[Xerte] Re: Creating Animation

Mon Jul 7 10:08:25 BST 2014

Hi,

I don't disagree with Julian that Flash etc still often have their place within the Xerte LO development cycle and some users (Alistair and Ron are definitely near if not at the top of that list) are very innovative in their use of different packages to create something to enhance the user experience but I definitely agree with Ron's point that something that allowed 'simple' animation would be a useful feature, especially for those without Flash experience and who dislike PPT. What that looks like or how complicated it gets i don't know yet...

I think my bugbear with alternative solutions is that you then have to somehow manage the support files. It's like PDFs - it's a regular occurance that people lose the original Word doc and although there are good converters back to Word, none are perfect and I doubt they ever will be... it's the same when you start using support Flash files, PPTs, etc that then get lost and need to be recreated.

I also like the simple 'updatability' of some of the pages in Xerte. Some could equally argue that the Table and Chart pages in Xerte are pointless (other than for backward compatibility). You can create better looking tables/charts in Excel, take a screenshot and import that but when you come to add the latest year's data then you have to do it again... the benefits with Xerte are that you just add a new line...

People will always navigate towards tools that they know they can make work in the time they have - I don't think that's a problem but could we make it easier for those who have no experience of any package?

Regards,

John Smith | Learning Technologist
Room A250, Govan Mbeki Building | School of Health & Life Sciences | Glasgow Caledonian University
Cowcaddens Road | Glasgow | G4 0BA

Please address ALL support requests to hlsblt at gcu.ac.uk where one of the School Learning Technologists will pick up the job. This will ensure that all jobs are completed as promptly as possible.
________________________________________
From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney [Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk]
Sent: 07 July 2014 09:35
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: Creating Animation

> That kind of animation from Nottingham done in PowerPoint, saved as a movie and then converted to mp4 or uploaded to a streaming service does work very well but obviously there isn't really any potential for user interaction via that route unless perhaps keeping the movies granular and linking to different next steps based on user choice via links or multiple choice etc.

I get that, but this is a non-technical user who has done something pretty decent, and I don’t want to start pointing out shortcomings – what I was asking was about how to do this easily / more easily because I suspect his process may be ‘non-optimum’ in that it is taken significant time to put together. I wondered if there were any tools / approaches that makes this quick and easy – I can talk to him more about xerte and interactivity separately, but there is a place for movies, obviously, and this is about finding efficient ways to make them.

Personally I’d use Flash, import a narration, and then animate on the timeline to synch it all up, and then export a movie and run it through format factory. What would be good would be a simpler timeline based animation tool I suppose, or perhaps Flash is pretty good for this sort of thing. The idea of doing it in ppt gives me the willies.

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 06 July 2014 11:19
To: 'Xerte discussion list'
Subject: [Xerte] Re: Creating Animation

Viewed this thread with interest at an event on Friday but no time to respond until now. I'd add the following comments…

Creating this sort of narrated and sequenced animation is a common reason people say they prefer other tools like Captivate or Storyline or even Camtasia Studio. Obviously we all know that these can be used together with Xerte and no single tool does everything and obviously cost and arguably the specialist skills required mean these tools aren't the option for the majority.

That kind of animation from Nottingham done in PowerPoint, saved as a movie and then converted to mp4 or uploaded to a streaming service does work very well but obviously there isn't really any potential for user interaction via that route unless perhaps keeping the movies granular and linking to different next steps based on user choice via links or multiple choice etc.

Converting the PowerPoint with a tool like iSpring Pro does offer potential for interaction and obviously these days the converted animation can be html rather than Flash but because the output is multiple files and sub folders can't easily be uploaded via XOT and needs to be uploaded somewhere first. The same applies to creating this sort of thing direct in Articulate Storyline or Captivate or similar. I've often thought it would be good to upload and extract zip files via media and quota to make this sort of use with output from other tools easier. But I guess there could be security risks to that too and perhaps challenges with export. There's quite a few different examples in the http://learningmathsonline.ac.uk stuff.

In my experience not everyone likes or takes to the custom animation settings etc in PowerPoint but another way to do this depending on the animation required is to add all the elements around the edges of a slide and then use a tool like screencast-o-matic or screenr to record the 'stage' area of the slide while you drag the elements onto the recorded area e.g. for creating common craft style explanations.

If the author has a tablet then apps like Explain Everything or Doceri or the myriad of other annotation or animation apps provide loads of options arguably much quicker and more flexible than PowerPoint and are very low cost or free compared with desktop or online apps. e.g. http://mitchellmedia.co.uk/xot/play_36?template_id=html5&_36#resume=2

It would be good even to just have some simple sequenced transition effects in Xerte but if there were a way to strike the right balance between ease of use and flexibility within Xerte itself it would add even more value to the new editor features where adding mutiple images/graphics to a page is so easy.

Ron

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Alistair McNaught
Sent: 04 July 2014 20:11
To: xerte at pgogywebstuff.com<mailto:xerte at pgogywebstuff.com>; Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: Creating Animation

Well if we were talking about cakes and icing I’d go for both options ☺

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat L (pgogy)
Sent: 04 July 2014 15:46
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: Creating Animation

recording and saving directly? Or uploaded MP3?

On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Julian Tenney <Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk>> wrote:
In terms of ease of use, this is what I’m thinking:

-          Powerpoint or something is used to draw the graphics. A background, and items that can move;

-          The presenter talks through the content and creates the animation live, either by dragging things around, or having things animate to where the mouse is clicked (click object -> click screen -> object moves etc);

-          Maybe some other actions like scale / vanish / move fast / move slow

-          Some sort of screen recording is made to capture the video of the presentation;

Does it sound like it might work?

Does that work with your real world use cases?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>] On Behalf Of Alistair McNaught
Sent: 04 July 2014 14:30
To: xerte at pgogywebstuff.com<mailto:xerte at pgogywebstuff.com>; Xerte discussion list

Subject: [Xerte] Re: Creating Animation

If it was easy for end user it would be great

A

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Pat L (pgogy)
Sent: 04 July 2014 13:13
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: Creating Animation

Would an animated gif maker be a good template?

On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 11:44 AM, Alistair McNaught <Alistair.McNaught at heacademy.ac.uk<mailto:Alistair.McNaught at heacademy.ac.uk>> wrote:

From a non technical viewpoint I do this sort of thing by

•         setting up a bespoke PowerPoint slide (maybe 6 x 8 cm page dimensions)

•         drawing the first frame

•         duplicating the slide

•         making the small changes needed for the second frame

•         duplicating the second frame

•         repeating

•         save finished presentation as gifs

•         use free tool like Photoscape or UnFreez (both portable so no admin rights needed to install) to determine the frame delays between them.

•         Save as animated gif.

•         Add to any relevant Xerte page

There is real advantage in using PPT to create the frames because it is really familiar to people, flexible and easy to use. It doesn’t allow onion skinning etc but I’ve produced several things using this approach – see slide 4 of http://vle.jisctechdis.ac.uk/xerte/play_477 where the beach transect process is illustrated.

[cid:image001.jpg at 01CF99C6.840F18F0]

A

-----Original Message-----
From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 04 July 2014 10:21
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: Creating Animation

I've often thought that we could use a page type that allows you to then add sub elements (media) each with their own script to control or a predefined script (such as move to the left, etc) and possibly a timer to tell the page when to run the script... shouldn't be that hard to do something like that...

John Smith | Learning Technologist

Room A250, Govan Mbeki Building | School of Health & Life Sciences | Glasgow Caledonian University Cowcaddens Road | Glasgow | G4 0BA

Please address ALL support requests to hlsblt at gcu.ac.uk<mailto:hlsblt at gcu.ac.uk> where one of the School Learning Technologists will pick up the job. This will ensure that all jobs are completed as promptly as possible.

________________________________________

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> [xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney [Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Julian.Tenney at nottingham.ac.uk>]

Sent: 04 July 2014 09:48

To: Xerte discussion list (xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>)

Subject: [Xerte] Creating Animation

I’m just wondering what approaches people use for this sort of thing: we have a lecturer who wants to create animation simply. He’s currently using powerpoint to create this sort of thing: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/toolkits/play_10711

I think the results are really good, and it’s taken some time to get right. I’m interested in optimising the approach a bit, to make it fast and efficient: maybe this is the best way of doing it, maybe there are others?

What I’m interested in is what approaches / tools do people use for this sort of thing? It doesn’t have to be high end output: it could be a mixture of screen capture, whilst dragging things around and narrating the process for example. We’re not looking to turn staff into Flash developers, it’s more about simple approaches that are easy and quick to do.

Ideas?

Thanks,

Julian

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This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system, you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

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This e-mail along with any attachment(s) is strictly confidential and may contain privileged information. It is intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, please do not disclose, store, copy, take any action or omit to take any action in reliance of its contents: to do so is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender and delete the e-mail immediately. Views expressed in this e-mail are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Higher Education Academy. Please note that this e-mail has been created in the knowledge that Internet e-mail is not a secure communications medium. We advise that you understand and observe this lack of security and take any necessary measures when e-mailing us. Although we have taken steps to ensure this e-mail and attachment(s) are free from any virus, we advise that in keeping with good computing practice, the recipient should ensure that they are actually virus free as the Higher Education Academy will not be liable for any losses as a result of any viruses being passed on by this e-mail and/or any attachment(s). The Higher Education Academy. Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales no. 04931031. Registered as a charity in England and Wales no. 1101607. Registered as a charity in Scotland no. SC043946.

Glasgow Caledonian University is a registered Scottish charity, number SC021474