Don’t know how this escaped my attention, but my old buddy Tom Higgins of Unity (ex Macromedia Director ambassador) posted that Unity Tech signs a three-year deal with LEGO!.

Ah — it’s funny; having recently been playing with Quartz Composer again, I’m feeling the need to delve back into 3d world…

The demo was nearly fully functional, controlled completely from a Media Center PC remote. Videos could be controlled, viewed at various sizes. Multiple ‘feeds’ could be viewed, and information regarding each feed, or each video could be seen, playlists created. Advertisements and branding were inserted into playlists.

Bumble and bumble University is a multifunctional facility using technology to teach advanced haircutting techniques to students that come into NYC from all over the country.

Programmed for VideoSonic, this combination of a Macromedia Director front-end talking to a Crestron Control System back-end allows instructors to control all elements within the classrooms or auditorium: lights can be dimmed, projectors controlled, videos played and rerouted, cameras controlled, audio routed and projector screens extended.  All media elements can be routed and controlled from classroom to classrom or to any of the salons on the upper floors, or from the 103 seat auditorium. Each room has two cameras which can be routed just as any video source, or recorded to dvd media, allowing the school in essence, to be a television studio.

Control system software on Apple iBooks allow instructors to create and control their own shows complete with hardware control and interface switching so that music fades out, lights dim, screens roll out, projectors are started and cameras focused  – all with the touch of a ‘scene begin’ button.

The 3rd floor is their university, containing 4 intimate classrooms and a 103 seat auditorium.  The supporting content is distributed to the classrooms using networked digital video servers, while the classes themselves are controlled by a facillitator using WiFi tablet computers.

The 4th and 5th floors are their corporate offices, the 6th floor is a teaching salon, and the 7th & 8th house the salons open to the public, retail shops, and a restaurant.

In addition to the instructional content utilized for the classes, 12 digital video content channels are generated  – information about products, events and industry news – are displayed throughout the facility on BumbleTV.

VideoSonic installed a VIDS12-DVD Server as the both the Display and Control engines for this dynamic exhibition that highlights milestone events in Lightolierâ??s 100 year corporate history.

Video shows are synchronized on 12 widescreen LCD monitors; the lighting in the showcases illuminate to show the actual objects featured in the video. Using LED lighting in the showcases, the display gently cycles through color changes when not running the shows.

Helped implement a 7-video and multitrack audio experience in the Intrepid Naval Museum. Utilizing a smpte track as a lock for the audio and video, midi controlled the raising and lowering of the screens, dimming of the lights and expulsion of fog machines to allow visitors to best experience a kamikaze attach upon the vessel in World War II. The audio was mixed in the space and allows for directional sound to the extreme.

As part of the reopening of the Statue of Liberty in 2004, VideoSonic installed a new fire alarm/safety system that would display exit information when the alarms would trigger.

As part of our installation we also created some of the points of interest – at the top of the pedestal we created the supporting videos as support to the Rangers’ tour. Seen by over 6 million visitors a year — story-boarded, designed and edited a 45 minute documentary on the history and technology of the Statue. This presentation is played while a Parks Commissions employee supplies the narrative, lighting the internal structure of the Statue at the appropriate times.

Designed and programmed a number of cdroms aimed for sales and marketing divisions of each company to help utilize and sell their brand. Combining disparate media, videos, and document libraries in such a way so as to be explored, exported, and even create and save simple powerpoint-like presentations to solicit customers using parent company approved materials.

An crossplatform cdrom made for Lehigh County Community College as an interactive searchable brochure and course information kit. Featuring in depth information about the school, a tuition calculator, videos from students and an offline full database of courses.

Created software to help in the automation of documents adhering to the Verizon brand. The application consisted of a database of corporate approved assets tagged by usage-type, and allowed the user to export the chosen elements in a variety of formats, ready for publication. Included in the application were a number of videos demonstrating the correct usage of the Verizon brand.

Programmed a cross platform application for Chase Manhattan Bank clients utilizing a searchable database of bank depositories, allowing one to view search results based on various ratings criteria.

Ascertain Solutions Security Officer Training Online

In 2000 was commissioned to author an e-Learning application that used high-quality local media in a class structure, configured remotely by communicating with a server running Coldfusion pulling test questions from an online database. Tracking the user – their answers and how much time between responses specifically for training purposes – this application was accepted by security insurance companies as adequate training for credit.

Designed and authored a number of other cdroms for TVT including artists such as the Black Crowes with Jimmy Page and the Beastie Boys’ DJ Hurricane – which used Thomas Dolby‘s (yes of ‘She Blinded Me With Science’ fame) Beatnik technology which was extremely ahead of it’s time — allowing users to control a virtual sampler and remix their own version of the single.  For this I had to break apart the sounds of the actual single and make a new triggerable version.

Assisted in creating and programming a custom store control system for the Toys R Us flagship store in Times Square. Connected by a multiuser socket server, the entire store is controlled by Director applications speaking a variety of protocols. These included the 10-foot external video marquee, one 152 individual 6 foot scrollers, lighting controllers, 32 internal video servers, 7 sound and the 20â?? tall Jurassic Park dinosaur. All media elements and events are entered into a MySQL database and the main application fires each event according to the EDL (edit decisions list) that gets loaded for every two hours of scheduling. All media elements scheduled are tracked for any advertising reports. An additional Photobooth in the main store area allows customers to pay for their images and any custom messages to be displayed in Times Square for all of New York to see.

For additional writeups see here and here.

Created this website for Sting and Compaq back in the day before Macromedia released Flash Communication Server and the mp3 codec wasn’t being used yet, there was Macromedia Generator… This Shockwave was a Macromedia Director application that communicated with Organic’s database through ASP and configured the output of a Flash movie from Flash Generator using hidden assets the user collected trawling the website.  The user would drag and drop these asssets into their own dock area, constructing their own music video to send on with a personal message. The shockwave would stream the 40 seconds of uncompressed audio and sync it to the templated Flash file pulling in the user’s chosen assets.