Start and End Slides, Take 2

[Alan Pope]

On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 09:54 -0800, Ubuntu Clips wrote:

> Thank you for the feedback. If we did this, we could either move the
> starting slide (with the k/x/ubuntu logo) as the second slide or
> remove it altogether as you suggest. Does anyone else have any
> preferences or thoughts about this? 
> 

I personally like the branding as the first slide.

> More fundamentally, can we assume that the web stream version of the
> videos will always be accompanied by a web title or text that will
> include the information on the starting sequence slides? 

By web stream are we talking google / youtube?

If so then no, we can't guarantee that there will be links on those
pages to the non-flash based video.

So should we perhaps host our own flv files with a simple flash video
player (which works in gnash? :) [are there any]) rather than upload to
google/youtube? Does anyone know of a simple player?

I know I have seen Novell use one for the old XGL promo videos on their
site. I borrowed the player (can someone confirm it [or another] plays
in a free player such as gnash) and you can see the result here:-

http://bishop.popey.com/flash/player.html?id=16bppraw1024x768to1024x768.flv

NOTE: Ignore the quality of the video - it is shockingly bad due to the
way it was recorded, not necessarily because it's an flv. I made it
nearly a year ago when I first thought Ubuntu screencasts would be a
good idea ;)

That way we guarantee that anyone watching the flash video is watching
it inside our site. We can also up the resolution (from the low Google
and youtube ones) slightly to improve readability. We can of course also
hold our hands up as clean on an open-format front. The downside is that
we don't catch the youtube surfer who stumbles across the video
in-between watching coke+mentos clips.

> I know that Youtube doesn't seem to use the first frame as the static
> preview and I just checked Google Video and it looks like it also uses
> a random frame. Thoughts, ideas? 
> 

I am not sure how it determines the frame selected, I note that some of
ours do indeed use a frame from early on which shows the title, others
seem not to.

You will note that on the screencast site I have removed the flash
plugin versions and merely linked to them on each page. I have replaced
the plugin with a static image taken from part way through the video.
This improves the load time of the page and doesn't mean people are
required to have flash from the get-go.

I believe the flash version to be secondary to the other formats, but of
course very useful for getting casual users to see Ubuntu in action.

So in a nutshell, no, I like the titles the way they are, but I am
easily convinced otherwise if people think it's important to do so.

Cheers,
Al.
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