Digital Think

Digital video

2008-07-30T00:14:00.000-07:00

Digital Video may refer to:

Digital Video (DV) a Digital Video tape format.
Digital video a type of video recording system.

1) DV

Digital Video (DV) is a digital video format launched in 1995, and, in its smaller tape form factor MiniDV, has since become a standard for home and semi-professional video production; it is sometimes used for professional purposes as well, such as filmmaking and electronic news gathering (ENG). The DV specification (originally known as the Blue Book, current official name IEC 61834) defines both the codec and the tape format. Features include intraframe compression for uncomplicated editing, a standard interface for transfer to non-linear editing systems (IEEE 1394, also known as FireWire), and good video quality, especially compared to earlier consumer analog formats such as Video8, Hi8 and VHS-C. DV now enables filmmakers to produce movies inexpensively, and is strongly associated with independent film and citizen journalism^{[citation needed]}.

The high quality of DV images, especially when compared to Video8 and Hi8 which were vulnerable to an unacceptable amount of video dropouts and “hits", prompted the acceptance by mainstream broadcasters of material shot on DV. The low costs of DV equipment and their ease of use put such cameras in the hands of a new breed of videojournalists. Programs such as TLC’s Trauma: Life in the E.R. and ABC News’ Hopkins: 24/7 were shot on DV. CNN’s Anderson Cooper is perhaps the best known of the generation of reporter/videographers who began their professional careers shooting their own stories.

There have been some variants on the DV standard, most notably Sony's DVCAM and Panasonic's DVCPRO formats targeted at professional use. Sony's consumer Digital8 format is another variant, which is similar to DV but recorded on Hi8 tape. Other formats such as DVCPRO50 utilize DV25 encoders running in parallel.

MiniDV tapes can also be used to record a high-definition format called HDV in cameras designed for this codec, which differs significantly from DV on a technical level as it uses MPEG-2 compression. MPEG-2 is more efficient than the compression used in DV, in large part due to inter-frame/temporal compression.^[1] This allows for higher resolution at bitrates similar to DV. On the other hand, the use of inter-frame compression can cause motion artifacts and complications in editing.^[2] Nonetheless, HDV is being widely adopted for both consumer and professional purposes and is supported by many editing applications using either the native HDV format or intermediary editing codecs.^[3]

Digital art

2008-07-30T00:09:00.002-07:00

Digital art is any art in which computers played a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithm art and other digital techniques. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Nevertheless, this type of art is beginning to appear in art museum exhibits.

Comic book artists in the past would generally sketch a drawing in pencil before going over the drawing again with India ink, using pens and Winsor-Newton brushes. Magazine illustrators often worked with India ink, acrylics or oils. Currently, an increasing number of artists are now creating digital artwork.

Digital artists do, simply, what centuries of artists have always done by exploring and adopting a culture's new technology toward the making of a personal imagery. In doing so the culture is also reflected in the artwork as is the artist's personal vision. As our culture becomes increasingly digitized, digital artists are leading the way in exploring and defining this new culture. Digital Artists use a medium that is nearly immaterial, that being binary information which describes the color and brightness of each individual pixel on a computer screen. Taken as a whole an image consisting of pure light is the feedback devise that tells an artist what is being made and simultaneously stored on the computer's hard drive. Digital Artists employ many types of user interfaces that correspond to the wide variety of brushes, lenses or other tools that traditional artist use to shape their materials. Rather than manipulating digital code directly as math, these electronic brushes and tools allow an artist to translate hand motions, cutting and pasting, and what were formerly chemical dark room techniques into the mathematical changes that effect the arrangement of screen pixels and create a picture.

Digital Art is created and stored in a non-material form on the computer's memory systems and must be made physical, usually in the form of prints on paper or some other form of printmaking substrate. In addition, digital art may be exchanged and appreciated directly on a computer screen in gallery situations or simultaneously in every place on the globe with access to the web. Being immaterial has its advantages and with the advent of high quality digital printing techniques a very traditional long lasting print of this artwork can also be produced and marketed.

The list of digital artists continues to lengthen:

David Álvarez
Winston Blakely
Craig Boldman
Brian Bolland
Ernie Colon
Grant Cross
Andrew Dabb
Scott Dutton
Rob Feldman
Matthew Forsythe
Ben Hatke
J.D. King
Roger Langridge
Jim McDermott
Dave McKean
Shawn McManus
Raymond Mullikin
Joseph Nechvatal
Ariel Olivetti
Zina Saunders
Barclay Shaw
Nancy Stahl
Jim Steranko
Michael Whelan
Andrew Wildman
Amy Youngs

Working with digital media

2008-07-30T00:09:00.001-07:00

As opposed to analog data, digital data is in many cases easier to manipulate, and the end result can be reproduced indefinitely without any loss of quality. Mathematical operations can be applied to arbitrary digital information regardless of its interpretation (you can add "2" to the data "65" and interpret the result either as the hexadecimal number "43" or the letter "C"). Thus, it is possible to use e.g. the same compression operation onto a text file or an image file or a sound file. The foundations of operation on digital information are described in digital signal processing.

Unconsciously, you do work in digital media these days. In the near future, your careers will depend upon your ability to use digital media to you advantage. It's not just the creative department or media; it will drive how every person in the company creates and operates, from human resources to accounting. Today, digital is not a department-it's a competitive advantage. In order for you to navigate this transition easier, here are some guides. First, you have to stop resisting it. It's happening. Or should I say, it happened. No longer is digital a "department" within an agency-it's an essential competitive advantage for everyone in the company. It is time to get on with it. Second, you might want to create a “first.” It was easier to discover new lands back in the days when guys like Christopher Columbus could accidentally bump into continents. Today, countless uncharted digital territories still await. Now is your chance to conquer one. Third, you should get outside your comfort zone. The best way to get smart about the digital space is to constantly expand into new forms of media by actually working with them. Take on assignments outside your area of expertise. Become a generalist in thinking, with specialist application as needed. Fourth, you might want to embrace technology in your personal life. You shouldn't spend life tethered to a BlackBerry, but you also don't want to become known as the slowpoke that can't access e-mail out of the office. Don't allow personal resistance to technology to become a pain in the ass for the people you work with. In this case, it's not OK for the cobbler's child to go barefoot.

Electronic Business Media

2008-07-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

According to Schmid,^[1] media can basically be defined as follows: They are enablers of interaction, i.e. they allow for exchange, particularly the communicative exchange between agents. Such interaction enablers can be structured into three main components:

First, a physical component (C-Component) allows for the actual interaction of physical agents. This component can also be referred to as carrier medium or channel system. Second, a logical component (L-Component) comprises a common “language”, i.e. symbols used for the communication between agents and their semantics. Without such a common understanding, the exchange of data is possible (with the help of the C-Component), but not the exchange of knowledge. Third, an organizational component (O-Component) defines a structural organization of agents, their roles, rules which impact the agents’ behavior as well as the process-oriented organization of agents’ interactions.

Together, these basic three components have been identified to constitute various kinds of media. Among others, it is appropriate to describe electronic media such as those deployed to support cross-organizational collaboration. Based on these components which already represent a first, scientific approach to modeling, understanding and reorganizing media, a layer/ phase reference model has been introduced as well.

The Media Reference Model (MRM)^[2] comprises four different layers (which all represent dedicated views on media) and structures the use of media into four sequential phases. Similar to the emerging field of software engineering in the software context, the MRM aims to provide a comprehensive, coherent and systematic framework for the description and analysis of various media.

The Community View (first layer) thereby accounts for the set of interacting agents, the organization of the given agents’ population, i.e. the specific roles of involved stakeholders, the situations in which they act as well as the objects with which they deal. Summing up, it models the structure of the social community sphere in a situation-dependent, but static fashion. The Process View (Implementation Aspects) deals with the modeling of the process-oriented organization of agents and can also be referred to as "Interaction Programming". It is also called implementation view as it connects the needs of the community with the means provided by the carrier medium and thus implements the "community-plot" on the basis of the carrier medium. The Service View (Transaction View) models the services provided by the carrier medium which can be used in the different interaction steps to reach the respective interactions’ goals. The Infrastructure View models the production system, which creates the services provided by the service view, i.e. in the case of electronic media the actual underlying information technology.

The above discussed three major components can seamlessly be integrated into the MRM: The upper two views (Community Aspects and Implementation Aspects) represent the organizational component (O-Component) which accounts for the structural as well as process-oriented organization. The lower two layers are mapped to the physical component (C-Component) which focuses on the creation and provision of services. Last, the logical component (L-Component) concerns all four layers as it ensures that interaction of agents is based on a common understanding of exchanged symbols.

Digital media

2008-07-30T00:07:00.000-07:00

(as opposed to analog media) usually refers to electronic media that work on digital codes. Today, computing is primarily based on the binary numeral system. In this case digital refers to the discrete states of "0" and "1" for representing arbitrary data. Computers are machines that (usually) interpret binary digital data as information and thus represent the predominating class of digital information processing machines. Digital media ("Formats for presenting

information" according to Wiktionary:Media) like digital audio, digital video and other digital "content" can be created, referred to and distributed via digital information processing machines. Digital media represents a profound change from previous (analog) media.

Digital data is per se independent of its interpretation (hence representation). An arbitrary sequence of digital code like "0100 0001" might be interpreted as the decimal number 65, the hexadecimal number 41 or the glyph "A". See also: ASCII, Code.

Florida's digital media industry association, Digital Media Alliance Florida, defines digital media as "the creative convergence of digital arts, science, technology and business for human expression, communication, social interaction and education".