Our big screen movie experience each weekend is usually at our local Portage, Michigan Celebration Cinema. In March 2008 they started giving out free CDs with trailers and more to anyone who wanted to take one from the display box. What kind of digital video guy can resist? It's not just about what's on the disc to view, but the hacker in me wants to explore the disc to see what kinds of files are there. It's a CD, not a DVD. My expectations weren't high.
Before adding the disc to the top of my one of my growing piles of plastic, I put it in the disc drive of my XP laptop, not really expecting something great. But a few seconds after it auto-started and was playing in my Adobe Flash Player 9 the disc content and its interactive nature sucked me into an eye-popping mesmerizing experience.
I was getting ready for the annual MVP Summit at Microsoft, where I get to mingle with other Digital Media MVPs and those at Microsoft who do the programming of Movie Maker and other video-related software such as Photo Story. I went back and scoffed up another dozen of the discs to hand out at the sessions. ‘…. Look what they put on this disc, and it’s not even a DVD!’.
I had to check the files. Yes, it’s a CD… but not a VCD or SVCD. It has an autorun file to get it kick-started, a media folder with 11 subfolders that include Flash video files and other stuff. There are 8 movie posters and 10 other jpg images on the disc, all generously sized at 1200x1500 pixels.
It’s a great example of interactive video done in layers, and packaged with other media... a DVD never looked as good. The images below give you some insights into the content.
The disc plays on computers only, not stand-alone DVD players. The video files are a mix of swf and flv files. Double clicking on a swf file on my XP laptop opens it in my IrfanView Flash Player. The flv files are associated with the Riva FLV Player. What files play on what software varies with your computer setup and your preferences.
Celebration Cinema says they’ll be putting out more of these discs. The part of me that has always been a collector will be adding them to my plastice piles.
Digital video is all around and I'm enjoying all of it, even in places where I don't expect it.