Report on interactive media

Over the years interactive media has more and more become a regular in peoples households .Now most young teenagers have computers ,video game consoles ,ipods ,phones,mp3 players ,TV’s and much more.

The first major breakthrough in interactive media was cinema when in the early 1900’s the first cinema’s were invented but they didn’t play full length films at first they only played short films roughly 10 minutes long cinema was getting more popular thought and in the 1920‘s the first full length films were introduced. Cinema started to grow in popularity but in the 1960’s cinema took a hit as new interactive media was coming into households in the form of TV ,although the majority of households still didn’t have a TV in the 1960’s this was still a major breakthrough and by the 1970’s most people had TV’s in their homes. After the excitement of TV’s being introduced boiled over cinema began to slowly recover as films were shown at cinemas before they were on TV. In the 1980’s VCR’s were introduced ,they were very popular as people could now rent videos of films shortly after they were released at the cinema. But now we have DVD’s ,CD’s and widescreen TV’s ,and that is how far interactive media has progressed and with more promising devices being released as I speak such as the ipad and who knows what lengths interactive media will climb to in the future.

I am now going to talk about the different platforms in interactive media. The world wide web is one of the biggest platforms in interactive media as it allows you to find out almost any information you want. It can be used to educate ,entertain and you can socialise with your friends. It has become a world wide phenomenon. It has also now become a alternative to going out and shopping as you can now actually order what you want online and have it delivered straight to your doorstep. People are also communicating more over E-mail and Email attachments such as homemade videos that you might get sent by a friend or more likely on the negative side Email attachments may contain pop-ups and viruses that could destroy your computer the general name for this mail is normally called junk mail or spam and it has become such a problem that people are now advised to not open a Email unless you know the sender. DVD’s contain lots of different types of interactive media as they can be used to entertain or they can be used to educate .You can now buy your own blank DVD and burn anything you want onto it such as a homemade movie. You can get DVD’s with the latest films on them or you could get educational DVD’s with a guide to GCSE maths or English etc. CD Rom’s are extremely similar to DVD’s although CD’s generally only contain audio. Again CD’s have educational properties as they could contain a maths test on them (Spoken questions)or they could contain the latest songs from someone’s album on them. Albums produced by global superstars are all now burnt onto a CD and sold online or on the high street. Presentations now also include interactive media as for pitches now most business men will use PowerPoint or Flash in their presentations and on your TV if you have freeview or sky etc you could use the red button to browse through the latest news or to get information about TV shows etc.Most people in the world now also have mobile phones or games consoles were you can send and receive messages and browse or play online with friends like on the PS3 from Sony and Xbox360 from Microsoft.
I am now going to talk about the uses of video in interactive media. Short films are mainly found in Cinemas before a feature film is about to start but could now also be found online on websites such as Youtube etc. They are mainly used to advertise but could also be in the form of homemade movies as well. Promotional material is also found online or in cinemas but also anywhere you look as you can find promotional material at football matches and on billboards in the street or even on the side of buses. Promotional material such as trailers will some times be played before you watch a video online or could be advertised in the corner of your computer screen or on a ad break during a TV programme promotional material is used to let the general public know all about there new game or film etc. Film trailers are also promotional and are also found on TV ad breaks on video websites like Youtube online they are also frequent in cinemas and before every feature film at the cinema a few film trailers are shown as this is were they will catch their main target audience. User-generated content on websites such as you tube is used so you can share hilarious moments online or get noticed as a online superstar through famous homemade movie appearances. Viral marketing is a extremely cunning and clever .Viral marketing is adverts that look like homemade funny videos but are actually discretely advertising their product. An example of this is the famous youtube video of a man videoing his girlfriend playing on the wii in her underwear. Later on it was discovered that the man who took the video was related to wii. Advertising is massive and is used to over exaggerate and make company’s products look good you can find adverts everywhere on billboards ,online websites ,cinema ,TV and newspapers. There are lots of different types of advertising like viral marketing advertising as I talked about above that advertises discretely and advertising on billboards etc which is nowhere near as discrete. Virtual reality tours are sometimes found online on websites for restaurants or hotels etc. They are used to as a type of tutorial for people who want to visit or make a reservation so that people know what to expect when they arrive at the location before they actually arrive at the location. The gaming industry is now massive with hundreds of millions of games being bought worldwide. Games can now be used online with people exchanging messages and socialising and playing games together they can also talk to each other through wireless Bluetooth headsets.E-Learning is another use of interactive media with schools and colleges now teaching students via the internet it is essentially a virtual learning environment that other teachers an alternative way of teaching. Examples of this are tutorials that show you how to use software like final cut pro tutorials etc.

Now I am going to talk about video in interactive media technologies. I am going to start off with video compression .Video compression is basically reducing of files by reducing the amount of data used this has its down sides though as this also reduces the quality of the file. A codec device is closely related to video compression as it is involved in the process .A codec is a device that decodes or encodes a signal etc. But it also compresses and decompresses data. You Stream and download videos or the latest songs from itunes or youtube etc online .Most videos downloaded would be on the following formats:
MPEG: Moving picture experts group.
AVI: Audio video interleave-this is a multimedia format.
MOV: Quicktime movie format.
WMV: Windows media video-This is the format for windows media.

Other video in interactive media technology is data transfer rates. This is the number of bits that are transferred per second often shown in the abbreviation bps .Your data transfer rate determines how fast your broadband connection is. Frame rates are the frequency at which cameras and video cameras produce frames(fps).Most video cameras shoot at 25frames per second. Screen resolutions are the amount of pixels or mega-pixels that your computer screen is made up of. With file sizes the smaller files have less quality but have a short time to download were as with bigger file sizes the quality is better but the file will take longer to download. Picture ratios are the size of the screen on your TV. Normal TVs generally have a picture ratio of 4:3 and are referred to as a letter box picture ratio. Were as wide screen TVs normally have a picture ratio of 16:9 which is referred to as the pillar box picture ratio .Other picture ratios include 14:9.Digital rights management (DRM) is a management set up to make limitations on the usage of interactive media content and devices. For example DRM imposes age restrictions on films and games etc.Here are different media player types:
DVD: Video and data storage (films short films etc)
Iplayer:TV catch up system for the BBC online
QuickTime: Displays .mov movies
Windows Media Player:used for WMV plays videos and songs etc.
Real: Plays real file movies.

Embedded video is a compressed video taken from a site like Videocure or Youtube that can be “Embedded” onto websites like blogger. Video tagging is creating a tag on hyperlinks or videos or songs etc that shows in small print when you role over it a bit of info(few words) about it.