Creating an Interactive Video Booth – Pre-recorded Questions & Response Capture

ignitesomerset

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a project in Isadora to create an interactive video booth. The concept is to play pre-recorded video questions and then record the participant’s video response directly after the question plays. Does this sound possible to do in Isadora and has anyone got any examples of this?

Many thanks!

Woland

@ignitesomerset

It is quite easy to do using the Capture Camera to Movie Actor. I can make you an example, but some more details would be helpful, because the tricky thing here is neither playing a video nor recording the response, but rather the more complex part will be the logic of how to trigger the question video to play and building the logic for whatever it is that you want to do with the answer after it is recorded, as well as preventing certain actions from being possible to trigger during other actions (example: you likely don't want whatever the triggers the playing of the question video to be triggerable 1) when playing the question video, 2) when question video has played and we're waiting to record the answer video, 3) when recording the answer video, 4) when playing the answer video).

What is triggering the video question to play?
1. Is a random question played?
  1. The Shuffle actor makes it easy to pick a random question video. This example file of mine that shows various ways to select random media and random durations.
2. Do you want the participant to be able to choose from a number of different questions?
  1. Option 1: Use Shapes and Text Draw actors to make target areas on a Stage shown on a secondary touchscreen display, then use a Stage Mouse Watcher and Inside Range actors to make trigger areas for the questions that trigger a specific question once someone touches the display in the location of the shape with that question's text is shown.
  2. Option 2: Use a Control Panel with Button Controls and a touchscreen display (though giving the public access to the main display is not advisable)
3. Is it a sensor that triggers a random video question when it detects someone?
  1. Sensor options:
    1. Quick and dirty solution for a sensor is Video In Watcher > Calc Brightness > Inside Range to trigger something when there's a significant change in the brightness of what the camera can see, i.e. when someone puts their face in front of it. (Skin color doesn't matter, you can define the upper and lower bounds based on what the Calc Brightness's output when the camera sitting idle with nobody in front of it, then use the "exit" output on the Inside Range actor to trigger something when the Calc Brightness registers a value that leaves the set range.)
    2. Another option would be to go Video In Watcher > Eyes (obj size output) > Comparator and trigger something when it sees an object of sufficient size.
    3. Another option would be to use the Freeze background removal method from this motion tracking tutorial of mine (I think the Scene is near the end) to be able to easily tell when somebody is in front of the camera.
What are you doing with the videos you record of the participant's answer(s)?
1. Is it played back to the same person, then recorded over for the next participant to do the same thing for them?
2. Is it added to a bank of answers for that specific video question and selected at random to show to another participant once they give their own answer to that question?
3. Is it being added to a looping idle mode where if nobody triggers the installation for a while, it plays a random question by itself, then plays one of the random answers it has recorded?