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Arkaos re-mix of Extreme T

Arkaos have released one of my shorts, Extreme T, as a VJ content pack.

I had to work within their existing pack template promotion for this one but it may be possible to get them to market content as re-mixable films directly. I've labelled this as such in the credits anyhow...

https://www.arkaos.net/shop/details.php?p_selected=67

Subtitling as machine-readable labelling?

Mark Robinson at subtitling company Independent Media Support (http://www.ims-media.com) gave the following useful information:

*Captioning/subtitling software is normally provided bespoke by companies such as SysMedia (http://www.sysmedia.com) and SofTel (http://www.softel.co.uk).

*Subtitling is normally farmed out to specialist companies. Only a few of the major broadcasters (BBC, etc.) keep it in house.

*It should be theoretically possible for the text normally sent to the monitor/screen to be diverted to another application for further processing (and so the text becomes the machine-readable label for each element), although he has never heard of it being done before.

Also spoke to John Boulton at Sysmedia, who explained the following:

*Subtitles are generated from the data not as text within a template, but as bitmaps. The larger part of the application is processing that conversion.

The Switch

The Switch is envisaged as a DJ/VJ interface to the film, allowing for malleable properties to be automated and controlled from 3rd party performance tools and other software.

At first glance, the most pragmatic way of approaching this is to develop The Switch as a ReWire application.

http://www.propellerheads.se/technologies/rewire/index.cfm?fuseaction=displaymain

Director's platform

My revised brainstorm of what I'd like to see in a SANCTUARY prototype around Groover and Switch.

The aim of the platform is to demonstrate the fun and potential of the concept whilst building as little as possible.

Inspiration from Akio Morita, co-founder SONY

As a manager, marketer and brander, Morita brought Western ways to Japan and Japanese ways to the world. When the “pocket-sized” transistor radio Sony first developed turned out to be too large for a man’s shirt pocket, Morita sent salesmen out in shirts with specially-made deeper pockets.

The following uses terms explained in the Glossary.

PERFORMANCE FUNCTIONALITY

Certain functionality is desirable for performing the re-mixable film experience

• Flexible CONTROLLER LAYER mapping - groove tracks playable from multiple input devices
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse
  • MIDI controller (e.g. Oxygen 8)
  • Game input (e.g. joystick)
  • Motion tracker (e.g. webcam)
  • Pressure sensor (e.g. dance mat)

• Invisible interface - hide/reveal interface elements in the PRESENTATION LAYER, but not "fake" cinema elements.
  
• Dual monitor support - display interface elements on a separate monitor
  
• Adjustable Tempo - variable playback rate which can be set by typing in a value or tapping a key
  
• Groove autoplay - playback of the current groove with a single key
  
• Asset library - browse and load capability to select assets from disk or online (via a cache mechanism)
  
• Ability to edit/replace assets in off-the-shelf applications like Flash and Final Cut Pro.
  
• Client/server messaging. Facility for GROOVER to receive and send control events as XML via the network.
  
• Access to "easy" EFFECTS like Flash standard functionality
  
  
  
  • Pan
    
  • Zoom
    
  • Rotate
    
  • Skew
    
  
  
• Ability to limit playback of any asset based on it being triggered at the appropriate time (the right Note). This is optional. A set of default events will be triggerable despite success/failure of rhythm game.
  
• Variable level of difficulty setting. Ability to fuzzy match controller events to Notes with a varying degree of accuracy to help rhythm-impaired users.
  
• Scoring capability based on success in matching the groove track with input.
  
• Each groove contains conditional logic to switch to a new groove based on success/failure to match the groove.
  
• Migration path to port (Flash) Groover prototype to a higher performance engine (e.g. Director, Virtools, Renderware).
  
• Asset compatibility with Arkaos (e.g. Flash text assets)