Look Smart, Be Smart: Make Your Leaders Come Alive

A how to tip: want to make your team page look smart, be smart?

Here's a tip from Market7.com, maker of video collaboration software, where the team page comes alive, thanks to Shannon Newton.

First, see the page.

Want to know they did that? Here's Shannon's how to, which you can pass along to your programmer or video professional (or teenager).

Step 1: Record your video, no more than 10 seconds.

Step 2: Export your video in flash video (.flv) format using flash encoder.

Step 3: Create a SWF file that simply loops the using Adobe Flash that loops

Some notes on Step 1 - You will want your loop to seem continuous so record 10 seconds where the first frame is the same as the last. The entire loop should not last more than 10 seconds but can be shorter. Not only do you want your loop to be short, you want there to be a moment where they believe it is a still photo. The first frame shouldn't have any motion blur. Also, the motion can either be the subject or the BG but avoid both. You want the picture to go from still to subtle but noticeable movement, not suddenly EXPLODE with movement.

Some notes on Step 2 - When you export your flash video, you want the file size to be very small. As a result, 15 FPS and a small image size are key. Smaller file downloads keep this fun and not annoying.

Some notes on Step 3 - When you set up your flash video, make the first frame the best looking one. shift the frame sequence so that this is the case. The reason for this is that while the SWF is loading, the first frame will be the one you want to display. It's ok if there is a pause because there will be something to look at until the whole thing starts moving. You can use the video swf template that comes with Flash. No controls, keep it simple.

The last thing you want to do is embed this SWF into your page.

Again, this is not something I would recommend for beginners, and I probably couldn't implement this myself, but you can send these instructions to your own Flash person to create this for your site.