Hyper-video

I'm very interested in the idea of hyper-video (that is, doing for video, what hypertext does for text) and possibly creating a Hypervideo control in Silverlight.

This week's  How Do I video is an attempt at a first step in that direction.

What I want to try next is a video player that lets our "How Do I" videos add dynamically adjustable links to supplement what is being described in the video.  The next step in this process will be to take the video player I built in HDI Create a Video Player Part I and Part II and wrap them around a video that has markers every 30 (?) seconds and then tie all that to some sort of database (preferably an xml file) so that I can  something like this:

 <movieInfo>
   <movieName>How Do I Create HyperText</movieName>
      <markers>
           <marker text="30"
                     <links>
                          <link>http://silverlight.net</link>
                          <link>http://www.microsoft.com</link>
                     </links>
         </marker>
           <marker text="60"
                     <links>
                     </links>
         </marker>
           <marker text="90"
                     <links>
                          <link>http://silverlight.net</link>
                     </links>
         </marker>
      </markers>
   <movieName>How Do I Create Dynamic Hypertext</movieName>
      <markers>
           <marker text="30"
                     <links>
                          <link>http://silverlight.net</link>
                     </links>
         </marker>
           <marker text="60"
                     <links>
                          <link>http://ww.someotherlink.com</link>
                          <link>https://www.jesseliberty.com</link>
                     </links>
         </marker>
           <marker text="90"
                     <links>
                     </links>
         </marker>
      </markers>
 </movieInfo>

There are a few key ideas here that I want to explore in coming blog entries and videos:

  • Having more markers than you need (so as your needs change you don't have to "re-mark" the film
  • Decoupling the text of the marker from the links displayed
  • Creating a database (probably in xml) that holds the marker to link information
  • Continually updating the database over time as new links become available

Possible additional features

  • Subscribing to the updates – so that users can decide if they want to see the movie again with the new links (RSS?)
  • Ability to hide/unhide links
  • Other kinds of additional information besides just links (other Silverlight added after the movie is created?!)
  • Click in the movie for more info…
  • This last has a lot of appeal. Imagine watching a How Do I movie and at various moments, while information is being shown (or words are spoken) an icon appears (perhaps a green question mark). Click on the green question mark and the movie pauses while a bubble opens with additional information, or a menu of choices to get additional information.

    There is a lot more that can be done, but this will get me started. The trick will be to build videos that demonstrate interesting techniques, while still building towards an interesting control.

    Your ideas, suggestions, etc. are always welcome.

    -j

    About Jesse Liberty

    Jesse Liberty has three decades of experience writing and delivering software projects and is the author of 2 dozen books and a couple dozen online courses. His latest book, Building APIs with .NET will be released early in 2025. Liberty is a Senior SW Engineer for CNH and he was a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft, a Distinguished Software Engineer for AT&T, a VP for Information Services for Citibank and a Software Architect for PBS. He is a Microsoft MVP.
    This entry was posted in z Silverlight Archives. Bookmark the permalink.