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>http://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
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
