Multidimensional photos

From TED: using photos scraped from around the Web, Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft shows Photosynth and Seadragon creating amazing multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features.




Also compelling is venture capitalist John Doerr on climate change and investment in technology.

Innovation in web video players

Innovation in web video players, and meta-players, is covered in recent articles, with CinemaTech providing a short survey:

CinemaTech, An Emerging Issue: Capturing and Storing Flash Video
New TeeVee, Break.com’s Innovative New Video Player
Beet.TV, Adobe is Not "Real" Postive about Real Network's New Video Player
Beet.TV, (an original Flash developer) Allaire of Brightcove on Real's "Illegal Piracy"

Break.com's player below is pretty cool and goes way past Veoh's recent innovation, although Break doesn't replicate Veoh's OSX-Dock-like navigation bar:


The Video Player - Watch more free videos

Filters on video in Photoshop CS3

Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush...Photoshop CS3 isn't a wonder at video quite yet! To apply a filter to all the frames of a video clip you have to convert the layer to a Smart Object, Filter>Convert to Smart Filter does the trick. Now an applied filter works on all frames.

The saved file will play inside of Photoshop CS3 but not in AE8, at least with the beta version. To see more than frame 1, you can then Save to Web for animated gif exports (as seen here with the Negative Layer Style preset), or use File>Export>Render Video.

I'm not aware of a way to get filters to animate but Layer Styles will, and they don't have to be Smart Objects if you don't resize. Just click the layer's twirly in the Animation palette and click the Styles keyframe button, then maybe move to another time and click on a style in the Styles palette. You don't have to export/render applied Styles, just save the PSD movie clip, import into AE and animate there too.

Update: Motionworks has a video tutorial showing a method using the Filmstrip format, which I used to hate because it would get corrupted easily. Looks like it's not as fragile now.

Update 2: I was reminded of Philipp-Spoeth's free Retrodots and the Halftone filter in Pete Warden's free filters when I happened upon a Japanese AE blog.

Free script for getting from AE to Cinema 4D

As noted by Toolfarm and General Specialist, Paul Tursley posted a new script for transferring data from AE to Cinema 4D over at AEnhancers.com, along with an explanation of the script's group-enabled development:

"It's taken a while, but I've finally posted an update to the AEtoC4D scripts...This version exports normal AE cameras, nulls to show the position of other layers, the comp frame rate, duration and start frame. It exports the position of any 2D/3D layer, so you can export things like motion track or motion sketch data too."

A Fair(y) Use Tale

A Fair(y) Use Tale, by Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University, is a humorous & informative review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms (mp4 hosted at Stanford Law School).




Another similar view is given in The Disney Trap: How Copyright Steals our Stories.



Also noted by The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford: Marilyn Monroe In The Public Domain

Buffalos rescue their baby from lions

Not much on AE lately, but here's a great video of a battle over a baby buffalo between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Depending on corn and other biotech

From UC Berkeley's Webcast series, Michael Pollan, UC Berkeley Professor of Journalism, discusses his new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. "What should we have for dinner? According to Michael Pollan the answer may determine our survival as a species." The first blurb on the role of corn is fascinating.

Whole Foods has made nice with Pollan in another UC webcast with powerful content on food production. By the way, Whole Foods has their own video blog called Secret Ingredient.

Food choice connects to deeper questions involving complex systems, risk perception, ecosystem sustainability, and democratic control over technology, some of which were discussed at a Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology by Edward Woodhouse (QT) of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. As a reminder, stay away from current batches of Chinese toothpaste and other possible sources of additives that the FDA is having trouble evaluating.