Been so long now . . . .

It's probably been even longer for me :-(

But back to the video, the controls are interactive for the viewer so how does his hand come out of the viewing window and press the same pause button that the viewer can press?

It's a bit like watching somebody on TV reaching out of the screen and turning my TV off!

It's flash and flash is not like quicktime or windows media player where controls are separate from the video.

Stock ( youtube type ) flash players load videos and are then more or less same as quicktime or windows media player, but if you make a flash player yourself you can do anything you want. Controls are inside the actual content and you can do whatever you want with them. It's clickable by viewers and can be cliked, moved, whatever by you or characters in the video itself.

They should have added the ability to click on the parent and drag him away from the play/pause button

That is why flash is much more than just another video player.

and I thought it was some kind of magic. :-(

Alan, don't listen to him - it was magic. No doubt at all in my mind - Magic.

Grazie

from the looks of it, I'm betting a DVD could be made to do that. The controls are locked out when the "parent" starts to push a button, a lot like a DVD transition video. Then a final transition video plays & it starts all over again.

Neat!

I didn't look again to see whether controls are locked when he leans over, but there is no real reason for them to be locked ( other than they want him to push it without you interfering ).

You could keep controls active at all times, or even be able to drag them away, out of his reach when he leans over and have him chase them all over the screen as you keep dragging them. You can literally do anything you want with it if you know how to do it in flash. DVD would only have a very simple limited version of this.

yes but if you could use the controls the censor wouldn't work. :D

Nobody's mentioned green screen. The guy was obviously photoed with a green screen bg and then layed over the stripper. Also, the scene of him shaking his head is looped at the end.

Did you guys let it play all the way to the end??

Also, the scene of him shaking his head is looped at the end.

That is NOT the end of the video.

After he stops it the first time, click on the PLAY button to re-start it. She will continue dancing and he will eventually stop it again. Keep re-starting it until you see how he deals with folks continually clicking on the play button :-))

Nobody's mentioned green screen

All due respect, no one's mentioned it 'cause it's not particularly relevant to the discussion. ;-) The "baffling" thing about this item is not how the guy appears in front of the woman, but how he is interacting with the same controls that we the viewers can and do. Generally speaking, content in online video is either a) part of the video itself or b) part of the video player. Whoever created this Flash item had the foresight and skill to almost seamless blur the lines between those two domains.

Update: Incidentally, I see people have uploaded this as a flattened, non-interactive video to Youtube -- essentially defeating the point. Way to go, Youtubers. ;)

Rob

>>>Whoever created this Flash item had the foresight and skill to almost seamless blur the lines between those two domains.<<<

You don't need any special skills for that. If you are creating this in flash everything in it is an object that can be manipulated.

Obviously you need some level of flash skills, but this is not difficult. The actual shooting and chroma keying will take far more time than coding this interaction.

I put myself into a game right here.

http://www.deusx.com/basketball/3pt.html

I could just as easily turn around and swipe away at your cursor if you try to click on my ass,, talk back to you or anything along those lines

And "some level of Flash skills" is what I was referring to.

I was specifically responding to a post which had the potential to steer the discussion toward video (specifically green screen), and I was steering it (back) toward what the "How do they do this" subject line was really referring to -- Flash skills. No, I suppose it wouldn't be difficult to for a Flash developer to do. I didn't suggest it would be. What I was doing was informing jazzmaster that we were not discussing video technique but rather but Flash coding technique.

In fact, I'd even say I was referring less to coding skills and more to overall Flash project management skills. Having your guy swat in the air in the general direction of the cursor is all well and good, but have him grab that cursor out of the air and move it for you. It takes not just coding, but planning and precise graphics design so that the item control you just moved doesn't jump from one place to another because the character is grabbing it somewhere else. Again, it may not be superbly difficult, but it is something I haven't seen done a lot.

That said, after playing with the content in question, I see it's not 100% perfect. First, you can scrub backwards but not forwards, which may tip off the viewer if they try it before the guy shows up. Second, if you let the guy come in and then you scrub back to the beginning and play it, you'll hear his incoming footsteps even though he's already standing there. Still, a very nifty video / app.

Rob

That is NOT the end of the video.

Still could be solvable on DVD: instead of having the thing be in an endless loop have it progress to another set of menu's which changes the outcome.

It's still a really neat idea. It shows how some people can think of something new even when the tech is years old.

Still could be solvable on DVD: instead of having the thing be in an endless loop have it progress to another set of menu's which changes the outcome.

What could be "solvable"?

It is not an "endless loop" because the video is not over, just "paused - with action" He is wating for you to act before the video continues on to the eventual end.

Just because it looks like it's a video in a video player doesn't mean it's not a flash project with layers (which it is). It's easy enough to create a project that looks like a player and has loop points. A good coder, with flash script, can easily pull this off.

It's sort of a video illusion, but, as Grazie says, a good idea.

Think about any of those other bits of green screen video where someone walks onto a web page and says, "blah blah blah, click here for info." That's just a transparent flash layer on top of a web page (or coded into a page). This is sort of the same thing, but the original video and everything (including the illusion of the player itself) is part of the project.

Don't think video: think interactive flash project.