Technology

• Overview
• M-Views Presenter
• M-Studio
• M-Views Camera
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M-Studio

M-Studio supports authors throughout the complex story construction process, beginning with initial sketching and storyboarding through to final simulation and testing. The tool provides authors with a visual direct manipulation interface allowing the author to focus on the narrative grid rather than on the machine coding requirements. While the authoring tool does not lessen the challenge of creating interesting, complex, self-aware story lines, it does allow authors to visualize story structures, examine story threads, and partially simulate the audience's experience in the mobile environment.

M-Studio consists of two main components, the Storyboard [Figure 1] and the Simulator [Figure 2]. Authors can use the Storyboard tool to lay out clips and associate them with locations. The user can associate flags with these clips to allow greater control over story structure. The storyboard can be used in both pre and post production. In pre-production, the author can create clips with text and images to plan the story and examine the structure. After the scenes have been shot, creators can replace the text clips with video clips. They then can use the Simulator tools to model possible event sequences that can be created from these clips.

The story simulator allows the user to enter in a series of locations, times, and context data and simulate the resulting story that would play back if a viewer followed that path. The map simulator tries to recreate the experience of real time playback by allowing a user to navigate an animated map. There are also storyline generation tools [Figure 3], which allow the author to generate all the possible paths through the story, with or without the constraints of location and context. Once satisfied with the simulation results, the creator can use the Storyboard to export the story to the server. M-Views users can then contact the server with their Presenters to begin playing the story.

[Figure 1] M-Studio Storyboard