Exploring New Ground with the Oculus Rift Posted by John Assalian on November 12, 2013 Elekta, a leader in clinical solutions for radiosurgery and radiation therapy, recently completed construction on a state-of-the-art learning center in Atlanta, Georgia—the company’s North American headquarters. The Learning and Innovation Center (LINC) is expected to draw clinicians, researchers, and health IT professionals for education, training, and collaboration on Elekta’s solutions for treating cancer and brain disorders. To help generate awareness, Viewstream created an interactive, virtual tour of the LINC facility that can be explored using the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Elekta invited attendees of the ASTRO 2013 conference to wear the Oculus Rift and experience the Learning and Innovation Center in virtual reality. To help build a buzz, the virtual tour was promoted before and after the conference through Elekta’s social channels, including YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. In the end, the virtual tour received overwhelming positive responses from both the client and the conference attendees. Viewstream created the LINC virtual tour using Autodesk Maya, the Unity game engine, and the Oculus Rift developer’s kit. The visual model was created in Autodesk Maya, using a combination of photos, videos, and blueprints of the facility. The model was then imported into the Unity game engine, where it was given physics, movement, and lighting. Finally, the resulting program was calibrated with the Oculus Rift headset using the product’s developer kit to create the interactive, virtual tour. Check out a preview of the virtual tour:
Viewstream Research Posted by John Assalian on March 12, 2013 As part of our research group, we are publishing a few overviews of interesting companies in the social media space. Altimeter Group is not a marketing company, rather a research/consultancy company (Powerpoint company). Think Boston Consulting or Bain mixed with Gartner or Forrester, focus is “Social Business” which includes social media aimed towards customers but also includes how organizations are internally organized and how information is shared within a company. In some cases this can mean using social media tools internally, but it can also mean creating whole new org charts for large organizations. Their model is essentially as follows: produce a large number of free report’s which are then use to leverage engagements in advisory, speaking or strategy. For advisory, this is be the classic consulting job. Called in to provide research and outside eyes on a project. Classically consulting in large organizations to displace blame. i.e. idea fails well expert consultants said it would work. For speaking, past topics include: Hot or Not: Deciding Which Disruptive Technologies Matter Creating a Coherent Social Strategy The Future of Social Networks Convincing Your Curmudgeon — Getting Executive Buy-In for Your Social For strategy, Altimeter has published on: Get Engaged With Your Customers (or Employees) Recruiting an Unpaid Army for Word of Mouth The Customer of the Future Developing a Mobile Strategy for the Whole Customer Lifecycle Developing — and Investing — in a Social CRM Strategy Rethinking Innovation in Your Enterprise Strategy It’s the People Stupid: Designing a Social Experience Funding an Enterprise Strategy Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist Developing a Scalable Social Strategy Some great reports here: http://www.altimetergroup.com/research/reports http://www.altimetergroup.com/research/webinars All altimeter reports are released under a creative commons license so you can pull their slides and use them in your own presentations as long as you give them credit.
Viewstream Recognized for AnswerLab Design Posted by John Assalian on September 26, 2012 Viewstream award winning creative was recently called out on Design Magazine. They call our work the “near perfect template” for enterprise clients. Very nice! Scroll down to AnswerLab to see the example. http://viewstre.am/1r
Video Testimonials Posted by John Assalian on August 22, 2012 Viewstream Video Testimonials communicate the benefits of an offering through the voice of the customer. It allows marketers to reach across the sales cycle by building demand and driving sales through discovery, promoting brand awareness, and validating the solution. Video Testimonials can be critical to demonstrating how the solution is applicable in the real world. The combination of story and concrete details provide a strong approach toward inspiring prospects to action. Check out the link to view the latest Video Testimonials that Viewstream produced: http://viewstre.am/1o
Seeing a Future in Tablets Posted by John Assalian on August 21, 2012 It’s amazing to think the iPad is only two years old–and across the spectrum usage is skyrocketing (along with the stock). Avid readers in particular have been downloading magazines on their tablets, and engagement remains high. Seeing a future in Tablets for business communication and marketing, we unveiled Viewstream Mags recently. Viewstream Mags brings magazines to businesses for marketing, communication and data analytics. The Mags are beautifully designed and feature engaging content written by actual journalists. Plus, we can do something that other digital document formats cannot do: we can track everything! From page clicks and swipes to engagement patterns and view duration of motion content, our analytic datasets offer a rich source of data for better decision making. To find out more, watch the short video on Viewstream Mags here: http://viewstre.am/1m
Viewstream and Education Nation Broadcast Posted by John Assalian on May 14, 2012 Viewstream worked with Cherry Productions to create a live capture of the New Schools-Aspen Institute Summit. The Viewstream team digital recorded the five panels in real-time to facilitate rapid integration for digital OnDemand broadcasting. You can view the event here: http://viewstre.am/1g
Viewstream and Dabble Launch Video Posted by John Assalian on April 18, 2012 Viewstream recently began work on a video for the Dabble launch with the goal of making an engaging video. After a few sleepless nights, Viewstream is proud to announce the release of the Dabble video. The video features some cool music and voice, and some interesting iPad and iPhone product captures brought to life. See for yourself here: And congrats to #Dabble!
Success Through Customer Evidence Posted by John Assalian on January 31, 2012 Viewstream is a strong proponent of using Customer Evidence assets to effectively communicate a products offering. Remember, people believe people, so what better way to build credibility but through the testimony of your customers? Prospects are compelled by true-to-life success stories above the constant chest-beating cranked out of old-school marketing strategies. Kill the marketing voice, and begin telling true customer success stories. Viewstream created a video to illustrate how Kelly Racing uses Autodesk software to improve racecar performance. Viewstream employed a new technique that allows the subjects themselves to create their own content, adding a powerful amount of honesty to the video. There are many ways to incorporate Customer Evidence to your marketing mix. But whichever way you choose, these personal stories help create a relationship between your audience and your brand, bringing real-world storytelling to your marketing campaigns. Watch the Kelly Racing/Autodesk Video below:
How to Record an iPad Screen Posted by John Assalian on December 1, 2011 A couple months ago, we posted an article about marketing mobile solutions with video. A growing number of our video clients want to show off their mobile chops—to illustrate their new app, to give tutorials on software use on the go, or to display their work on mobile devices. As we mentioned in the article, one of our clients recently tasked us with recording a demo from an iPad, which presented a number of challenges, including harsh shadows, rough resolution, and flickers on the screen. Fortunately, we devised a system that worked. We thought that we would answer the question, “How do you record an iPad screen?” We’ll even take this a stop further and explain how to create a final video with a composited, animated background using a green screen. 60 is the Magic Number Most videographers know that shooting television and computer screens has historically been an issue, as the refresh rate of the screens never seem to match the standard video camera frame rates. This issue has been negated by LCD screens, which do not create the annoying CRT-like flicker. Mobile devices, however, have brought back the challenges of screen refresh rates. The iPad 2, for instance, refreshes at 60Hz, or 60 times per second. If your camera’s frame rate is not matching this, you will experience shuttering and flickering throughout your video as you record the screen. In addition, filming screens in interlaced (vs. progressive) mode can lead to blurry motion and jagged images. We overcame these challenges by recording at 720p/60p. For our needs, 720p created an image large enough for our final output. With a native frame rate of 60 progressive frames per second and a shutter speed of 1/60.00, we knew we could match the refresh in the iPad. To dial into the refresh, we used the Syncro Scan feature on the camera set at 1/60.00 to ensure the camera and the screen were hitting at the right times. Shuttering and flickering were gone instantly! Positioning and Lighting Another challenge with recording an iPad is the need to have it steady and flat on a table for easy access by the hand that is navigating the screen. If you shoot straight down, you will get the camera’s reflection on the screen. Plus, with improper lighting, you will have harsh shadows on the iPad screen, as well as on your tabletop, which is challenging if you plan to key out the background. That the angle of the iPad screen and that of the camera lens must be parallel. If they are at different angles, with this close of a focal length you will definitely notice a distortion on shape of the iPad in post, with one side longer than the other. We slipped a notebook under our cloth to prop up the iPad, and matched that angle to the angle of the camera lens to ensure we were hitting it straight on. Your iPad also has an option to turn off the automatic orientation feature, so the slight angle you keep the device at will not flip the image on the iPad screen. QUICK TIP: Shoot the iPad upside down so the hand enters the camera viewfinder from the top. This way, your tripod will not get in the way of the actions of the hand. Just rotate the image 180 degrees in your editing software. With the right camera settings and sotting techniques, you can capture clean, flicker-free shots of your tablet or smartphone in action. Also, you want to create a consistent soft light across the entire area with as big of a spread as possible. You can achieve this by using two softlights off to each side of and above the iPad, and/or reflecting bright lights off a large white surface, such as a wall or bounce card, to achieve the same effect. It took some tweaking between light placement to make sure we were not getting light reflection on the iPad screen, and that we had effectively removed any unwanted shadows. Make sure to move the hand around above the iPad, and bend the fingers to check for dark shadows on the skin. QUICK TIP: In setting the iris on the camera, you need to find a balance between the brightness of the iPad screen and the hand working the device. You can adjust both the camera’s iris and the brightness of the iPad screen to find a bright, consistent image for the camera’s sensor. Once the camera’s settings are in place, and the lighting is where you want it, you are ready to record! While Shooting During the recording, make sure your hand model removes their hand from the screen area anytime it is not being used to manipulate the screen. This way the viewer can have a full view of the screen, and edits between screens remain seamless. QUICK TIP: Keep the shot clean by wiping the iPad screen with cleaner between takes. In this lighting, smudges can obstruct what you are trying to show on the screen. Adjustments in Post In the case of our project, we wanted to create an animated backdrop for the iPad. We placed the iPad on piece of green screen cloth, and made sure our lighting did not create the harsh shadows that would make keying difficult. With a shadow-free surface, adding the key channel to iPad video is relatively painless. But remember that you will likely lose quality on the actual screen itself due to the key. To get around this loss, simply create a duplicate layer in your edit, with a matte around the screen for complete image clarity. As more and more businesses move their offerings and platforms to mobile devices, creating videos to illustrate mobile capabilities will certainly become more prevalent. With the process outlined above, you can ensure clear and clean demonstrations of your mobile solution in action.
Viewstream at SC11: A Recap Posted by John Assalian on November 22, 2011 SuperComputing 2011 was in Seattle this year, and the exhibition was open from November 14th – November 17th. This was a huge show, with an estimated 11,000 exhibitors, hardware vendors, HPC middleware vendors, system integrators, SuperComputing Center reps, HPC ISVs, and others bustling around the convention floor. Viewstream was excited to be at the nexus of the industry ecosystem, engaging with our clients and other industry leaders. Throughout the week, we talked with community members about HPC directions and how their marketing is being affected by the broadening of HPC and its cross-fertilization with Cloud and Big Data. Lots of big industry announcements are made at the annual SC Conference, and this year’s was no exception. With Intel’s announcement of the MIC architecture and the Sandy Bridge e and x79 chipset, the release of NVIDIA’s Maximus technology that combines Tesla and Quadro, and Cray’s picking up of BlueWaters from IBM, there was no shortage of surprises. One of the more exciting projects featured at the conference involved the work Microsoft has been doing testing the limits of its Windows Azure platform in the real world. As HPC continues integrating with more and more Cloud offerings, solutions like Windows Azure can help free researchers and other HPC end users from slow data return times and other compute limitations to allow them to produce some very exciting results. An example of this game-changing technology is the relationship between Microsoft and Baker Labs, a research lab at the University of Washington that leverages HPC in the Cloud with Windows Azure to help solve some of the smallest mysteries is modern medicine. To learn more about this project, watch the video Viewstream produced that was featured at Microsoft’s SC11 booth: