How to embed video in a DPS scrollable frame

When creating scrollable frame content for Adobe DPS, the scrolling content can be a group of any type of InDesign objects, both static and interactive. You can group together text frames, images, buttons, and multi-state objects, and then make the group scrollable. However, if you try to include video in the scrollable frame group, you’ll find that it doesn’t work. After you paste the group into the “container frame” and go to the Folio Overlays panel, you’ll see that the options for video are displayed, not the options for scrollable frames.

Here’s a workaround that makes it possible to include embedded video in scrollable frames:

1. Group all the content together that you want as scrolling content, except for the video

2. Create a frame the same size as the outer bounds of the scrolling content, and name this frame “Container frame” in the Layers panel

3. Cut the scrolling content group

4. Select the Container frame, and choose Edit > Paste Into

5. In the Folio Overlays panel, choose Scrollable Frame, and select the desired scroll direction and other options

6. Place the video that you want to include in the scrolling content

7. In the Layers panel, drag the video into the Group that is inside the Container frame

8.  In the Folio Overlays panel, set your video playback options as desired

9. Position the video where you want it to be in the scrolling content

10. Resize the Container frame so that it is smaller the the scrolling content group.

Boat in the pond

This post is a break from my usual digital publishing technology posts. As some of you know, I’m nuts about sailing. I’ve spent the last few days training and consulting at Oracle Corporation headquarters in Redwood City, CA. You may know that Oracle is a major sponsor of the America’s Cup.  

The main Oracle campus features a small pond in the center. This month they delivered USA-17, the trimaran that won the 33rd America’s Cup in 2010, to the middle of the pond. It was airllifted into place by a helicopter. As you can imagine, the trimaran looks gigantic in the middle of the pond.

Some statistics about the boat:

• The mast is 20 stories high
• The boat took 150,000 man-hours to build
• The enormous hull is 90 feet x 90 feet square (bigger than a baseball infield)

Here’s a photo of the mast being trailered in:

 

The boat in its final resting place:

 

How to make the Photoshop Crop tool behave like older versions

I did some Photoshop training last week, and was reminded again how much some people dislike the behavior of the “new and improved” crop tool that was introduced in Photoshop CS6.

What people dislike the most is the new behavior where Photoshop continuously centers the crop area on the screen as you resize and reposition the crop boundary. If this bothers you, pick up the crop tool, click on the gear icon in the Options bar, and uncheck the Auto Center Preview option. This will turn off the auto centering behavior, and the crop tool will behave similar to previous versions.

Another complaint I hear is that people dislike the way Photoshop applies a crop boundary to the image as soon as you click on the Crop tool. If you don’t like where the crop boundary is positioned, it takes longer to move and resize the boundary than to just create a new one. But did you know that you can just ignore the crop boundary that Photoshop creates, and drag to create an entirely new boundary? You don’t need to resize/reposition the boundary that is there.

In case you’ve missed it, I’d like to point out the Delete Cropped Pixels choice in the Options bar. If you uncheck this option, cropping is non-destructive. In other words, as long as you save your image as a layered PSD or TIFF file, the pixels outside the crop boundary are retained, so that you can adjust the crop boundary in the future.