All about Popcorn

  • Have some Popcorn with your documentary (2)

    Popcorn in action - a dozen different demos

    As explored in part one, Popcorn.js and timed metadata are ways to bring the rich interactive and interconnected web into video and audio. As audiences increasingly 'dual-screen' – surf the web and social networks while watching TV or a video in the background – connecting this extra information to a film in a way that is coherent with the look and feel of the film, has lots of potential.

    Some Popcorn creations keep the data away from the video, while others add so much data that to some viewers they could be seen as distracting from the documentary. Some go further still and consider the entire web browser as the documentary canvas, and the video elements just one part of that beside any other form of media. Like any new tool, there’s a wealth of possibilities with it, and the most interesting thing about watching the framework’s development over the last few years has been the depth of ingenuity people have applied when mixing audio and video with the potential of the HTML, javascript and the many open web services out there. Here's selection of a wide variety of use-cases.

    1. On-screen notations

    Inspired by the pop-up info panels that would appear on some music TV shows, pop-ups let you provide text-based commentary during a video and can be styled and coloured as needed – and placed anywhere on screen for as long as desired. Because these aren't encoded into the video, they can be indexed by search engines, translated by screen readers – and changed and added to during the life of the video.

    Example: Reblious Pixel’s Buffy vs Edward remix with pop-ups

    Pasted-Graphic-13.jpg

    Read more
  • Have some Popcorn with your documentary (1)

    What does transmedia documentary really mean?

    This weekend at Ravensbourne College on the Greenwich peninsular, over 1,000 of the world's leading web makers and digital innovators have gathered for MozFest, Mozilla's annual get-together for a weekend of idea-sharing and web-making. One of the big announcements at the three-day event – which spans from gaming and learning to digital media and collaborative creativity – is the arrival of version 1.0 of a tool called Popcorn, which could revolutionise the way we watch and interact with films and video online. Nic Wistreich, tech consultant on SDI's Virtuous Circle initiative, is on location. 

    Popcorn.js @ Mozilla Fest 2011

    Photos from MozFest 2011 by Jonathan McIntosh (Creative Commons)

    It has been suggested that the most innovative aspect of the web was the hyperlink, as it gave the ability to connect one page or item to another without needing the permission of whatever you are connecting to. An article is no longer limited to just reporting an event or idea but can connect directly to the sources, discussion, points for further reading, means to share more widely, and suggestions for taking action. The invisible threads between ideas and debate that once could only be found in the indexes of books and journals could begin to be connected, building an ever-growing tapestry of knowledge and ideas.

    But while this has been liberating for text, images – anything that could be printed onto paper – it falls flat (quite literally) when applied to time-based media. You can link to a video file, but the mass of information within it and related to it is mostly lost. 

    Metadata is the addition of data to data, and for films has traditionally dealt just with the sort of info you could find in IMDb: the credits, technical details, synopsis, rights holders and so on. But a blog link and biography for the person speaking at 24 minutes and 03 seconds? A map reference for the breathtaking cathedral during the opening scene? The latest news stories around the topic at the heart of the film? This sort of metadata has until recently been kept quite separate from the time-based media itself.

    Enter Popcorn.

    Read more