Assignment 4 - Rich Web Media In Action

Below these next few paragraphs is a video application that detects the metadata within an .flv file and then dynamically displays the data in plain text format. The .flv that is used in the video player is actually the video that we created in the last assignment, so to fully understand how the player below works I would highly suggest reading it. It is important to realize that the metadata being displayed in the player is the same metadata being indexed by Search Engines. This is great news for any of you who want to display your own customized information, and even greater news for those of you who want to get ranked higher on Google's video index. As mentioned before, search engine robots love rich text, so our metadata is just the thing to satify their hunger.

Below you can choose from two videos. The video on the left contains customized metadata created with Captionate, while the video on the right does not. You can toggle back and forth to see the differences. Mess around a minute with the player and I will discuss key areas once you are done. Oh, and make sure you have the latest version of Adobe's, Flash Player installed or the demo may not work properly.
Was that not the greatest thing ever? Well, now that you've had your fun let's continue.

Closed Captions

Not only are closed captions great because they comply to accessibility standards, they also provide all users the ability to search videos by quotes. How many times have you found yourself using famous quotes when trying to describe a movie to a friend? How great would it be to quickly type in those quotes into a search engine and instantly find the video your talking about. I think that would be "keen". Captionate makes embedding captions or subtitles very simple, so I think it is worth investing in the program if your serious about Flash video.

*Keep in mind that video is not the only platform to use captions. I bet someone could think of a really great way to implement lyrics into mp3s using captionate. You can create audio only .flvs and use them for an audio app, you know! I would love to have an application that could search through any song based on lyric queries.

Titles or Descriptions or Keywords = All The Same

Don't let my master trickery fool you. The title, description and keyword display areas, no matter their label or hierarchy, are just strings of text. This text is pulled from your embedded custom metadata. This rich text is what the search engine robots read and use to contextualize and index your videos. Although there seems to be no way for search engine robots to verify that the keywords in your video indeed match what is actually in the video, I would suggest that you refrain from plastering unrelated keywords in your metadata.

Where to go from here

Hopefully this tutorial has inspired you to jump on the Flash video bandwagon. You are now ready to embed your own custom metadata into your .flv files and are ready to create your own Flash video application. Take your Flash apps to limit knowing that the videos being played in them will be fully optimized for search engine sites.

If you would like to test out the Atari videos seen in the player above, you can download both videos here. Good luck and I look forward to seeing all of your great video content at all the major video indexing search sites.