Features

AVS provides unique features to play with.

Out there, there are tools that extract shots from video. There are tools that create thumbnails from a folder of photographs. But there is no tool that creates video web thumbnails.

There is no tool that creates video web thumbnails with that level of personalization : video hyperlinks, dynamic keywords, transparent shot bitmap templates, html templates, formulas, conditional content and conditional formatting.

There is no tool that creates video shots that fast, up to twice the video speed, and that accurate.

 

In short, AVS release 2.1 introduces something new to the market. Depending on its success, future releases of AVS will bring even more to it.

Below is a short summary of the features :

  • reads many video file formats, including AVI, MPEG, VideoCD, WMV, ASF, and provides a convenient way to play them. You can dock or resize the video window. The status bar shows the current frame.
  • [2.1] the ability to open online video streams. So far, you could only analyze and create video web thumbnails available locally on your hard drive or from a network share. But it is now possible to open a Windows Media file available from a http server or a Windows Media server. AVS can open Windows Media script files (.asx) and let the user choose one video stream among the several video streams that a Windows Media script sequence can declare.
  • the video can be played at many different speeds. Down to one tenth of the normal rate, and up to twice the normal rate. The good news is that AVS can do all the heavy slicing processing at this speed!
  • automatically slices the video according to its content. A fast algorithm is used to detect scene changes, while not being too sensitive to moves like translations, rotations, ...
  • creates a navigable shot for each scene detected. Once a shot is created, you can double-click it. You can also right-click and find a wealth of features, including Merge, Extract, Delete, and so on.
  • uses a linear shot sampler for scenarios where the automatic shot engine is not required, for instance when you want 10 shots out of a video regardless its content.
  • provides shot settings that match user comprehension. For the linear shot sampler, you can decide the amount of shots being extracted according whatever measure that better suits you. No technical manual needed!
  • provides a powerful "publish to the web" tool that creates thumbnails by taking into account highly relevant web issues like bandwidth (for instance, pages are broken down according to your bandwidth requirements) and so on.
  • provides dynamic keywords allowing to personalize the thumbnails with 20 keywords that bring to you the context to titles and shot captions. See here for more information.
  • works on any Windows platform, with very low requirements. No internet connection. No GHZ of CPU power required, No GB of memory required. The initial development of AVS began on a Pentium 166 with 32MB of RAM, only to tell how much AVS differs compared to other "mass market" video production tools.
  • saves your work in a .hpv file for later reuse.
  • [2.0] preview your media files, including videos, bitmaps and html templates.
  • [2.0] when publishing your thumbnail, use a html template instead of relying on the default generator (which was introduced in version 1.1 and is still available).
  • [2.0] edit your html templates and add formulas, conditional content and conditional formatting to unleash your imagination and the power of video web thumbnails, all by taking advantage of html
  • [2.0] simplify deployment and save bandwidth by creating web-archive based thumbnails, that retain all pages and all shot pics within a single file.
  • [2.0] transparent shot bitmap templates can be used to personalize the shots themselves.
  • [2.0] UI enhancements like the ability to show timecodes everywhere (video professionals will love that), the ability to mark a video segment for play and/or processing, and the image refiner.
  • [2.0]
  • the publish to the web dialog box has been replaced with a full-fledged 4-page wizard with dynamic options. You can choose your html template. Additional files (css stylesheets, javascript files, external pictures) can be aggregated in the resulting thumbnail.
  • [2.0] last but not least, the entire UI now works with shadow-looking dialogs. This gives a neat look to the product.
  • [2.1] the ability to create video hyperlinks. Video hyperlinks let you define, share, and play a particular segment of the video, by manipulating the AVS user interface. There are two ways to achieve this. The first is to create a video hyperlink in the clipboard so that it can be pasted in an html page. Just select one or more shots, right-clik, and choose create a videolink. The other is to publish video hyperlinks by using $(VIDEOLINK) keywords in template files. The latter allows to create video web thumbnails which for instance will start playing a particular video segment when the user clicks a shot of the thumbnail.