Mozilla Popcorn – Future of web video?
After reading a tweet about something called Mozilla Popcorn by Learn 4 Life’s Leon Cych and hearing one or two things on the Twittersphere from the recent #Mozfest event I decided to have a look at a) what Popcorn was and b) what it can do…
In a nutshell Popcorn extends on HTML 5 video and allows you to make web video as interactive as a conventional web app. Through the Popcorn framework the integration of external data and content sources such as Flickr, Google Maps, Google Translate, WordPress blogs, Wikipedia entries… the list is endless AND all this can be done on the fly as the video is streaming in your browser.
This Webmonkey article sums up some of the possibilities:
For example, the subtitles attached to the video can be sent to an online translation tool and converted to whatever language you want on the fly. JavaScript handles the syncing. Also, the location data associated with a video can be plotted on a map, and the viewer can browse the map while the video plays.A demo video can be seen on the Drumbeat website – look at the widgets and check out the translation subtitles, all the content being pulled from source site is being done on the fly.
And to make to Popcorn a little more accessible for the non-coders out there Mozilla have released an Alpha browser app – Popcorn Maker – to let you literally point and click your way to making simple interactive video apps. Within a few click you can create simple video apps, so simple even I could do it… which leads me back to where I came in and back to Leon Cych who on his L4L blog has done a nifty little intro video to get you started..
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