The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead’s New Multimedia Magazine Gives an Inside Look at the Most Iconic Walkers
February 1, 2012
Greg Nicotero describes creating the most iconic walkers from Seasons 1 and 2 in this new multimedia magazine with photos and video.
http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead/walker-gallery
ZAP TO IT exclusive
HOMEPAGE
BLOG
HBO Bored to Death
All Platforms are launched with auto-detect from http://cdn.ctnhd.com/hbo
IPAD auto detect pageswipe gallery mode – landscape with html5 video
Link
iPhone 4s IOS5 as Homescreen WEBAPP
FEATURES SPECIFIC TO THIS NEWEST 3 Screen promotional marketing target:
1) Full Spread Treatments – Starts open ( no half screen coverpage )
2) Startpage Background music ( 1/4 volume )
3) Page insertable, autoscale to fill iframe dimensions, served for bloggers ( as shown )
<iframe height=”440″ name=”box” scrolling=”no” src=”http://cdn.ctnhd.com/hbo” width=”640″></iframe>
As Seen in Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/exclusive-bored-to-death-season-3_n_997972.html
4) Autodetect and deliver iPad ( with Webapp Homescreen Icon mode )
- Ten iPad compatible m4v CDN delivered Videos
- 14 panels momentum swipe and Illuminated bottom navigation
5) Autodetect and deliver iPhone ( with Webapp Homescreen Icon mode )
- Auto scrollup of Address-bar on initial load and on every orientation change.
- 3G Speed optimized loading, All files performance tuned, all high resolution.
- Ten full screen Apple iPhone-specific m4v Edge CDN delivered Videos, with end-of-play screen restore.
- Short URL available tab.io/hbo ( tuned to properly support iPhone 3 on IOS4 thru 4S on IOS5 )
6) All versions delivered from a single target LINK http://cdn.ctnhd.com/hbo
Some of the buzz:
FEATURED
HUFFINGTON POST WRITE-UP
HBO HOMEPAGE LINK
Blogger insertion ( example typical )
http://seriesandtv.com/bored-to-death-premieres-season-three-monday-october-10-9pm/7308
HBO made a Marketing Outreach page that authorizes use and provides links/embeds/Key Art/ Trailers. CTN augments that with scale to fit engineered presentation on 3 devices profiles ( Laptop & desktop / iPad / iPhone ) and one-click social sharing.
FACEBOOK ONE CLICK SHARE
The Good Wife Digital Magazine
Launched and active at www.tgw.tv
Congrats to Julianna Margulies and CBS for top nod with the Academy win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama.
This domain has auto -detect for each device profile and runs on L3 edge origin highspeed cache. Below: auto flip Leanback mode initiated. Click Fullscreen. Click Lower right arrows “Expand” button for full spread at 720p.
This edition is PageBlend3, a Lookbook with video for each character, and a longform leanback video play mode.
LIVING DOCUMENT publishing model.
PageBlend 3 is specifically crafted to be a “Living Document” Magazine model, with weekly update versioning, page swapping, sponsor placements and fresh clip handlers with social target linking, capable of well over 1000 hits/sec on CDN. Curated content is crafted to encourage repeat visits with fresh nuggets of on-going arcs, catch-up drill-downs and followups.
LEANBACK MODE: is a no-click-required play method for viewing with auto flip at video play completion for 5 pages distributed across the magazine. Can be interrupted at any time with a page turn. http://www.tgw.tv/mag.htm?page=4 initiates the functionality. FULLSCREEN is crafted to be perfect on HDTV with a 720p h.264 fast start video.
150,000 pageviews gathered from 70,000 unique PV on Sunday Sept 4th, marketing promotion was limited to a single Facebook entry and single link twitter post. – low key marketing with a high yield in 4 hours laborday weekend.
Sept 16th: a simple blog post on the homepage of The Good Wife on CBS.com http://www.cbs.com/shows/the_good_wife/
Some of the Buzz:
FACEBOOK REACTIONS
iPad HOME ICON:
Longform Player… 4 segments thumbnail launcher with html5 video player for 1/2 hour special – 12 placements of video total 35 min video engagement
Special Version for iPad with an inset video for each Character, lit thumbnail page navigation at the bottom, momentum glide pageswipe.
Runs auto-detected to all 3 screens of device profile. ( flash and Html5/IOS)
video overlay launcher for character videos and promo “Addicted to Love”
EMMY
Emmys
Turner Chose CTN for a 10 show “For Your Consideration” EMMY Video Lookbook to connect to their ad campaigns featured on Variety.com , The Hollywood Reporter, etc.
Each Show has a dedicated page and target URL – with detect and redirect to iPad & iPhone compatible video playback.
For a PC user on the websites, an ad click loads a PageBlend Book,displays the cover for less than 1sec while it preloads the page request, the desired page turns, arrives and autoplays a video , with the option to play in full spread.
FAST LOADING on arrival is done with careful timing, CDN and load broker code in the PageBlend engine system.
For iPad, iPhone, iPod, Google TV and Android devices, a video or book is presented, and that is managed from a single target URL at the CDN, keeping the delivery process fully capable, robust and simple to track and manage.
These are the Ad Target Links for a 10 show book:
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/conan.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/lopez.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/hawthorne.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/leverage.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/closer.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/moaca.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/southland.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/rizzoli.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/memphisbeat.html
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/emmy/moguls.html
Each Page has tracking at the granular level of fullscreen chosen, full spread video played, video played to completion, time spent.
For speed, IOS device detection directs to optimized video playback.
From PC, to iPhone, iPad, Google TV and tablets … ALL all supported from a single target url that goes direct to the desired page within the book or the proper configured content.
Unlike other systems, there is never a “no show” outcome.
Augmenting the paper and DVD delivery of engaging content is now quite a normal an powerful option, on all devices and at any point in the daily interaction of a screen clicked or touched, in the world.
TNT SUMMER 2011
An 8 show lookbook featuring Falling Skies, with full spread video
Heavy use of the page specific linking system brought a lot of first look traffic directly to Falling Skies.
http://cdn.ctnhd.com/turner/summer2011?page=2
The linking copy to clipboard seems to have been quickly discovered, as was the facebook wall post and Twitter link.
This set of video frames around the “skitters” scene just past the middle of the clip attracts a lot of attention.
Direct tracking of icon clicks in this edition show a high percentage use of the icons below, it seems the self-service self-evident usages are well understood.
The first 1000 visitors were measured granular for analysis in the first few hours. This delivered massive views and 20% repeat visits – average greater than 10 minutes screen-residence time means that screen-time-eyeball total was over 10,000 minutes ( viewer eyes time spent.)
MADMEN FASHION on AMCTV.com
Currently Featured in the homepage redesign of http://amctv.com
Leads to http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/season-4-fashion-gallery/
This is an example of inserted in-place PageBlend Look Book with:
video and thumbnail views, automated display ad cycle on each page turn, full spread video expands and more.
Feel free to use the facebook link icon and post to your facebook Wall with a single click.
FEATURED
OPENING PAGE
Full Spread Video
TRADE Presentation Books
This is also an iPad LOOKBOOK of over 30 pages and over 2 dozen Videos – 460 megabytes. ( Very Large App ) The purpose for this was to create best-of class international executive presentation for TV show properties at MIPCOM 2010 – without needing any WiFi or 3G connectivity, fast and highly interactive.
Video
All videos were re-processed to fit iPad desktop m4v format play and audio was Normalized for maximum levels on the built-in iPad video player accessible to native application code. Since the amount of video in the file-system was unusually high, a special memory manager was required and created to support play of m4v “desktop” files.
HD VIDEO: To satisfy higher resolution viewing and add last minute video ( Yes, Virginia ) all videos were also prepared and re-rendered to HD 1280 x 720p and made playable from the std iPad VIDEO player icon. Best-effort upscaling was done in the CTN editing suite.
Look and Feel
Simulated page-turn was coded to present the book to be nearly identically to the print and flash PageBlend Application. This project used our single finger landscape page turn with dynamic shadow-drop left and right, fast and finger placement responsive.
B2B applications in Apple Products
Apple does not support private B2B applications. This is a difficult problem to get around, we needed a private APP Business Presentation Solution in less than a week, and it can only install via iTunes which is a customer facing store with a specific credit card on file that matches one device to each iTunes installation. We had 10 devices. Therefore all such applications not in the Apple App store ( intended for for nonpublic use and B2B ) must be installed as private, compiled to run on declared and specific device ID’s, from within an XCODE environment and installed via iTunes on a single, certified developer system.
This means all such instances of B2B Applications are sourced coded individually from and tied to the Developer’s iTunes Account. This is the only way to craft applications in ways Apple seeks to control with a rigorous validation and certification process available only to Apple Approved developers.
At this time, CTN does not use or endorse “jailbreak” methods and is the developer of record and code-rights holder of this iPad framework. In short, Apple works very hard to make what we had to do, into a very complex process that required our best people 24/7.
Touch Screen Interface
Interface design was intended to be as simple and robust as possible. The INDEX page launches all Show pages. Each show page contains a Synopsis, Production and cast credits and launch to video placed in the Key Art area. For the iPad this video is played fullscreen ( upscaled in the built-in video player ) … the page drops down, plays video to completion and pulls back up automatically. Double-tap to bring up a bottom navigation bar to return to INDEX or the first page of any section. Fast page turn by quickly tappping corners.
Device-optimized custom display reformatting.
The print version was for 7 x 11 inch landscape pages. No device screen is that shape, and that required all pages to be reformatted to fit fullscreen 16:9 custom PageBlend for PC and HDTV full spread and then again to fit iPad 1024 x 768 fullscreen. Design layout look and feel was preserved to reflect a consistent presentation on all 3 screens. This also meant a new codebase was created to support cross-page text flow, column justified. Total project time from Final Plan Adoption for Production, to Delivery was accelerated with managed team man-hour load for 24/7 production and code. PageBlend book was done in under 5 days, iPad was done in 4. For pre-show email support to a global recipient list, the PageBlend book was promoted to CDN, 1.3 gigabytes of on-demand edge-origin video.
Standalone / offline presentation.
MIPCOM is in Cannes France where Internet connection quality could present difficulty, all content was prepared to be available as application software, and included a Memory Stick version of the Flash PageBlend version for offline support of PC and HDTV presentation. This assured there would be no reliance on network support, presentation venue location or screen availability constraints
All PageBlend LOOKBOOKS are crafted to beautifully support high definition screens, large scale video projection systems and easily operate from keyboard or mouse control.
Samsung Galaxy Tab
Hardware specs
Android 2.2 running TouchWiz 3.0 7-inch TFT LCD with 1024 x 600 resolution (WSVGA)
Weighs 380 grams 1GHz Cortex A8 processor 16GB or 32GB internal storage microSD expansion for up to 32GB additional storage
Front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera and rear 3 megapixel camera with flash 4,000mAh battery
3G data / voice (there's a speakerphone and Bluetooth for phone calls, but no earpiece)
5GHz dual-band 802.11n WiFi Standard back color is white, carriers might offer different colors Full HD video playback
There's a 30-pin dock connector on the bottom that allows for HDMI, USB, and docking accessories (a car dock at least is planned)
Yes you want one… no barriers, and matched with that bluetooth headset, its a phone that works.
SAMSUNG is morphing into a very creative and capable tech marketing firm, what was once seemingly a basic appliance company is heading to a new image for itself and from what we can see with its Internet@tv and Tab and Galaxy phones and 3D … they can and will become headliner products.
SO Says ENGADGET:
We may still be waiting on final word of pricing and availability for the Galaxy Tab, but it doesn't look like Samsung is wasting any time in making some pretty bold claims about it. Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Samsung product executive Hankil Yoon said that the company expects to ship 10 million Galaxy Tabs and grab a third of the global tablet market by next year. Yoon further added that Samsung eventually plans to introduce a whole family of Galaxy Tab devices, although it's not clear if those factor into his sales projections. Anyway you slice it, however, ten million tablets is a lot of relief on the go.
BARNEYS NEWYORK – 3D DENIM
Contact: Robin Rudoy
Tel. 310-471-1575 x 2
Email: robin@ctndigital.com
CTN DIGITAL SELECTED BY BARNEYS NEW YORK
Neal Gray, President & CEO of CTN Digital, said, “Barneys New York is taking the lead with an immersive and edgy 3D experience that will entertain and engage their customers like never before.”
Recently CTN has developed and launched multiple campaigns, the reason its seems like just last week that we launched AMC RUBICON, is because it was last week. So We would be remiss if we didnt thank our amazing team for producing hundreds of pages in perfect form – on-time – and very very quickly.
UP and running August 9th, is the Denim Delight BOOK – a 3D LOOKBOOK like none other, all in precision anaglyph ( Red-Cyan ) at http://barneysmag.com with autodetect iPad Viewer ( the scroller mural framework ).
PageBlend allows for Insertions into homepage placements with ipad/nonflash fallbacks.
Users can click Select:FULLSCREEN and jump to full and back with a click, Shop directly from inside links of the book pages.
All Pages are tracked for page-view time, event clicks for mouseovers and shop button use.
Aug 16th – Book Placement in homepage of Barneys.com
iPad with scroll slider navigation cover bar – made for 3D , pinchzoom to 1.8 mag. 7 megs maxes out the iPad Cache.
This viewer loads 5 megs of imagery – so it is right up to the very edge of Safari limits.
CDN supported to 50,000 visits per hour with 5 videos and 50 pages ( 24 are full spread 3D ).
Visit http://barneysmag.com or simply google "barneysmag" its the #1 choice
… click and we take it from there and send you to the right content for your device. HDTV users with 3D glasses get a superb experience. This is our 3rd "All 3 Screens" development, but our very first "3D" … It took special extra virtual pixel coding and bandwidth management … we hope you enjoy it.
Below is the Page at barneys.com to signup for free glasses.
http://www.barneys.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-BNY-Site/default/Link-Emailsignup
Virtual pixels and scaling
Now that iPads and retina displays and variations in PC screen size can run from 1024 to 2560… the world as we know it has changed. Being able to zoom and having various pixel density display technology is not all there is to it. GPU cards also scale and smooth the rendering as does the code in the browsers, so maybe 5 or 6 hefty chunks of tech and software intervene to either software smooth or possibly inflict device-specific GPU driven rules of image handling.
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Depending on your device, the images above will either look identical, or ( as in an ipad zoom ) the one on the left is pixeled and the one on the right stays ok. Of course adding Anaglyph 3D to the mix of dependencies increases the problems of tending to visual accuracy even more, generally making all images blurry anyhow until you put on your retro 3D glasses. ( another story for later )
The solution does include the need for high bandwidth…
the image on the left is 25kb the one on the right is 150kb.
The problem is industry-wide and spans these cases:
1) HDTV – as more HDTV 1920 x 1080 displays get connected to the web, the more evident it becomes that variations on pixel density over distance will matter. A 32 inch 1080p looks stunningly accurate up close where the same image looks rather soft or jaggy and fuzzy with the same image up close on a 65 inch tv. Both resolution and device physical dimensions come into play. Virtual pixels help manage the dramatic differences in Dots Per Inch of display area.
2) iPhone4 The Retina display – 328 or so pixels per inch in a smartphone 4 inch or so form factor "fixes" a problem that doesnt much need fixing, but it does look nice and by practical means, zooming on that display is far more enjoyable.
3) iPad – just the ability to pinch zoom is a scaling "virtual-pixel" gamechanger – mostly because it processes to 'sharpen' the image in post-zoom code ( you can easily see it doing that though it is not documented for coders to manage ). The ability to easily zoom and the inherent GPU device-specific scaling behaviors must be dealt with properly. We do several pre and post processing technology efforts for making this work.
In 300DPI publisher formats for 11 x 17 ( we get that a lot ) the accuracy vs size of dot density is not compatible with pixel-based displays, causes lots of processing problems for PageBlend to tend to. Much of our code and prep is based in knowing the issue and doing re-design to preserve the original feel of the art in the new context of 300 dpi source to 72 dpi screen typical less resolution delivery accuracy, and do that with immediacy. ( Avoiding the Zinio + Zmags zoom image recovery cycle required by simple-minded PDF conversions )
The user experience should not be interrupted by image cleanup – post-fetch correction, when as in PageBlend, it can be seamless.
Basically when you have a book in PageBlend, extra effort, code and Bandwidth all are brought together to preserve the visuals with no post process lag to "fetch the highres image ". It is immediate and across PC to HDTV. Videos arrive and play right on time.
BANDWIDTH:
THE PROBLEM IS GENERALLY THE LAST MILE OR THE LAST 30 FEET ( wireless )
We are quite good at exerting command and control over creative and applying solutions, but it comes at some expense of one thing we cannot control… the stark hard reality of user endpoint bandwidth. ( Google know this, they want to fiber connect a whole town to prove it too… )
It generally takes 5-6x the filesize and bandwidth to deal with this. But the problem is even more complex in that it doesnt matter if you have massive server horsepower like we do here… because the bottleneck will be at the LAN/WAN local wireless. This is not even a last mile problem, its a last 30 feet problem that is challenged by all the radios of competing wireless devices. If you have an iPhone, iPod, iPad, iMac all running on the same desk .. you have 4 radios competing at the same wavelength for communication attention to a single router in a single connection. All it takes is the kid in the next room to add a YouTube video to the load of the system and you are basically going to stress the dataflow… there is nothing anyone can do about that, so making the arrival bandwidth satisfy a profile happens at the designers desk. This means bumping the files a bit with no obvious loss of quality. We will not tell you how we do that, but rest assured its a big part of what we do.
We urge browser coders to please make the client-side tooling work with even less code for the HTDV enabled systems… that is required to allow is to satisfy this emerging need.
3D
