PE6 Flash

Flash can create some pretty amazing motion and even 3D graphics.  Honestly though, I haven’t figured out exactly how I can incorporate this into my training.  There is one very important use that I have for Flash that I can see right away: convert video files into Flash files.  I use my favorite Web 2.0 tool, Udutu, for a lot of training, but it freezes when you try to upload anything except a flash file to it.

So now that I feel like I have a basic understanding of how to use Flash, I wanted to experiment with converting files.  While I grasped how to create the animations pretty quickly, I had a much harder time with this part.  I did a little more research and watched a few more tutorials on file types and it all started to become a little clearer.

I was so excited when I saw this screen!  It finally had successfully imported!

The most common Flash file types are .fla and .swf.  The .fla files are files for working within Flash and the .swf files are the “output” file, or what you would post to a website or put in other media.  I looked up Udutu’s Guide to Getting Started, and sure enough, it said it took .swf files!

Then I had to figure out how to get a video file into Flash in order to change it into a .swf file.  I found a tutorial that said that Flash took just about every kind of video and photo file type out there, but when I tried to import an iMovie file, it kept telling me that I needed to convert it with Adobe Media Encoder.  I couldn’t figure out how to do this, but finally after trying several file formats, I got lucky and was able to import a .mov file.

This is my .swf file in Udutu

I immediately turned around and exported this test file into a .swf file and was able to successfully upload it into Udutu.  I will need to work on getting faster and better quality images out of this, but at least I have a start now!

PE5 Flash

I’ve watched many more tutorials now, and I think I have a clear idea of what Flash really is: Photoshop but animated!  When I first started researching Flash I kept thinking about how similar I remember Photoshop being.  Then it occurred to me that they are sister programs as part of the Adobe suite and it would make sense to make many of the buttons and formatting similar so that a user can easily transition between the two.  I even learned that you can edit a graphic in Photoshop, right while you are in the middle of animating it in Flash! 

I’ve learned that in order to do any animation in Flash, you have to drag your graphic into your “Library” and convert it to a “Symbol.”  One of the tutorials said that the symbol can then be animated with ActionScript, which I am realizing now is the programming language that Adobe uses for animation.  I didn’t realize that before, I thought it was another program!

Once your graphic is in symbol format, you can pretty much do anything, from basic movement, to adding blur effects, to even adjusting the transparency of the graphic (the Alpha I learned its called).  Some of the motion presets you can use are flying onto the screen, bouncing, smoking, pulsing, and zooming around the screen.  You can create your own presets as well if you need to use the same motion again and again.

That purple diagonal line means I made my tree branch move!

The motion effect is called a “Tween” effect, which I think is a really funny name.  Isn’t that also the new marketing lingo for pre-adolescent aged children?  Well, in Flash, its called Tween because it causes a graphic to move beTWEEN two parts of the screen.  I think someone who made Flash has a sense of humor.

I’m still working on figuring out importing and exporting video files.  I’m going to work on that and the next blog will track that progress.

PE4 Flash

Flash is a lot different from what I expected.  I’ve heard of Flash but I really thought it was a type of video viewer, like a Quicktime player, or perhaps a program to convert videos to some kind of internet-uploadable files.  I was only seeing a very small part of what Flash is actually capable of!

Flash is an application to create animated graphics or short movies.  It seems to be particularly good for web applications because it creates smaller file sizes that will load more easily and not have so much time lost for buffering video.  In this era of 5-second attention spans, that’s incredibly important!

I’m watching the basic tutorials and learning how to create layers.  A long time ago, I had a class on Photoshop and from what I can remember, the layer thing seems to be about the same.  In order to have the most control over your graphics and effects, you want to create them on different layers.  You can lock and unlock layers to be able to edit.

I’m also beginning to experiment with the “Deco” tool.  It lets you create quick graphics of trees, vines, fire, flowers, flames, smoke, and lightening.  You can even easily create animated flames and smoke here.  Flash automatically creates a timeline for you that shows when and for how long the graphics appear and move.

I haven’t tried this yet, but the tutorials say that you can import pictures and video with pretty much any kind of file.  I am really interested in this feature because I do online training videos through Udutu, a Web 2.0 tool.  Udutu requires that its video files need to be uploaded as Flash files, and I’ve always had to call on the editors at Full Sail to convert my videos for me.  Perhaps once I learn how to import video and export Flash files, I can work much more quickly right from my laptop!

I’m going to learn more about this, and what else I can do with Flash.  Stay tuned: more blogs to follow, and check out my Deco tool fire and smoke test video below!

PE3 WordPress

Now that I have researched the WordPress Web tool, I want to think a little more about how I would actually implement it at work.  I work in Admissions at Full Sail University, and my department has grown considerably over the last few years to keep up with the growth of the entertainment industry.  My goal is to create an online forum for my team to bond with each other.

I think that before I actually implement this, I would definitely need to pay to customize the layout and appearance.  While I like the look of the blog aesthetically, there is a lot of unused space on the sides and the toolbar at the bottom is a little jumbled looking.  I suppose I can get to fixing that if I can get approval to actually employ this idea.

I would like the key areas of focus for this blog to be personal updates, industry and company updates, and tips.  I want the content of the blog to be largely user-driven with my role being more of a moderator.

For personal updates, I can share upcoming birthdays, parties, babies and marriage news.  I can encourage the reps to upload pictures to share with each other.  We’ve also got many musicians and artists on staff that I would encourage to share their band updates with the team.  Its always fun to discover the hidden talents of your co-workers!

For the industry and company update portion of the blog, I would like to share special events that are happening at Full Sail, such as concerts or guest speakers.  Additionally I would like to post any Admissions updates such as degree or policy changes.  Currently, we email updates to the team and have meetings, and while that is good, I think it would be even better to reinforce the news with links on a blog.  Additionally there is a Full Sail Blog account for all the online programs that I would want to link to this area of the blog.

The last section of the site, I want to be tips that they share with each other.  Full Sail has a lot of reps that have worked in the industry for decades and have a wealth of knowledge.  It would be great for them to be able to share that with some of our newer reps.  My idea is that I can post a thought, and then request tips and feedback.  For example, I could post “When talking to High School students, what do you recommend they do to get ready for an entertainment career?”  The reps might answer with anything from recommending students read Rolling Stone, to recommending that students practice reading music.  It would be fantastic to hear them share with each other!

Full Sail Website, News Section

I’m going to continue to brainstorm ideas for this company blog idea to take flight, and if you have any thoughts, please leave a comment for me. 

PE2 WordPress

It is extremely easy to set up a WordPress account!  I’ve created an account under my name that I am going to use as a test before I create my actual company blog.  Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Set up for the blog literally only takes a few minutes.  After clicking on the “Sign up now” button, getting a blog is as easy as entering a username, password, email address, and picking your privacy settings.  I’ve clicked on keeping my blog private for now.

Once logged in, clicking on “My Account” takes you to the place where you can edit all kinds of things.  “The Dashboard” has all the basics: how to post, the comments that you’ve had on your posts, drafts of your posts, and even stats on your blog.

I’m most interested in the tab on “Upgrades.”  Here, once you’ve already created an account, is where you can finally find the prices for extra features.  You can add a domain for a one time fee of $17 or upgrade to VideoPress, which will allow you to upload, store, and share videos for $59.97 per year.  You can also get space upgrades to store media, and the price there depends on how much extra storage you need.  For $29.97 per year you can ensure that your side has no ads.  Those all sound like great features and the price is reasonable, but they are not quite what I’m seeking.

At the far right of this tab, I came across just what I want: Unlimited Private Users for $29.97 per year!  That’s a great price, and I’m sure that I can pitch that number to my boss and get a good answer.  But wait, there’s more!  There’s also the upgrade option to customize your blog’s appearance beyond the general themes that are available.  This is only $14.97, and I’m sure that if my department is going to go for something like this site, they would want it to have company branding.  I will keep these two options in mind.

Here's the current look of my blog

Moving on with my settings, I wanted to choose a basic theme and layout for my blog.  Knowing that my company colors are orange and gray, I did a custom search for themes that included orange in them.  I came across a very elegant looking theme called Vostok that I’ll go with for now.  Until I can get that customized feature working for me, this will work quite well.

Now I’ve got my theme, I want to add some widgets.  For now, it looks like a “blogroll” or a list of common links will be great, because I can post links to other sites that have industry and company updates.  I also enabled comments from here and set the page to show up to 10 recent comments.  There’s a lot more widget options, but I don’t think many are relevant for what I’m trying to accomplish right now. 

I think now that I am fully set up and ready to start blogging!  My next post here will be about how I plan to implement my WordPress blog at work.

PE1 WordPress

I’ve chosen WordPress to research because I think it could be very helpful to have an online blogging community within my office.  In the last few years our department has grown to about 65 employees and with this many people, its hard to maintain the close family feeling that we’ve always had.  I want an easy and convenient way for our staff to share news, thoughts, and tips with each other, without taking the time for a giant meeting.

I started my research by watching lots of tutorials on Lynda.com.  There was a lot of good information, and the tutorials were not nearly as dry as I expected.  I learned a whole bunch, but I will share with you only the ones that were the most interesting to me.

First off, I learned how to manage the settings of the blog.  The Privacy feature was particularly interesting to me because I need to make sure to keep company information confidential.  I was disappointed to find out that when an account is marked private, only 35 users will be able to access the blog.  I can upgrade my account and be able to have an unlimited number of users, but nowhere in the tutorials does it say how much the upgrade costs.

For the appearance of the blog, the theme seems fairly easy to change, there are lots of themes available that you can search based on colors, columns, and even widgets.  It’s also very easy to upload an image for your “Gravatar,” which is WordPress’s lingo for the blog avatar.  I was surprised to find out in the tutorials that its possible to upload pretty much anything for your Gravatar and can then rate it G, PG, R, or even X.  I certainly have no intention of having an X rated Gravatar, but I thought it was odd that anyone would really want that!

I also now feel comfortable with how to add links, audio, video, and widgets.  It seems like WordPress really tries to make it easy for the user!  My next blog post is going to be my discovery process as I sign up for and learn additional features for my WordPress blog.

BP11_OMM_WordPress

Here's some information on a great Blogging site, WordPress.