How did they implement the video at http://www.wecansolveit.org/

[floridaguy]

I was impressed how the video on this site (http://www.wecansolveit.org/) makes an otherwise simple page look very sophisticated. I'm referring to the woman who seems to walk right onto the screen and talk to you.

Could you please let me know what technology is being used to do this and describe the process and/or degree of difficulty in implementing such a look on a website?

Thanks so much.

[djlebarron]

I used to have an A/V Mixer for my business that had "green screen" capability. They can now be picked up used on ebay for a couple of hundred. The videonics I had (circa 1995) enabled you to pick on a color (or an unlimited number of colors) on the screen, and make that (or those) colors your "transparency". In other words, you didn't even have to set up a green screen. If you wished, it would recognize the slightest variation between colors/shades. So, with a little post-production work, you could actually take ANY video and replace the entire background with anything you wanted to replace it with. With a green screen it was just a couple of button pushes through the menu. Even though I did it live a few times for shock and awe, it was a pretty long set-up for a live performance, as you can imagine.

I'm sure that they probably set up "green screen" shots and then simply replaced the backgrounds with transparency. It looks like they then used simple layering to put things either under or over the processed video.

The heck of it is, you wouldn't even need flash if you do it that way. The video is certainly smooth enough (and the subject edges give clues) to lead me to believe that this is what they did. Though flash would be almost necessary if you wanted the next step of having your subject actually interact with moving objects. If I'm not mistaken, the smoother your flash, the more frames, the more CPU usage, etc. Picking up a used A/V mixer with that capability might be worth the investment. You could put up a few demo vids and draw some customers. Hmmm.