VideoActionWall

The VideoActionWall is a program that allows you to easily create interactive arrangements of running video clips. The program and technique for analysis has been developed over several years at the Mads Clausen Institute for Product Innovation at the University of Southern Denmark. You can find out more about the research we do by visiting our website: www.sdu.dk/spire

Setting Up

To set up a project to use with the VideoActionWall, create the following folder structure wherever is most convenient for you.

• /project
  • /clips
  • /arrangements
  • /backgrounds

The 'project' folder can be any name you choose, but the others should be named as you see them. You can use the 'example_project' folder in this directory to help you in setting up these folders.

Next, copy any clips you want to include in the VideoActionWall into the 'clips' folder. The clips should be small and short and quicktime format with a *.mov file extension.

Put any pictures you would like to use for backgrounds into the 'backgrounds' folder. The pictures should be *.jpg format, and a good size for them is 1024x736 (other sizes will be stretched to this). There are some prepared backgrounds in the 'backgrounds' folder of the example project.

Basic usage

Click the 'VideoActionWall.exe' (VideoActionWall.osx on Macintosh) file in this directory to start the program. A screen will open with a button named 'Open Project'. Click this, and navigate to the place where you created your project folders. Click on the 'project' folder (or whatever you called it) and press okay. The VideoActionWall will start and create a first arrangement for you.

You should see your clips playing in the middle of the screen. You can click on them and drag them around the screen.

In the bottom-right of the screen is a text box where you can type to create labels. Type the text you want and then click and drag on the light-grey box where it says 'Label' to create a new label.

To the right of the new label box, there are two arrow buttons. Click these to change the background picture.

On the bottom-left side of the screen, there is a button titled 'New'. Click this to create a new arrangement. You will see that the clips go back to their starting positions in the middle of the screen, any labels you have created disappear and the background turns grey.

To the right of this are to arrow buttons and a text box. Click the arrow buttons to change between different arrangements. You should be able to go back to the first arrangement using these. Change the text in the text box to change the title of an arrangement.

There is also a 'Save' button where you can save the arrangement you are currently working on. (Note: if you don't click the save button before you close, then your changes will be lost).

Reporting bugs

If you find bugs in the software or have ideas for how it could be improved, please email to jared@mci.sdu.dk