TED Talk: Ryan Merkley demos Popcorn | Hacker News Reader

TED Talk: Ryan Merkley demos Popcorn

blog.mozilla.org

The idea of video timelines corresponding with external actions to create an immersive experience is definitely not new although its always good to see anyone trying to move the ball forward. I know advertisers get all wound up about the potential of this stuff.

I do find it kind of disappointing that what is a decent and relatively mainstream tech demo is featured through TED - I don't know just doesn't seem TED-worthy to me personally. Looks good though.

Each item at TED is mainstream to people in the same field as the speaker, otherwise the speaker wouldn't be famous enough to get the organizers' attention.

I don't think that's true at all.

Salman Khan was certainly not mainstream (in general or in education) when he gave his talk on Khan Academy.

Videos certainly deserve to be more tightly woven into the fabric of the Web but my first interaction with the Popcorn-produced video did not end well.

The article gave a link to a TED video remixed with Popcorn so I decided to see it in action. Shortly into the article a Wikipedia article popped out and having hesitated for a few seconds I decided to click on it ... just as it disappeared off the screen. Nevermind, right afterwards a link came up to some frog. Intrigued, I clicked on it and a new tab opened with an amusing Youtube video of a frog attacking an iPhone. The related video was about a bird playing dead, then a Chinese soldier failing to throw a grenade, an amazing goal being scored, a fight... What the original video that I'd set out to watch was about I've still no idea.

The "related" videos are likely from youtube's shit related videos system.

Youtube, while the largest - is a fucking nightmare of a service. HORRID buffering, zero relevance with videos, spammy ad overlays etc...

Stop focusing on youtube lack of everything and focus on the fact that this idea is a BRAND NEW service that looks like in a years time will kick everythings ass.

I gave Popcorn a whirl after watching this video. For full disclosure's sake, I'm a rather experienced videographer with years of experience using Final Cut Pro.

I knew not to expect the moon with Popcorn, but they have a lot of work ahead of themselves. I wrote a hefty block of text for feedback, but essentially, the drag and drop interactions really needed work, the Events need more elements inside of them, and there's no good way to get rid of Events other than moving it to another layer and trashing the layer.

There were a few other points I made as well, but I hope they take the time to really study how people interact with video editing software and emulating that behaviour with Popcorn. As it stands, it's a tad too unintuitive to use and remix with Popcorn.

Really looking forward to what they can do with this though.

I don't really see what's so great about this. We can already embed maps, captions, links around the video via html. Why is it so groundbreaking to have it embedded within the video itself?

It is more that these can be triggered by events in the timeline of the video.

I don't think the demo that Ryan gave necessarily helps to highlight scenarios where Popcorn would be helpful.

Imagine you are watching a 45 minute video of a presentation about some topic in 1 pane in a window, in others you could have:

- Another pane with the slides that the presenter is showing, in slideshare type format, so you can see them clearly. Changing automatically in time with the video.

- A 3rd pane with a list of sources for that slide, with clickable links where appropriate.

Now I can pause the video and look at the sources easily. I can see the slides clearly at all times. I can send people a link to a particular moment in the video, knowing they will have all this available to them also.

I could even introduce a 4th pane that allows people to comment on certain slides, so discussions can be centered around certain topics in the presentation.

My point is - the technology is cool, and opens up more options to us. Sure, some people will use it in poor ways, but I think other people could make some awesome stuff happen with this.

But you can do that already:

setTimeout(displaySomeImage, offsetInVideoWhereImageIsMentioned);

video.on('pause', pauseTimeouts);

Give me a few weeks and I can build a rich JS video control which allows all that and more.

You can resize video elements, move them, respond to pausing, hovering. Control the video from the page, the page from the video. All in HTML5+JS.

There's also things like this:

http://taxi.ba.com/

(feel free to use my postcode NN26JP if you need a UK postcode)

Which I feel take video beyond the static - it takes streetview data and shows the plane literally taxiing down my street. Real time!

Or things like http://www.takethislollipop.com/

Popcorn.js is a javascript library, so someone who knows Javascript can do all the things shown in the demo using the library. Takethislollipop is running on popcorn.js. The neat thing here is that Mozilla is creating software for people that are NOT devs, so that they too can be creative in bringing dynamic data into a video, while at the same time learning about some of the open technologies that power the digital world.

If you want to, and you have that few weeks, you can contribute: https://wiki.mozilla.org/PopcornMaker/QA

Aha! That explains a lot. I think my expectation from the ted vid was that it was going to be something that wasn't already possible.

But while it's not quite that, it is still cool that it's a framework for non-techies to produce richer video content

This type of tool could be great for education. Imagine an instructor typing the program on screen and allowing you to change the code interactively.

Agreed. It's a great way to drive engagement, by allowing the viewer to explore content non-linearly while maintaining the original intent of the author.

This looks really really promising.

I hate youtube, its a horrid proxy of the existing limitations of video.

I really am interested in seeing this succeed.

While this looks impressive, it seems to be a solution to a problem that isn't particularly big or pervasive.

I quite like the existing distinction between video and interactivity. I like that videos are static and non interactive. I like to be able to sit back and absorb the content without distraction.

Agreed. This technology looks amazing and sweeps you away.

But, when I think about the implementation, I cringe. I don't want video with more info popping-up.

TV is not better because there is a running feed of "breaking news" or a running stock ticker. In the same regard, I don't more info popping up during video.

>> I don't want video with more info popping-up.

In terms of info popping up, how is it any different than embedding the info in the video? It's the same concept except now the info is actionable. The use cases aren't as broad as encompassing all video (yet anyway), however in many situations where videos are used, it seems like a very clear improvement to me.

I could be wrong (and am curious what you have to say) however your line of thinking sounds like fundamental resistance to the innovation present here, ie. combining concepts/ideas to produce something that would be superior in specific cases that disrupt previously separate and clear ideas/concepts in your mind. Meaning the potential really isn't being understood.

There are so many use cases -- for example, for any learning environment, the ability to interact with the lesson to achieve instant and dynamic feedback is an incredibly useful feature in terms of ability to improve learning outcomes.

Perhaps my reaction was too broad and quick. The technology is amazingly and perhaps there could be interesting applications of it that I failed to consider.

There are several use cases with Popcorn Maker

In some cases, you may want to offer the viewer further information to link out to.

In some cases, though, the web content is woven directly into the video area. Consider a full screen Google Map, for instance, or an image. With Popcorn, we're exploring new and different ways of telling stories.

-Brett Gaylor, Director, Mozilla Popcorn

Some of the ideas presented here look promising. But I really don't see this taking off in its current form. News and blog websites already wrap videos with the related written content and links etc. And as one user described above, clicking links half-way through a video really breaks the user's attention to the video. Perhaps it would be useful if YouTube used machine-intelligence to recognise the content of a video and provide links below to related Wikipedia entries or news articles?

Interesting concept, and I agree that video needs to be able t o link into the web and pull from it, but I watched the other ted talk they had Popcornized on their site and found all the links and extra info distracting. After about a minute I was looking for a way to turn the popcorn stuff off.

So on one hand this is a nice little framework, on the other hand using html5's timeupdate to load things dynamically based on approx timestamp isn't exactly a new idea. This is definitely going to popularize the concept due to the lower barrier of entry.

I see video at its core as being passive content. When I watch a video, of academic or informational content, I typically need to give it my full attention.

This is an interesting concept, but I agree with moocow01; this doesn't seem like a TED-worthy presentation.

Ask a TV editor how hard it is to build stable desktop software to edit video. Despite the naysaying, everything in a browser is a very large step forward in the accessibility and ease of use department. One giant step forward.

Mozilla Popcorn Maker:

http://mozillapopcorn.org/popcorn-maker/

That's an old version of this tool. The 1.0 version will be released at the Mozilla Festival in a month (http://mozillafestival.org), and they are currently doing QA: https://wiki.mozilla.org/PopcornMaker/QA App is at https://popcorn.webmaker.org

+1 for the coding effort. However, generally speaking, stories are anchored in time and don't need live changes. Think of a birthday, marriage, or graduation for example. He's selling point is wrong. This should be more targeted to niche cases where a live web stream is needed instead of advertising it as story telling tool that everyone needs to use (plus I agree with moocow01 this smells in-video ads all over it)

Awesome! I will definitly be using this!

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