how is this done?

person walks in front of webpage and talks

[Mike McKnight]

... So I was surfing around and saw something Ive never seen before on the web. I Clicked on a link and up comes a home page with lots of info / content on it, then in the lower right screen location, a woman walks into / onto this webpage and proceeds to introduce the website to the visitor.

Now I know it was / is an embedded .swf movie file - I looked at the source, but I am still not smart enough to know how they do it. She had no background as in transparent it was just the spokes person in front of the text on the webpage, such that as she spoke and moved her head and arms, it would hide/reveals the static text content behind her. I hope that I am describing this enough so you al can understand.

I'm mean it would have been no big deal to me if a flash movie was opened some where on a web page that would hide whatever was behind it, but I've never seen this affect before, very professional presentation, she walks on to the page, does about 30 seconds of introduction, then walks off the page at the end and the page looks normal.
WOW, something I have only seen before on TV.

Any one know? - Also I didn't see any co-ordinate specs to force the swf movie to be placed at the lower right screen position, It may not have been as effective if the movie was positioned say in the center or left margin.

The code in the area that called the flash/shockwave movie
looked fairly normal to me, but how could they make the lady
walk in and out of the movie with a transparent background?

Happy New Year all
trying to learn something new for the new year already
Mike Mc

[TheJones]

Well you need to shoot the video with a blue/green screen and then key out that color. Like most effects it's all in the prep. If you have a well lit green screened video it's very simple, if not it can be a nightmare. Programs like After Effects offer decent keying, but there are programs that are made for this purpose and do it quite better. After you get the video bg keyed out you need to render it as an FLV to preserve the alpha in flash. You can then import the FLV as an embeded movie into flash and work it like a normal swf, or stream it from a media server, and so on.

Hope this helps.

[Mike McKnight]

Thank you for explaining the process.
Mike

[dreamcatcher]

I find this to be totally annoying. As soon as someone walks on the screen I navigate to another site. Each to his own Mike.

dc

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I have seen this effect and it is quite clever but I hate sound when you don't get any warning. If you have been sitting working away in a quiet office for some time any sudden sounds coming from the speakers can be quite startling and annoying.

As you say, "To each his own!"

[Mike McKnight]

OK guys, I agree that under normal old school circumstances that this kind of thing would be irritating, like some site that had some sort of music playing every time you got to a page.
But I believe that the lines are starting to get blurred with so much broadband usage these days between TV and the web, at least when it comes to ecommerce.
We have been running a retail website since 1996, and it still looks very much like it did when we first started up.

I'm kinda slow on the up take about all the new tech stuff, for example I stuck with dos and completely skipped windows 3.2 or whatever it was called before win95 came out, so I skipped a whole generation of MS operating system.

I've skipped a whole lot of stuff that has been widely used by ecom and other website developers since '96 but when I saw this flash intro movie , I really thought that it might really be a neat thing for our website, something to definitely set our retail website apart from my competition.

Nobody that I know of has any thing like this in our trade area, yet. Or at least I don't know of any website that uses an actual spokes person to introduce the website.

I've seen plenty of animated flash thingies with all kinds of bits and pieces flying around the screen with and without music in background, but never a person speaking like this.

The thing is we have a niche product website - a subset of jewelry and gifts aimed at a specific subset of buyers, and I know that I would be among the first in my trade area to use this kind of intro movie until it would be copied by others. I would have to learn how to make it not play when visitors would return, maybe set a cookie or some java program that could check if the IP address had already seen the intro, don't play it again?

I certainly don't want to piss off new or old customers, but just try to find a fresh way to greet visitors and let them know we appreciate their time and their business.

MIKE

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I know that I would be among the first in my trade area to use this kind of intro movie

Henry Ford was the first to produce an Edzell. ;)

I am being facetious of course and I do appreciate that things may change wrt video but I don't think it is happening yet. If you feel must do this I would offer it as an option rather than imposing it on people.

My 2p.

[TheJones]

To be fair it is a slick effect when done properly. The problem is the added value doesn't really stretch beyond the gimmick. Therefore, these effects never really catch on. If multitouch wasn't so useful it would stay a slick iphone effect.
Also, from an instructional design point of view, there is a reason IKEA uses line drawings to show you how to put things together rather than images of the actual parts. Or a med student studies an illustration of the heart rather than a photo. Video introductions won't tell the user something clearer or quicker than well designed and layed out copy.
Just my two cents. I don't know your audience enough to completely write off the value in a high tech first impression.
Good Luck

[g1smd]

Embed a cookie so that the introduction is hidden if they have already seen it twice.

Clear that cookie if the introduction film has changed since their last visit, or their last visit was many weeks ago.

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by eelixduppy. New thread at: flash/3857702.htm [webmasterworld.com]
2:32 pm on Feb. 25, 2009 (est -5)

[webnerd]

What about putting a clickable link (to have someone speak to you) on the page in question that then and only then loads the page with the person walking on what looks like the same html page.
Wouldn't that be about the same as a web page with clickable tabs to play music, show pictures etc.

I can't seem to find the page inquestion.