As mobile devices – specifically smartphones and tablets – become more prolific, there is a greater need to engage and connect with live event audiences that are using them. The days of “please turn off your cell phone” are over.

Attendees are, and should be, encouraged to participate and interact via their mobile device. Ultimately, it’s about extending the experience and initiating a reason to keep the conversation going.For live event producers and planners, the time has passed to find ways to incorporate mobile engagement methods into your shows.

Thankfully, there are a number of ways to increase attendee participation, boost the event’s social factor, and extend the experience well beyond the emcee’s closing remarks. Here are a few:

Discussion Forums Provide a community forum for attendees to discuss thoughts and trends on the event with one another as it’s taking place. Social Media Sharing Encourage attendees to share photos, links and other social information about their experience using applications like Facebook and Twitter.

Not long ago clients would order a high-quality videotape and a few DVDs to take with them at the end of their production session. Today most clients need digital files of their project. Unfortunately there is no standard format for after-edit deliverables – it is truly dependent upon the display device(s) the video will show on. So where do you start? What are the basics you need to know about file-based deliverables and what questions do you need to ask before distribution?

First, the basics

What is compression?
Simply, compression is converting something large into something smaller while retaining quality or the ability to uncompress to its original file specifications.

What is file conversion? File conversion changes one file type into another. Most likely the file will become smaller or compressed, though conversion to another full-resolution file type is an option.

Why do we need so many choices? Today, our industry has turned the corner from tape-based audio and video delivery to digital file-based delivery. And the dizzying array of devices – iPods, iPads, tablets, smartphones, netbooks and e-readers – all have different players that need specific file types.

Within these file types are other specifications that are even more unique to the device than just the file extension. These include image size, bit rate, frame rate and color space, to name a few.

The least you need to know about players, file types and codecs

Players are applications that launch when a file is selected to play. Apple QuickTime, Windows Media Player and Flash are common players. All are cross-platform.

File type is noted by the extension at the end of the file. Common extensions are .mov, .wmv, .avi, .mp4, or .flv. The QuickTime player can play .mov and .mp4 files (and even .wmv and .flv files with the right plug-in); Windows Media Player can play .wmv, .avi and .mp4 files, to name a few. Flash only plays .flv and .f4v files, both proprietary Flash formats.

Codecs are a set of applications that code and decode media files. Depending on where you are in the process, the coding is where we set the compression or encoding parameters of the file. When playing media files, the players need to have the right decoder/plug-in, or the file will not run. Sorenson Squeeze and Apple Compressor are two popular tools that contain several codec options.

Ordering your final deliverable

As part of the steps taken when a project is started here at Mills James, we determine the specifications of the intended playback method or device. That’s when we may need the correct file specifications in order to generate the appropriate file.

This process can get technical very quickly. One important variable is the resolution, or the size of the image. 1920 x 1080, 720 x 480, 320 x 240 are common resolutions. Likewise, the bit rate in which the file is encoded also needs to be determined. Two bit rate types are CBR (constant bit rate) and VBR (variable bit rate). These are normally expressed in kbps, or kilobits per second.

Frame rate is also an important variable, which corresponds to how smoothly the video will play and determines how big the file will be after it’s compressed.

More choices: distribution options

Once you have your file in the desired format, it will typically need to get somewhere. Here are some options:

Portable storage device – Transfer files to a hard drive, flash drive or data disk

Web-based electronic file transfer E-mail, ideal for small files, typically under 8mb. Simple FTP such as, Accellion, YouSendIt or custom IT-engineered sites. Robust FTP/collaboration sites like MediaSilo.

Broadcast television content distribution Vyvx – Point-to-point real time live video transmission. DG – Satellite delivered data stream direct to broadcast stations. PathFire – Backhaul long format programs (data) to broadcast stations. Hula, Extreme Reach, Javelin – FTP file-based delivery of broadcast programs and spots.

Whether you leave Mills James with a tape, drive or an e-mail, you should know that we will always keep a master of all programs either on site or stored at another location. We do not keep copies of distribution files ordered as a deliverable.

We’ve learned that the best place to start a project is at the end. One of the first things we need to know at the beginning is the various flavors of the final deliverables. Knowing this can shed a great deal of light on the production and lessen the ambiguity during the process.

Well, in fact, it does matter. Simply put, graphic file formats vary greatly from one to the next. They all have different color depth, compression and transparency – all suited to particular types of images and media. Since the subject is very deep and technical, we’ll just stick to the basics.

Scenarios

Let’s identify a few situations you might run into.

Logos – Every presentation has a logo, right? Logos are line art graphics with a handful of colors (think Nike, FedEx, Home Depot). GIF/PNG will give you clean crisp lines with solid colors and is the format of choice. You want to stay away from JPG for logos, as it will make the edges and colors look poor. Designed for photos, JPG compression creates ugly artifacts against clean lines.

Expert Tip: If you’re going to put logos in an Office document, use a PDF vector logo. It’s universal and you can size it to any dimensions without compromise (provided it’s a vector PDF).  A graphic professional can create this with software like Illustrator. Once you have this, you’ll never have to get another version!

Photos – A picture is worth a thousand words, but it only looks good if it’s a JPG. JPG uses millions of colors instead of hundreds, making it well-suited to display photographs. JPG will use compression to lower the file size, which is not typically noticeable unless pushed to extremes.

Charts & Graphs – If you are having a designer create a chart or graph, then this falls into the category of line art graphics. Like logos, you’ll want to use a GIF or PNG to get a clean rendering. The readability of the text and lines is the most important thing to keep in mind. Here again, if you can get a vector PDF export of the chart, you’ll have the ultimate in quality and flexibility.

Text – Sometimes you have styled titles or visually treated text that is a graphic. You guessed it; you should use GIF/PNG. For optimum readability you want clean lines with no edge distortion.

Transparency – If you want to cut out the white background of an image, you need to use transparency. For our discussion, the files that can support transparency are GIF, PNG and even PDF.  But they will have to be exported specifically for this and often professionally tweaked to provide the best end presentation.

Sizing

Now that you have a file format selected, you will also need to think about dimensions. How big is it? (Pixels wide by pixels tall.)

All of these graphics should be created or exported at the size you wish to use them – the last thing you want to do is stretch it. Microsoft makes it all too easy to size a graphic up or down, but resist the urge. Sizing a graphic up or down makes it look blurry and can distort the shape. If you are unsure about an image already placed, Office allows you to investigate its properties and make sure it is set to 100%.

Samples

Still not convinced? Sound like techno-babble? Take a look at a few samples to see what we’re talking about.

Conclusion

In the world of graphic file formats, this is only the beginning. In addition to many more professional formats, there are variants that offer more options than discussed here. But hopefully this will get you started in the right direction.

We sure think so. Just as long as you take into account the business realities of corporate communications. Here are 4 reasons why it’s time to go mobile:

1) It’s everywhere.

According to mobithinking.com, nearly 1 billion people around the world have mobile broadband connections. Additionally, a recent report by Gartner Research suggests that by 2013, 80% of businesses will support a workforce using tablets.

Because people are on the move and technology is moving with them, reaching them wherever they are becomes increasingly important.

2) It does everything.

With a smartphone or tablet application you can put your videos, printed materials and pictures into one easy-to-use interface. And because mobile devices allow for more dynamic content, users have a more engaging experience, increasing the likelihood your message will be received. The ability to integrate slideshows, videos, animations and sound creates a level of interactivity that your printed handout simply can’t match.

3) It’s quick and easy.

On the Web, everything is instant. Content changes as information changes, and updates happen in seconds. There’s no quicker way to push up-to-date information to your employees and customers than through a mobile communications platform – and with today’s content management systems, access to that information couldn’t be any easier.

4) It’s trackable and measurable.

You’re familiar with the old adage “knowledge is power,” so why not put it to work? By knowing when and what consumers are clicking, reading, watching and sharing, you have the power to get your message across more effectively. The analytics of mobile communications provide vital information about your customers and clients, and can help you determine what’s working and what isn’t.

For mobile corporate communications, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Look for upcoming posts on mobile websites; mobile applications; and Mobile Press, a service that transforms your corporate communications into highly engaging tablet editions that come alive with slideshows, animations, full-screen video, interactive graphs and embedded Web content.

While the White House has pledged to respond to any petition that receives 25,000 signatures in the first 30 days (up from the initial threshold of only 5,000 signatures), the value of such a petition is certainly debatable. Does this outlet offer a real opportunity for change, or merely fragment activists from more concentrated, publicly visible activities such as door-to-door campaigns and statehouse rallies? What is certain is that technology will continue to change the landscape of governance at a rapid pace.

The idea of allowing democracy to be played out via the Internet is not a new idea; interestingly, the U.K.launched a strikingly similar online petition initiative in August. And just prior to that, social media is widely credited as a key factor leading to the Arab Spring. In fact, most technology historians trace the birth of the Internet back to a network developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars, so it comes as no surprise that this technology would come back to re-shape the political landscape that brought it to life.

Might this be the birth of a new form of democracy? Could we be voting from our personal computers in the near future? And further on down the road as the technological barriers are overcome, might we be voting more often on increasingly more mundane issues currently left to our elected representatives, replacing our representative democracy with direct democracy?

Perhaps, but certainly not anytime soon. President Obama’s own “Twitter Town Hall” and YouTube Q&A were drowned out with fringe concerns the President opted to ignore. While it may seem the whole world is online, major segments of our population — especially the elderly – have been slow to embrace this technology and therefore the online community is still a subset of our national population as a whole. And, perhaps, we may just be too fragmented with too many incompatible ideals for such a system to work. These fragmented voices from all sides of the political spectrum tend to cancel each other out, as Alexander Fraser Tytler famously wrote many years ago, “the will of the many is in truth a mere chimera, and ultimately resolves into the will of one.”

So where does that leave us? If recent polls are any indication, Americans are feeling historically disenchanted with our elected officials. Although digital governance has failed in recent experiments, it may have an impact on our lives yet. Digital governance is very much in its infancy, and the passage of time will surely sort out the problems just as many companies have managed to turn a profit online despite the dot com bust a decade ago. The way to get there is to take advantage of the mini-democracies all around us by experimenting on a smaller scale: homeowners’ associations, PTAs, and wherever else we congregate to shape our communities.

Use these opportunities to boldly experiment in ways we’re not yet comfortable doing on a national level. Ask for greater accessibility to voting through online means, share information online that people can use when deciding their vote, and use social media to stay informed of the good ideas emerging from other communities. Good ideas will emerge, good ideas will rise to the top, and together we can forge a better tomorrow by focusing on our local communities. That is democracy in action in the digital age.

The TV Loudness War is nearly over. Advertisers, striving to be heard, were bombarding audiences with more heavily compressed [and seemingly louder] TV spots – while more viewers retaliated with the “mute” button or lobbed complaints to the FCC. Last year, Washington legislated a cease-fire.

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation [CALM] Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama on December 15th last year, requires satellite networks, cable operators and broadcast stations to ensure that commercials are aired at a volume no louder than the programs that surround them. The bill’s sponsor, California Rep. Anna Eshoo, said the CALM Act was among the most popular pieces of legislation she’d introduced during her 18 years in Congress. The FCC was to begin enforcing the law one year after it was enacted, and we are just now beginning to see [hear, actually] the effects of this bill. 

aurally denser and more noticeable, couldn’t be reliably measured by those earlier standards.  And the transition to digital television and more HD programming only magnified the problem. 

Broadcast and cable networks are now measuring the loudness of television spots over time and are starting to reject nonconforming content back to the spot distributors, agencies and production companies.

Two things can happen if you’re an advertiser and your content is rejected – neither of them good: 

(1) Since spots typically get to the broadcasters just in time to air, any delay can put the whole media buy at risk.

(2) If you don’t have the latest metering equipment to ensure the spot’s audio is FCC-legal, one option is to just guess at lowering the overall audio level. But then you run the risk of not lowering it enough over time and having to re-do again – or being too cautious and dropping the level so low that it is too quiet compared to the surrounding program material.

If you are producing and finishing HD commercials on your own and don’t have the capabilities to analyze your final spot for FCC-legal loudness, feel free to contact our Operations Department at 614.777.9933. We will be happy to analyze and verify your audio track so that you can distribute your spots with confidence, knowing that it won’t be rejected by the networks.

WWW: Discovering fire 

While the Internet dates back to 1969, its early years were the exclusive domain of code-literate research scientists. But a little over two decades ago, Tim Berners-Lee, a software consultant at the CERN nuclear research labs in Geneva, Switzerland, submitted a proposal to secure funds for an open computer network to share particle physics research in a more “humane” form that didn’t require heavy-duty computer coding. His paper would later serve as the blueprint for the World Wide Web with innovations including HTTP, URLs and HTML. Once he had the funding, Berners-Lee built those three foundational chunks of software code — plus the server and browser software to host it and read it – by Christmas, 1990.  While the invention of the Web rivals the discovery of fire, it took awhile to catch on.

Tim Berners-Lee created the vision for the World Wide Web and invented the software protocols that serve as its foundation.

A slow bootup

But it would take years for this obscure research tool to gain momentum. For mainstream computer users, the World Wide Web wouldn’t become a global phenomenon until the mid-1990s once Mosaic, Netscape and AOL popularized the software and helped put browsers on every desktop.

Businesses start to ‘get it’

In 1995, most of us at Mills James were still asking, “what’s a website?” But later that year, we launched our first homepage, which initially was a modest presence in a “business mall” site with other companies.  In early 1996, we premiered our first full website with its own domain, the Mills James Drive-In. In the mid-90’s, many businesses followed a similar trajectory and rushed to the Web with “brochureware” sites as we all began to sense the immense communications potential of this fledgling online medium.

Launched in early 1996, The Mills James Drive-In was our first website with its own domain.

Later in 1996, Mills James jumped into the deep end, launching an entire “New Media” department as part of a major building expansion, staffed to build corporate websites, e-learning content, kiosks and interactive media.  The rest is 15 years of digital history.

Mobilizing resources

Today it’s a different rush, as organizations scramble to stay ahead of the online tsunami — mobilizing websites with content optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices; launching video portals, webcasts and webinars to satisfy video-hungry online appetites; and integrating websites with social networks and their growing online communities. Our Video & Interactive group is staffed with knowledgeable consultants who can help you navigate this rapidly-changing digital terrain. It’s tough to imagine how different today’s world would be if Tim Berners-Lee hadn’t created the elements that brought the World Wide Web to life. Who knows, maybe we’d be faxing this blog to you.

Today, organizations are scrambling to mobilize their sites – optimizing design and content for smartphones and mobile applications.