The Visualist

Breakpoint 2010

Laurent — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:43:25 +0000

I’m sure everyone has seen the winner, this demo is an impressive combination of technical innovation and fresh sensation.

Youtube brings the masses to your video

Laurent — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:11:44 +0000

Ok, it’s been more than a month since I’ve posted the Standing On the Shore video remix on Youtube as an experiment with Insight features.
Since my last post, the video has been mostly promoted through Youtube search, social networks, and what Youtube calls viral.
Viewer attention curve (Hotspot) has evolved little but mostly accentuating the scale of the curve.

The number of views has been in constant (slow) progression, but 2 days ago, the numbers exploded (+200%).

The reason : Search rank, the video passed from 6th to 1st position in the search query : “standing on the shore remix”. I don’t know what triggered the change on Youtube, but I have some theories

(note that sources info are one day late compared to view counts)

This video had a big attention number, almost 90% of people that started the video stays to the end. A reason for that is that it addresses hardcore users that where interested enough in the topic to look at result #6 and stay until the end. I also noticed during this period, attention of viewers during the slow intro part dropped below average, like I expected a previous post.

Theory #1 : Attention results of videos are analyzed by Youtube expert system on a regular basis, and it saw that the performance of this video was good compared to other results, and it promoted it to #1.
Theory #2 : Youtube shuffles the order of results to make the content feel new.

Based on my user usage of Youtube, my bet is that it’s probably a bit of both, and it’s probably handled in a scoring system (what did you expect from google ?).

So now, what are the changes I expect :

On the sources : I expect more viral, because it seemed that viral was proportional to the number of views (with a 1 or 2 days delay). So we’ll see if a viral explosion happens, or not
On the attention curve : Now that the video is #1 in search results, people brought to video will probably be more casual, and have less time to spend on a video, so I expect attention to drop a little, this is probably what google expects too, their goal is to challenge video performance to make good videos stand out. The curve has started to flatten, maybe it will just even all parts of the video.

Too bad we cannot split-test videos on youtube, that would be fun to see the results of a video without the intro part.
Anyway, insight is an amazing tool that will help video expert improve their content each time.

Youtube Hotspot graph – Standing on the Shore DDYRmx

Laurent — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:31:57 +0000

Empire of the Sun - Standing on the Shore (Dirty Disco Youth Remix - The Visualist A/V Edit)

That’s great to get feedback, and I’ve finally been able to have a Hotspot graph for this video. Some fact that could be interpreted from this data :
- The video is hot : more people keep watching and rewatching than leave. That’s a good sign, I didn’t loose my time, I lost other people’s time
- The intro is a bit long : I knew it, but it’s important to set the mood and create anticipation. Plus the viewer doesn’t have much choice watching, the whole video is loading, the challenge is after that, you have to follow with something really strong otherwise there will probably be a big drop.
- The cave part brings interest : in this part the music is very different from the original track, that’s probably why people want to check that again.
- The outtro is quite hot : It can be that people are jumping a the end, to check if there’s something more interesting, or maybe want to check again the little text they didn’t have time to read. But I don’t really know why it’s so high.

Next youtube insight update, it will show a heat map of where people are looking on the video I can keep dreaming

Empire of the Sun – Standing on the Shore (Dirty Disco Youth Remix – The Visualist A/V Edit)

Laurent — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:39:25 +0000

I decided I had to remix this cool Empire of the Sun video on top of the remix. So I did it
Hope you like it !

Rusty Nails by Moderat now on Vimeo

Laurent — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:04:09 +0000

This is one of the most impressive videos of the MODERAT show. You certainly don’t want to miss it. Peace.

Moderat “Rusty Nails” from Pfadfinderei on Vimeo.

Moderat in Montreal, an A/V experience

Laurent — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:00:44 +0000

Unplanned, I went to the show of Moderat (Modeselektor + Apparat + Pfadfinderei) in Montreal. And they crafted a pretty good scene experience. Pretty solid minute by minute show, very progressive. Modeselektor and Pfadfinderei have collaborated before and you can see that clearly.
My first impressions (somehow important) where that the music has some resemblance to Boards of Canada (great), and the visual, except being mostly based on abstract real footage, reminded me of the good old demoscene time in its progressive style (please stay with me reference below ).

Here is the teaser of the show : http://www.vimeo.com/3837671

The video just teases you but if it works you can find all the videos of the show with previews on iTunes : here.
And there is a DVD available at retail (who uses that, now ? )

So about the demoscene, here is one of the best intros of the kind : Rise by Mindforce and Park studios

Here’s a little playlist, including some of the best Halcyon work and Kosmoplovci, there is no youtube video of minimalanimal, at your own risk ). There are much more so feel free to complete it.

1K is too much space : Untracable by TBC

Laurent — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:47:28 +0000

I’ve been surprised again, TBC has pushed the limits. They did a demo, that fits in less than 1kb (1024 characters), music included. I really don’t know how they did it, because in my last experiments, a while ago, even initialization of 3d and sound did not fit into 1k.

Just enjoy the show :

Don’t forget to comment on pouet.net. Runs ok on Vista but the first 2 scenes are a bit slow on my laptop So be sure you have a class A video card.

For those interested in the technical details, most of the geometry is based on fractal formulas, these are classic 3d fractals. I don’t know how the music is done (generated or pure midi), or how the lighting is done, but it has 2 colors and a fog effect, it could be a shader, based on the hardware requirements.
It seems to use D3DX, a library provided by the Direct X SDK, that could help with mathematics or graphics calls. But just linking (even dynamically) with the library takes quite a few bytes.

Rupture by ASD

Laurent — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:09:12 +0000

The gathering and breakpoint 2009 where happening this week-end. The first demo that was noticed is Rapture by ASD (another gem from the amazing group ASD). It features a unique rendering. To run the demo prefer a lower resolution with higher framerate because the main effect is a bit detail destructive, but the animation is quite good. Here is the video :

Diplabs / Dipmedia’s augmented reality

Laurent — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:36:39 +0000

Last week, I got some big news from my friends Francis and Thomas that founded Diplabs and Dipmedia based on the Smode technology. The results of this sample shows how smode can be used to project an image on real volumes to create an “augmented reality” scene.

Very nice result (thanks to the material and lighting properties that reality offers for free ) with a great audio/video sync by Albin. Good job guys.

The concept is not new, but the final look is stunning, and better than other things I’ve seen before ! It could be the beginning of a new era for dipmedia, if you want to contact them for business opportunities contact@dipmedia.fr.

For those who never heard of Smode before, it’s a technology that is used to combine building block of visual effects in a very flexible and powerfull way. The technology first started for demomaking (I did 2 demos with it), then thanks to great evolutions it became a tool for VJing (I did a live show with it), then it turned out as a technology for much more, look at dipmedia web site. What’s next ?

Gameplay Book and Show

Laurent — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:34:11 +0000

A while ago, I read this article on gamasutra called the Principles of Virtual Sensation, written by Steve Swink from Flashbang Studios (a company that seems in good shape, and uses Unity as their main platform).
It’s really rare to see articles on gameplay, for 2 obvious reasons, it’s difficult to explain what makes a good gameplay, we really lack of broadly used vocabulary and references; and secondly it does not interest much people, that’s for sure, they are much more interested in articles about storytelling,… sadly.
Hopefully, Steve did a great article, and while I tried to suggested a lot of my coworkers to read it, it hasn’t been a breakthrough. There is still a lot of work to have people go on that path.
My opinion is that sensation is almost the first reason why people play on console, and great games (top 10) have always provided sensations above game design and story. So if you are a gameplay programmer (a motivated one) that want to make a good game and you haven’t read steve’s article, go right now.

A few years have passed, and I see that Steve has released a book about the topic, which is probably good (no read yet) called Game Feel. The books seems to feature work from great indie developers including Jonathan Blow, which did a great talk last year in Montreal. So if you look at the book please let a comment about it.

And to finish, I’ve read an interview from the team at Flashbang Studio and they said they released their meeting and project post mortem in the wild as videos. Now you think I’m kidding but you have to watch at least one of these videos. It’s quite interesting… (indie spirit guaranteed)
If you haven’t played Blush give it a try this is pretty fun.

Video.