A lot of people asked us how we created the “10 things I can’t live without” short movie, so here is the basic story and how it unfolds.

We needed to create a new experience based on FlashEff 2.0, something that is different and would bring a new vibrant look to the product. We focused on the idea of presenting 10 physical things that most of you can’t live without. We made several attempts to find out which would be the most important 10 things, and finally we had those. Than, with a bit of creativity and as shown bellow, we did it.

Ingredients:
- Adobe Flash CS4
- FlashEff 2.0 (Premium Plus)
- Camtasia Studio
- Nikon D90 (for HD video, VR lens)
- Adobe After Effects CS4
- Adobe Premiere Pro CS4
- Mac & PC
- … (the secret ingredients)

1. First, after we got the idea, we had everything pictured in our heads and asked our sound engineer Alex to do the soundtrack for the movie. He understood very well what we needed and he managed to deliver the soundtrack in time and as we needed.

2. We shot 9 video clips (about 2 takes each). We wanted to edit each video clip separately and in the end to mix them on stage in Premiere. We made all clips black and white from the beginning.

3. We tracked a few points on each movie to be able to attach text to the filmed objects.

4. We created 9 flash animations for texts using the FlashEff 2.0 effects component. Than we captured them with Camtasia Studio and turn them into movies.

Sample flash movie

5. In After Effects, we got rid of the blue stage and turn that into a full transparent window. Than we mixed each of these flash movies with it’s corresponding video.

6. Finally after all these steps we have 9 clips that contain video, texts animated with FlashEff 2.0 and tracked into the video clips.

7. In the last stage we mixed all these clips together with the sound to make it feel more like a movie. There was a lot of stress and time used on the dubbing to get the sound synchronized.

8. We inserted a few blow-up blur in some places, a few other effects, and that was it. The movie was finished.

9. We spent about 200 hours on this project. This was just a side project since in the background the whole FlashEff 2.0 site and experience was developing.

We’re making a short creative movie/(FlashEff 2 story) that will extensively use the new FlashEff 2 and After Effects. We’re trying to find out which are the most important 10 things creative people use.

Our guess includes the following: Macbook Pro, iPhone, Coffe, Guitar, Junk food and, of course, Twitter.For anything that you have in mind, please drop a comment.

We’ve just launched FlashEff 2 Beta. This is an invite only phase, meaning that, in order to get access you need to either comment on one of the blogs that are building official invite only lists, or you can buy FlashEff 1 Premium, since all previous FlashEff customers will get access to FlashEff 2 Beta.

Also FlashEff 1 Premium Unlimited users will get a free upgrade to FlashEff 2 Premium.

Important! We’re not discontinuing FlashEff 1. The major differences between FlashEff 2 and FlashEff 1 are in user experience. We encourage anyone to get FlashEff 1 now and still get the free upgrade to FlashEff 2 Premium. (plus Beta access to Premium Plus version for about a month)

read more

The contest submissions are open till October 31st 2008, you are required to submit your patterns to dev[at]flasheff[dot]com before this date in order to get a chance to win $2500. (3 prizes available*)
Each winner will get $2000 cache and $500 in discount coupons to be spent on JumpeyeComponents.com

Also, all eligible submitted patterns will be instantly rewarded with a copy of FlashEff Premium Unlimited.
To get approved as eligible, each pattern have to meet the following rules:

1. You have to make sure it works correctly with FlashEff. Patterns that have functional issues will not be approved.
2. It is owned/developed by the same person/company that submits it.
3. The code should be open for us to evaluate.
4. No third party code should be used unless you have a written agreement that lets you use it.
5. You have to make sure it is not an illegal copy or a very similar approach as another pattern.
6. It should be submitted before October 31st 2008.

To select the best patterns from those that will be found eligible, we will evaluate each pattern by the following criteria: uniqueness, artistic look, visual quality, code quality and most of all: popularity. The final decision will be given by popularity, by vote. After October 31st we will publish all the submitted patterns as swf movies for people to choose between them and vote. The patterns earning the most votes will win.

*Up to 3 prizes are available as follows: Not more than 1 prize for each 10+ participants, 2 for 20+ and 3 for 30+. So, for example if only 10 participants have patterns that are eligible for the contest, only 1 prize will be given. One participant can win only one prize (even if he submits more patterns, this will indeed increase the chances to win)

Important! At least 1 but not more than 3 prizes will be given as stated above.

Download the FlashEff SDK here: http://flasheff.com/sdk/

Here are some photos from the conferences we’ve attended so far in 2008. FlashForum in Koln, Germany, FlashBelt in Minneapolis and FITC in Chicago. We also plan to attend FlashForward in San Francisco, FlashOnTheBeach in UK, FlashPitt in Pittsburg and FlashTap in Boston, all in 2008. Actually, FlashEff is a gold/silver sponsor at most of these conferences. So if you’re going to be at either one of these, come by and meet us at our booth.

All in all we had a great time at these conferences and we met a lot of people from the extraordinary Flash industry. We’ve been hanging out with mostly the guys at RGA, Pixelfumes and FDT and made a lot of great friends out there.

Here is how to use this embed TxEff object within a blog/webpage in 5 easy steps:

1. Choose an effect from txeff.com (you can create your own effect with your own text and save it previously)

2. Get the embed code exactly like you do with youtube videos. (choose “customize” to change object size, background colors, autoplay and loop options)

3. Paste it within your posts and publish.

Since we just started this , we have a promotional offer: send us a link where you have posted an embed TxEff and we’ll send you a free TxEff with Reflection (a non-commercial limited edition upgraded version of the TxEff component).

Here is how the player looks like:

Join our Referral Program

We have just launched our own Referral Program, anyone can join and use this program to make money by simply linking to us.
Read more to see how you can get 20% of all sales originated from your posts.

Win $100

Since we are committed to constantly improve our products, we want to know how do you like the TxEff component, website and patterns.This is why we started a discussion board on our Facebook group. So in order to win $100 you will need to join our Facebook group, and make a suggestion about the TxEff on the discussion board, tell us how you like it, what is good and what is wrong, and mostly what would you do to improve the overall TxEff functionality. 3 discount coupons will be sent to random members at the end of the Month.

We have also added 9 new impressive patterns to the TxEff Full License. In order to use them, you will need to re-download and re-install the TxEff Patterns from within your member account.

50% discount for Flash Decompiler Trillix

We are pleased to offer you a great deal, hardly obtained for you from one of our best partners: Eltima Software
Flash Decompiler Trillix is a powerful SWF to FLA converter with functionality to decompile Flash movies, convert SWF elements into multiple formats and edit SWF movies (dynamic texts, hyperlinks and more) without Flash Studio. With an ease of one click you can extract SWF elements: sounds, images, videos, shapes, frames, morphs, fonts, texts, buttons, sprites and ActionScripts from any SWF file directly to your hard drive.

The 50% discount code is only available for newsletter subscribers.

First impressions
I’ve been working with Camtasia Studio 5 on our video tutorials, and I can say that I’m impressed. Camtasia it’s a program that enables you to capture video from your computer ad voice or even make a powerpoint recording.

It has a lot of great features: effects that enable you to add different video or audio effects like highlight cursor, highlight click and mouse sounds or typing sounds.

Publish with Camtasia Studio
Another cool part of Camtasia is the Camtasia Studio.
Here is where the magic happens, edit by adding callouts, title clips, captions and to smooth the video you can add transitions with different effects.

Using callouts
You have a multitude of callouts to select from and if you want to try something new create your personal callout to bring a personal touch to your project.

Transitions are used to make your video smoother, by using different effects while your video is running. You have a variaty of transitions to choose from as well.

The good
It has a very user friendly interface that makes it possible for first time users to complete the desired task in a fast and easy manner. Sometimes you would like to zoom in and zoom out as you click, now you can with the Autozoom option which will auto focus the center of the camera point on the clicked object.

I enjoy working with Camtasia and it’s abilities really help you when you’re making tutorials or other videos, it’s a great program that will make your life a lot easier when it comes to video recording and editing.

To try Camtsia, go to www.techsmith.com

Innovating the Flash world again – TxEff

The name says it all. It’s a text effect component for Flash that will change the way you look at text. It’s specially designed for Flash users and designers that want a quick and easy way of animating a text without any coding. The free basic component contains 3 patterns. The number of patterns doesn’t limit you because in each pattern you can try numerous params. As you will find out for yourself this will just open your appetite for more ways of animating.

 

TxEff website – a new approach

You don’t have to explore every possible combination of params, we want to help you enrich your number of effects, all you have to do is access the TxEff website http://www.txeff.com/. This is not only a website it’s practically an effect DataBase, on which every time a TxEff user discovers a new effect, he can share it with the rest of the TxEff comunity.

If you go online and see something you like just copy the effect Id and paste it in your Component Inspector and you will have the desired effects without having to think of them yourself.

Enter our TxEff community and get all the benefits that come with it.The component itself is very user friendly. All you have to do is to write the text, access the TxEff component and tweak the params to get the desired effect, drag and drop the effect on text and you have a fully animated text.

TxEff is the result of months of development and the feedback we got from our clients. We spent time thinking what our clients would want and offer them that special something. Everyone on the team came up with innovating ideas on how a text effect component should look and act. The result is a very user friendly, time saving component that doesn’t require any coding.

 

TxEff’s special offer, ends on December 31 2007

Get the full licensed TxEff which contains a minimum of 50 patterns by March 2008. We’re continuously developing new and complex patterns to suit your artistic need and all this for only $99.97(promotional offer).

There’s more, if buy it in December you will get MCTE for free, or if you have already purchased it, you can get it’s value in discount coupons.