QR Magic

QR (Quick Response) codes may not sound like an online video subject but in fact a large proportion of those in use exist to bring a video up on a mobile device. Let's take a second to get caught up (if you aren't already) on their history and future.The following is lifted from the i-nigma.com website:

QR codes - It all started in 2002 with the Japanese network carriers (NTT DoCoMO, J-Phone) handset makers (Panasonic, NEC, SHARP), and a number of service companies (Denso, MediaSeek, 3GVision) collaborating to create innovative uses for the new cameras in mobile phones. Their favorite idea was an idea to turn a camera phone into a barcode scanner, delivering encoded information - including URLs that could connect direct to the mobile internet.
The style of barcode that was adopted is called QR (short for Quick Response) and five short years later, QR codes are recognized by over 90% of Japanese mobile users - and used by over 50% of them - for fast and easy access on the move to encoded information on the internet. More people in Japan now surf the web from a mobile phone than from a PC and QR codes are found everywhere - in advertising and promotional materials, on product packaging and vending machines - to deliver "Quick Response". The Japan Story - 3Gvision's barcode reader, now called i-nigma was developed to be pre-installed in handsets supplied by all of Japan's major mobile manufacturers - in collaboration with them - to the specification of the Japanese network operators. As a result, this barcode reader has become the standard for camera phones in Japan - in over 80 million handsets, with over 90% market share - creating a marketplace phenomenon that the rest of the world is now embracing.

 There are many code scanners available for mobile devices, some supporting multiple platforms and some not. The "i-nigma" scanner is the third I've installed on my Blackberry Torch, and by far the fastest. Knowing its adoption in Japan makes me comfortable with the choice. Their site offers, in addition to the scanner itself, a page for creating free QR codes of your own. The one that appears below links directly to a YouTube video made recently to help sell an RV.



If you have a scanner installed on your mobile device please give it a try - and even better if you leave a comment about the result. If you don't yet have a scanner onboard the i-nigma is a great start, free of concerns about unwanted hitchhikers on the file. Unlike my former favourite, i-nigma only offers to scan for you. There are no other live links to software you might download in error.

More Viddler

I've been reading the help section of the Viddler site, getting to know my likely next online video hosting platform provider. Because I can, I'm going to use this post as a host for embedding the one video I have on their server to date - just to see how their embed code presents the player.

Hello World

    Let's just say it's been a while. Something I stumbled on this Super Bowl morning made me return to the blog. YouTube claims that every second of every day, one hour of video is uploaded to their servers. They have created a website to graphically illustrate the fact, at onehourpersecond.com/ I'm not sure it's worth the pixels involved but that's your call. It did remind me of where I've been video-wise for some of the missing nearly a year since my last post.
    I've lost two system drives in two separate PCs since mid-December. I have an infection in my video editing platform that is likely to require a reformat of that system drive. This latter issue caused me to think about the video software I'd choose to install on a blank drive.  Change is constant as we all well know. Last week my video hosting platform of choice, Veeple, announced its demise. I don't have a ton of material on their server but enough to make having to move it less than welcome. I'm sorry too that Doug Broomfield and the crew at Veeple weren't able to attract financing or partners to keep a great application online. Veeple, as I blogged about long ago, offered the option of adding interactivity to digital video - clickable icons that took the viewer out of the video to present other material, then brought her back. They aren't alone in the space but they did it elegantly in my view. Right now I'm checking out Viddler, who don't offer that same functionality, but do serve your file in multiple formats, including mobile, which is, likely thanks to iPad, becoming a bigger issue for video makers than it seemed likely to be a year ago.
    Skip this paragraph if you aren't posting video online. The Viddler trial provides a URL for video you upload. That single URL works on multiple devices, seemingly detecting the device type and serving an appropriate file format. The one video I've uploaded since beginning the trial period I've viewed on a PC and a Blackberry, using the same URL in each case. Try it if you're so inclined: Buy my friend's RV
    So, what software to install? I have used Adobe Premiere for nearly a decade and Photoshop for longer. Both have little brothers called "Elements", currently at version 10. I yesterday installed and worked with Premiere Elements (trial), specifically to test its usefulness in creating video from still images. For a few years I've been using "Imaginate" from  what was Canopus when I purchased it. Imaginate delivered the "Ken Burns Effect" to digital video, making panning and zooming quick and simple with sufficiently large still images. Each sequence could be exported as an avi, then brought into Premiere and added to the timeline. Like my favourite stand-alone green screen app, Ultra 2, the Imaginate technology was swallowed up and taken off the market, integrated into a larger software suite, and upgraded to HDV capability when DV was supplanted by HDV in the camcorder world. Thanks to Premiere Elements, it is now possible for a C note to export to HD frame sizes video made by animating still images - with multiple video and audio tracks, titling and effects. For another $50 one may add the Photoshop version of Elements to the purchase. Just as Moore's Law has steadily and dramatically improved desktop editing at ever lower prices, software developments like these two apps have made the process so much better and easier for in this case a quarter of the price I paid a dozen years ago to put a proprietary (Canopus DV Raptor) Firewire card into a PC, so I could capture digital video from a Sony DV camcorder. The card and the camera cost two thousand together, far more than an editing PC needs to cost today.
    I need a bit more time with Elements before drawing firm conclusions about its place on my clean hard drive. It seems to render very slowly, and one export format failed consistently. If I can fix these issues I'm definitely sold.