmap) graphics that you use in Flash. Any native graphics and text that you create within flash are totally resolution independent and can basically scale to any size.

No traditional video solution will give you the versatility that Flash video will, but you may not need that versatility for your application, but if you're planning on using Flash, then you probably already know why you want to use it. I'm sure you could pay a videographer to put some titles and effects on your video and export it to an AVI for you, but that still gives you no control over the player interface, looping, or other programatic issues that may be associated with creating your standalone application. It sounds like you're on the right track. Just create everything at your target TV resolution. If this is for standard TV resolution you can use 640x480 and it will look great. If you are doing HDTV it will generally be either 1280x720 (for 720p) or 1920x1080 (or 1080p). Be sure you know the exact output resolution so you can totally avoid scaling your final movie. Scaling during playback will reduce the quality and can drastically degrade playback performance on slower machines (causing stuttering during video playback).

For more info on resolutions, check out Display resolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[pagetta]

thanks for all the help there! We were going to use flash because we are an in house marketing department in a B2B company and we don't have anyone with after effects skills, or anything other than flash. Also it will be predominantly animation and text, with some video integrated into certain parts.

I realise its predominantly made to create interactive pices for the web, and so isn't designed to output to a tv screen, but we have to work with the resources available - I am looking into after effects but I don't know if I will have time to learn it.

So basically if I make the flash movie at the pixel size of a 42" screen? The thing is I tried this with making it to the full size of my PC screen, but when i published the movie the resolution had all gone - how do I import the movie into flash and then publish the movie without losing any resolution?!

(NB: HD Footage isn't vital but our product manager shoots weddings spare time and has all the equipment to shoot in HD - is it better for him to shoot NOT in HD though if using Flash MX 2004?)

Thanks again guys!

[NetLinksCorp]

Hello…

I have done several of this, some as long as 10-15 minutes – I found Flash for none web based presentation to be too convoluted – We normally used sWish (sWishZone) – As far as resolution it’s all relevant to the type of connection between the screen and PC

*If you are using VGA (D-15) then
The ideal resolution is the screen native or MAX in this connection platform not necessarily the screen max resolution in HDMI or Component Video

*If your video Card has Component or HDMI output I would consider 1366 by 768 or 1920 by 1080... (If the screen can go there!)

[juliansr]

If your videographer shoots in HD that's fine. You'll get best quality if you reference the video file into the flash with LoadMC (defunct:LoadMovie) instead of embedding it. it will be played without having to be compressed by sorensen spark (and so, at the resolution/size you specify in flash). Embedding it will ruin your resolutions for rasters and video, even if you chose the highest raster quality when you go to publish (you should definitely be using highest quality publish settings, check those too). Any video input resolution will work, as you can scale or otherwise manipulate the incoming video the same way you would scale/color/mask/rotate any MC object in flash. Pretty Rad stuff. Loading Movie clips is blindly done ...since it wont show the movie until published...but if you know what size and location to set in the properties dialog, it can be as exactly positioned as you like. I sometimes setup a dummy MC on the video layer for arrangement purposes that has the same dimensions i want from my vid and load the MC into that target MC with actionscript.

Timing is also harder to do blind, but nothign a few blank frames here or there won't fix. (video length in seconds x flash movie framerate = time as flash frames)

It's not a professional video tool. Complex video action slows it down tons. Otherwise for most multimedia presentations it scales cleanly to any size i've ever tried. Frames may skip when flash is loading huge files <so preloading your video is a sharp move> or trying to render overly compley animations (multiple color and shape tweens over each other)

Academic: HD has a framerate of ~29 frames/second for 1080p and upto 60 for 720p (1080i and 720i are not mentioned because interlacing is lower quality)720p is able to be played faster and therefore show sports and hummingbirds better. 1080 is slower fps but higher resolution...better for panoramas and detailed images.

ANY FRAME RATE YOU SET YOUR FLASH TO IS FINE, but know that you WILL HAVE A LIMIT and that if you get the framerates matched you will not miss any frames. I use 15fps because it renders faster and is divisible into the framerates of both 720 and 1080. If you want the HD video to play full quality (not skipping frames) then set your FLA to the same framerate as the HD movie and it will be shown as such. 15FPS looks good enough for me and most passive tradeshow viewers.

Rant:As for Flash being a web-only platform...that's bollocks. It's grown up a whole lot from it's humble web-banner beginnings. It's on cell-phones, has an extensible object oriented java-derived coding language, etc. It's main limitation is with more complex animations that require lots of layered effects to be rendered...especially when they are overlaid over video or otherwise complex motion graphics. For cleanly laid-out prentations it's a marvel. It's highly portable and fast if use it to do what it does best.

i'll shut up now.

[juliansr]

xxxxxxx

[charlierobot]

The Instore TV system makes it easy to play any file format - Mpeg, AVI, Flash, Jpegs, Text - you just upload and the client player will perfectly resize to the screen.

Instore TV :: Digital Signage Solution : Software

[kgun]

Originally Posted by pagetta

We have a stand at a major exhibition and the company want to run a 3 minute demo on a 42" tv continually through the day. The idea is to use a combination of flash and video - problem being i'm not very experienced in flash and video!

We have a videographer who can shoot and edit all the relevant clips to import into flash etc etc that bit is fine - but then how do you export so that the video keeps its resolution on a 42" screen?!

I currently have flash mx 2004 - if i have flash cs3 will this allow me to export HD video clips that retain their resolution on a big screen? or can I do this with normal high res video in earlier versions of flash? thanks for your help!

fiona

My boldings.

I don't see the problem. Why not buy a digital video camera like Soney DCR-SR72 with 25x Optical zoom megapixel, Black light, 60 Gb harddisk and sound recorder?

Then edit your dvd movies with a program like Windows Moviemaker.

You can show the movie on any Tv screen using a DVD player or even on your web page.

In addition, there is nothing fundamentally new with a dvd movie file. Reduced to it's least common denominator it is a bitstream that can be uploaded and linked to on any webpage.

Related WPW links:

Which digital (video) camera do you recommend?

Can anyone recommend a good video editing software

Was this off topic or did you want to make it more complicated than it is?

[ran_dizolph]

Was this off topic or did you want to make it more complicated than it is?

She said right off the bat that they have a videographer. Didn't sound to me like she's shopping for a video camera or a video editing suite.

I'm not so sure why most posts here are trying to provide her with third-party solutions to answer a relatively simple question.

Like I said in my first post, simply build the flash project to be the resolution of the screen it is to be displayed on, import the video into flash, and voila. It works. Don't worry if it looks a little wonky on your computer monitor.

Build a small test application and run it on the TV and you'll see. You may need to play around a little bit.