Production Sound & Video

Fall 2016

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28 hen I started my career in playback, the job consisted of playing back pre-rendered video content into TV and computer monitors. Fast-forward sixteen years and our culture has become saturated with dis- play technology. With the majority of people walking around carrying at least one, and often a few screens, on their various personal devices at all times, it's becom- ing commonplace to take for granted that images and video should just magically appear on demand. So often the question we're greeted with on set becomes "We have this new mobile device, can you make it work before it plays tomorrow?" While the playback job has always required creativity and flexibility, the pace of modern technology has pushed things to a new level where, to remain viable in this age of rapid growth, we must blend the roles of traditional playback operator with a hefty dose of software engineering. Having grown up enamored with technology and gam- ing, I have a natural tendency to want to figure out how things work. This has been a real blessing in my profes- sional life as I'm driven to want to experiment with and develop for new devices as they appear on my radar. Up until recently, we've been making do with pre-made mobile apps and a basic video looping program I devel- oped a few years ago. Now that devices and technology have both evolved to a point where people are able to enjoy advanced video gaming on their phones, it's become apparent to me that leveraging video game engine software will allow me to become more agile and able to work with new devices as they hit the mar- ket. Building content across platforms (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, etc.) has been a major challenge when working with the current tools used in computer play- back. Adobe's flash program works on some mobile devices but is limited and cannot take full advantage of the device's hardware and their Director program (which hasn't been updated in years) can only function on Mac or PC and has very limited support from Adobe. P A S S E N G E R S by Vince Parker VIDEO PLAYBACK hen I started my career in playback, the job consisted of playing back pre-rendered video content W

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