juli 1st, 2010

Hiring: Interactive Sound Developer

Do you want to change how the web sounds forever? DinahMoe is looking for an AS3 developer with a true passion for music and sound.

The Job
You will be responsible for the interactive audio post production in interactive projects. You will work closely with sound designers and music producers to create the raw material for the interactive sound track. You will have a close contact with our client’s developers and guide them through the pre-production phase. You will use internally developed tools for post production to add the sound and music to the site, flow control, transitions, mixing, etc. You will develop logic for more advanced real-time control of music and sound. Your work environment will be ProTools, Logic, the development IDE of your choice, our own post production development environment.

The Company
DinahMoe is a digital production company 100% dedicated to music and sound. We do adaptive music and interactive sound design for the web and other interactive media. With projects as Hotel 626 (2008), SAAB Change Perspective and Adidas Teamgeist (2009), Lexus Dark Ride (2010) we have moved the frontiers what can be done with music and sound in a web production. DinahMoe acts as a creative partner to our clients and is active in all phases in a production, from concept to deployment.

Who you are
    * You are an AS3 developer with a true passion for sound and music.
    * You are creative and always push yourself to come up with new and better ideas.
    * You handle stress well and keep your cool and quality thinking under pressure.
    * You have excellent communication skills and are fluent in English.
    * You make up for possible flaws and lack of experience with ambition and hard work.

Your application
Please write a short presentation of yourself and what you’ve done before (education, work, projects, etc). Include links to some of your previous work (movies, games, music, programs, web pages, etc). Please do not attach files.

Send it all to contact@dinahmoe.com.
We are really looking forward to your application :-)

januari 13th, 2010

DinahMoe’s New Year’s Resolution

Last year we promised to ”raise the bar for sound and music on the web”. And guess what? We did! Since it went so well the first time we tried, we thought we should give at go this year to:

”During 2010 we will redefine music and sound for the web.”

Simple and ambitious.

To make this promise come true, we have defined 5 areas to focus on during the year, each will be covered in longer articles during the next couple of weeks (click on each headline to read that article):

1. Adaptive music
2. Real-time control
3. Syncing graphics
4. Linear flow
5. Attacking the silent web

januari 13th, 2010

Adaptive music for the new decade

– The trick is to weave a seamless and musical soundtrack that follows you and enhances the experience no matter how you choose to experience it. Simple, huh?

Using music to enhance and create feelings is as old as music itself. Remove the soundtrack from any movie and you loose a lot of the emotional impact. This is also true for the web. But there’s a catch.

The Catch
When you create music for strictly linear media, for example a movie, you know exactly what happens and when it happens. That guy who slips on a sloppily discarded banana peel at 1.32 will always slip on it at exactly 1.32 no matter how many times you watch it. It’s easy to compose a soundtrack that builds up, peaks perfectly and gives your masterly directed slip that comical punch it needs.
    When you’re working with non-linear media, like the web, the user has the ability to interact with stuff and mess things up. Maybe the user jumps to a new section just before the 1.32 slip, or plays back the scenes in the ”wrong” order, or simply just refuses to look at any scenes involving a banana. You are not in control, the user is. And the music? Well, all those efforts to communicate emotions are quite inevitably chopped into pieces.

Traditional Use of Music on The Web
Music on the web today usually involves static loops that doesn’t really react to any user interaction. When someone has tried to make it responsive it’s often done with the tact of a woodsman swinging an axe rather than the loving touch of an artist and a musician. The result is music that stops and/or restarts abruptly when jumping between sections and that changes completely without respect for the beat and the tonality of the music.

In some computer/console games and web sites variation is created by crossfading between tracks with different intensity, e.g. when the enemy attacks in that spiffy game the soft track is fades down and the danger track fades up. This might have been edge and really cool on a multimedia CD in 1996, but 2010?!

Adaptive Music Is Sooo 2010!
So what do we need to do to get away from the Internet’s musical downfall? What we need is music that reponds to the user and changes in a musical way, that is transformed from one feeling to another seamlessly, that is changing in subtle ways to create an organic feeling. We need adaptive music.

Adaptive music is, simply put, music that adapts to something. When applying it to the web it means that when you interact with a web site, the music will adapt (e.g change) accordingly to what happens on the screen. It can be subtle changes that sets different moods for different pages/subpages or it can be bombastic symphonic fanfares that play when you score a goal in a soccer game – all made seamlessly and as a part of the soundtrack that is being put together in real time.

Real Life Examples
Here are some examples of productions we made last year. They all rely heavily on adaptive music. (Check out the launches section for more examples).

Adidas Teamgeist – A grand production that demanded some grand music. We wanted to create a Hollywood motion picture style soundtrack that never was interrupted, a soundtrack that just flows from one section to another as it would in a movie. Since the application is interactive the different games and sections would vary in length from one time to another, and all the videos could be skipped at any moment, so the musical transitions could happen at any time. Visit the site and try skipping videos, jump back and forth between sections and be as crude as you can – whatever you do the music makes smooth transitions between the different parts. Most people don’t even think about the transitions if you don’t point it out for them, it just feels natural. Just as a great soundtrack should :-)

SAAB Change Perspective – The song used here was originally written for the TV-commercial. The old school way would be to just add the two and a half minutes long track to the site and be happy with it. We didn’t go the old school way. We really wanted to make the most out of the music and make it adapt to what the user did. Visit the site and try navigating to different sections and back to the main menu, all sections have their own feeling and the music changes seamlessly between them, please be brutal, the music forgives all. Did you try to ”drive” the pen? Did you notice how the music changes from calmer to more intense car-driving-king-of-the-world music when you do? It really makes me want to buy a SAAB, no kidding :-)

E-On Action – The music is a solo nylon stringed guitar that follows your navigation, and it’s also affected by some realtime controls (like the amount of wind). The goal was to create the feeling of someone playing and following every action you take. The music is really naked and would easily be killed by rough editing, but with some love and care the music flows uninterrupted whatever the user does. Subtle, clean and alive.

So What Is The Secret?
Disassembly and reassembly. We chop up the music in small parts, just some seconds long, some containing a whole mix, others containing a single instrument. When the user navigates and interacts with the site these parts are reassembled in real-time depending on what is happening. Since we have the music in small parts we can put it together in any way and any combination we want.

To make it musical we set up rules how the music should behave. E.g. ”If the chorus is playing and you are on a specific subpage when you navigate back to the main page; play this transition, do a drumroll and change to the verse”, ”If the intro is skipped during the crescendo; do a quick build down and queue the strings”, ”If it is raining in Shanghai, take it to the bridge”. Plus a million rules for all other possible cases.

This is a quite abstract process, even for us, we are in a learning process, and everyday we reach new heights and new potentials.

The Source of Adaptation
The fundamental source is navigation – to let the music seamlessly follow the different sections of a website. This is used in almost all our projects where music is used. Letting the music adapt to different interactive elements is another source, it really enhances the user experience of the interaction (driving the pen in the SAAB site for example) . The music could be used for increasing usability, e.g. by changing to a ”waiting” tonality when the user is expected to input data. Another example is to make game states more understandable, e.g. the music changes depending on if it is my turn or not (as in the Teamgeist soccer game). Game score could also affect the music.

The Future Is Here, And This Is What It Holds
As you might have noticed by now there is no end to what we can do with adaptive music. The most obvious (and effective) is to affect the music by interacting with a web site (music changes according to navigation and other events like; completing a game, skipping a movie, etc), a more untouched field that we would like to keep exploring is to let the users mood, personality and current state of mind affect the music too.

How can we use data from things like Facebook to create a richer experience? What would happen if we tracked the users facial expressions and had that affect the music? How about tracking eye movements and change the music accordingly to what words you are currently reading?
And how can we use other realtime data like time, date, weather, number of users logged in, number of unread mails in you inbox to enhance the feeling of ”Wow, this is really happening right here and right now!”. And what real life events would be interesting to accentuate?

It is by walking down this path we can make the borders between inner and outer world blur.





This article is part of DinahMoe’s 2010 New Year’s resolution.
Click here to read about all of them!

oktober 5th, 2009

Music supervision

All spiffy web sites need music. Working with music for the web has a lot of advantages (and also some drawbacks) compared to linear media like film or tv. Therefore it also requires a different work process.
When we get briefed about a new project we always try to add to the ideas to make each project truly unique and to use the web medium as much as possible. Down below is a short list of how the work process usualy looks like.

1. defining what to do
     a. musical style
     b. interaction
2. deciding on production strategy
     a. interaction
     b. approval process
     c. time
3. production

Summary: Define what to do, how to do it, and then just do it. No rocket science as it seems :-)

Defining what to do

Producing music for a web site is NOT the same thing as finding the right song for a TV commercial or a radio spot, unless you want it to be static, boring and totally 2008.
We think music for a web site should be adaptive, interactive and 21st-century-awesomeish.

So what is the difference compared to linear production? Defining an interactive track is like defining a toolbox, the pieces we need to paint the whole picture. And it is not all that easy to bend the mind away from a static reference track. A track for a web site needs to be defined with both musical style and interaction in mind.

Musical style
Find references. Define the keywords. You know the drill.

Interaction
This is where the music comes alive. Music is all about emotions: happy, sad, angry, uncomfortable, scared. Music can communicate these emotions, and also create them. So how do we make the most out of this possibility?

First we look at what we can use as a base for interaction. Most common are user navigation, that the music adapts itself to where the user is in the application. The SAAB site is a good example of this. Real time data, such as position on the screen, current score in a game, even the current temperature in Tokyo, can be the source. Done right the music adapts itself to the user, to her emotions, wishes, dreams, actions.

Deciding on production strategy

Sometimes the music should sound like nothing else in the world, sometimes it is quite the opposite. We choose production strategy specifically for each project. The music can be produced by DinahMoe in-house, by external producers or artists, or by a combination of the two.
The production strategy is selected based on the following factors.

Interaction
Adaptive and interactive music requires that the music is produced with this in mind. The higher level of interaction the more needs to be done in-house. Since the music is created at runtime, the production and assembly blends into each other, and the work process contains a lot of testing and redoing. Doing this with a producer that does not have experience with interactive music will not be as smooth as it needs to be. Some composers do find it distrurbing that they are not in control over the final result,

Approval process
Let’s face it, music is about personal taste. There are as many opinions as there are people in the world. Even though we have done a good job defining what to be done, the approval process is still a factor that need to be considered when choosing production strategy. If there are many parts that have a saying about music it might be a good idea to work with drafts, or even several parallel productions. But then, of course, it all comes down to the next point :-)

Time
Sometimes lots of time will give a better result, sometimes not. Either way time affects the production process a lot. The less of it we have, the more freedom we need to choose the solution that will give the best result possible.

september 11th, 2009

Our best work in the last 12 months

Hotel 626 (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners/B-Reel)
www.hotel626.com (26/9-2008)

SAAB Change Perspective (Lowe Brindfors/Acne Digital)
http://changeperspective.saab.com/ (28/8-2009)

Swedish Armed Forces Recruitment 2009 (DDB/North Kingdom)
rekryt.mil.se/recruitment2009/ (10/6-2009)

Swedish Armed Forces Recruitment Portal (DDB/Acne Digital)
rekryt.mil.se/ (25/3-2009)

Coke Zero Life as it Should Be (North Kingdom)
possible.cokezero.com (15/5-2009)

Simple Machines (Unit9/Helpful Strangers)
www..msichicago.org/online-science/simple-machines/ (9/6-2009)

augusti 17th, 2009

Top 5 things we want to do

We love challenges. And if there is no challenge we will create one, just see how we can improve things. And we really love to do things that have never been done before. Here are our list of the five hottest areas with the largest potential to break new grounds.

Adaptive music – not done
We do it already even if we don’t have to. And at the basic level it is just about creating a rich, organic experience. But it could be so much more. Music is all about emotions: happy, sad, angry, uncomfortable, scared, music can communicate these emotions but also create them. What happens if the music adapts itself to the user, to her emotions, wishes, dreams, actions? Weird, mind boggling, and way cool!

Real-time control – not done
I know it is hard but let us all try to get this into our heads: the web is not Television. It is here and now, it is interactive and adaptive, it is two way communication. Or at least it should be. So we need to let it show.
There are lots of real-time data in a web site that could be of use: current score in a game, the position of an animation, numbers of current users, whatever. Or we can use input devices – mouse, keyboard, camera, microphone.
The goal is to create an experience where the user feels that she is controlling what is happening. By letting actions in the real world affect the digital world the two are melding together and creating totally new experiences and possibilities. Kind of like Tron ;-)

Groovy graphics – not done
Look at any music video and you will see how they have put a lot of effort into making the graphics groove with the music. But Flash is not groovy, not at all. The timing sucks and it is impossible to make anything sync with music.
We have solved the timing problem and we can make it as funky as you want it to be. And does it matter? We have seen the light and say yes, and when you see it for yourselves we are convinced that you will way yes too. But there are not many good examples out there. So there is an awful lot of cool stuff to be done. Let’s do it!

Linear websites – not done
The web is non-linear, the experience is created at runtime based on user interaction or other parameters. And that is something that we should make the most use of. But even if the medium is non-linear, the experience is linear, like a movie that is created at runtime. Most sites does not take this into account. When you are navigating the site, or playing back parts in another order than it was supposed to, the experience is degraded, more like zapping a TV than experiencing the most modern medium there is.
Sound and music are important parts in creating the next generation web experiences which focuses on the linear experience, where the loaders are not a punishment for a slow connection, but a natural part of the flow. And everybody loves each other and gets high. Groovy!

Company websites – … eer, what?!?!
Well, that sounds really cool, right? Company webistes, noone has thought about that one before. Let’s just get a little visionary here.
Today we have two basic types of web presence: portals and campaigns. Portals are information centric, ugly and boring, and campaigns are (hopefully) exciting, absorbing, involving. These will eventually blend, not fully but nevertheless, as the medium evolves and matures.
We want to be a part of that development. But what can we do? I can hear some of you saying ”a corporate website will never have sound and music”. But as always it is very hard to predict the future before it is here, and when it is here it seems all natural. So how will the future web sound? We are really really interested in finding that out.

augusti 5th, 2009

Track laying of non linear media

Sounds sexy doesn’t it? Bare with us and we’ll tell you about one of the most important sides of working with sound and non linear media.

Video is such a relief! It could be real footage or pre-rendered stuff, it gives the sites that expensive look. With a video you can do a traditional sound design/music production and track laying (you just let the production company work their magic and deliver the ”awesome audio file of epicness” with all mixing and mastering done).

But what happens if the video does not play back in the same tempo on all computers (flv on the time line) or if it is dynamically controlled? Then the track laying has to be far from traditional.

So what does variable speed playback require?
All sounds (music and ambient included) must be mixed at runtime. If you pre-mix sounds they will get out of sync with the picture.

You must separate the sounds in a correct way (e.g. different tracks/layers for different sounds), and you have to know what to loop and what not to loop.

Sync points for spot effects must be based on position in the file, not time. In this aspect there is no difference between a flv where the playback is controlled interactively and an flv on the timeline. Using flv cue points is not a good idea. First it creates a dependency between sound and development, second it only solves the probelm for flv:s not for swf:s.

Our solution
We have solved this thorugh a sync processor that keeps track on current position in the master file. All changes in state are automatically handled (play, pause, buffering, speed etc), and all we have to do is basically to tell a sound file when it should start and that is needs to be in sync.

We are using this technique in all projects involving video. Projects like Swedish Armed Forces Recruitment would have been impossible without it. The site is a ”linear” 19 minute experience, some parts using a custom flv player (fixed frame rate), other using flv on the timeline (variable frame rate), yet other parts adaptive and/or interactive. To add to the complexity several scenes were changed from fixed to variable framerate during the work process.

Working in a traditional way with our high ambitions would have been a nightmare, and maybe close to impossible. The way we work with non-linear track-laying handle these differences automatically.

juli 19th, 2009

Track laying for the web

Anyone familiar with sound post production for film or TV have seen the huge number of tracks filled with small bits of audio. And as if that wasn’t enough there’s also buses, effects, graphs that control volume and pan, fades (in/out/cross), etc, etc. All of these tools will in the right hands produce smashing sound that will please you ears. Compared to this, track laying for most web productions sounds like they are done on a four track cassette recorder. What is the reason?

I just can’t do it, Captain. I don’t have the power!
Doing a really good sound production the traditional way is no rocket science. You do your stuff and mix it to a single sound file that will sound exactly the same every time you listen to it. When dealing with the web it’s whole different story.
    The web is interactive and non linear, which means that things will play back differently every time you run it. In other words; you can’t mix the sound beforehand, you must do it at runtime each time the site runs.
    This has obviously turned out to be too big of a challenge for most, and the only for way for people to handle this is to limit the number of sounds playing. That is the reason why the sound production almost always consists only of a couple of sounds.

Whoop-dee-doo, what does it all mean, Basil?
From the start of this company we’ve had the ambition to raise the bar of sound production on the web to the same level as sound production for movies and TV. And the only way to do that is to adapt traditional track laying and post production methods to the interactive and non linear nature of the web. But what does it all mean?

It means that the sounds must be mixed at runtime. Keeping all the elements separated and controlled independently.

An example
In the lullaby room on Hotel 626 site the sounds were separated into the following tracks:

Room ambience
A looped sound that gives the room its basic sound character (a small chamber with wooden floor).

Environmental effect loop
Building the basic sound environment (thunder and rain in the distance for example).

Environmental spot effects
Spot effects that are used to build a dynamic and organic feeling (e.g. no loops). Sudden bolts of lightning that are triggered randomly, etc, etc.

Ambient music track
Drones and other elements to enhance the creepy feeling.

Foley
Breathing, footsteps and body movements.

Game sounds
The sound of the girl and the music box (interactive sounds).

This corresponds to 7 mix buses and even more sub buses (each bus playing several tracks of sound at the same time). This is the work process we apply to all projects since it gives us the level of control that we want and need to reach our goal.

juli 1st, 2009

The Future of Sound on the Web

First published in december 2008 showing the direction we were heading. Now 7 months later we are there and we are very excited about what is next.

Read the article at the FWA or check it out here.

The Future of Sound on the Web
By Johan Belin, Creative Director at DinahMoe AB

Web campaigns get more and more complex combining 3D, movies and animations into a rich immersive experience. Network and processor speeds are constantly increasing. Still, the sound on many high profile productions often consists of one ambient sound and some spot effects, the sounds are abruptly cut off when navigating, parts are silent without any apparent reason. The sound track feels simplified, unrefined, half-done.

We all know what good music and sound post production can do. Just watch a good movie, a drama, comedy, action, thriller or any other genre. The skills and experience are there. Why does not the web sound as good? Are the skills not transferable to the web?

Of course there are huge differences between movie and web production. The focus here is only on the differences from a music and sound perspective.

The media

The sound track for a movie can be created solely on the basis of what sounds best and the finished result will always sound the same.

Music and sound for web must be designed with the technical limitations of the web in mind: download times, CPUs, Flash itself. Understanding what is complicated and what is not from a coding perspective must also affect the design. The possibilities of the media with realtime interaction should also be a part of the picture.

Audio guys normally don’t have this competence which means that the music and sound produced will be far from optimal. So what happens? People on the world’s best production companies are still surfing sound FX databases and making synth drones, since it is so much easier to do it yourself. 

But will the final result be as good? Probably not.

The work process

Sound post production for a movie is done while watching the movie on the screen, which makes it possible to judge if it works or not on the spot. Score music is done the same way.

Doing music and sound for web normally means working in the dark. The standard process is that the web production company writes a list of all sound and music parts that has to be produced. This has to be done quite early in the process, often before you can see anything on the screen. The music and sound is produced and delivered according to specification. Visuals and functions are for obvious reasons prioritized in the development process, which means that the music and sound are added the last couple of days before the site goes live. By then new functions are added and others removed, timing and flows are changed etc which means that the delivery does not fit the need. Time is short and the budget is tight…

So even if the ambitions were high the end result is a compromise.

The headache

And it’s getting worse. Sites are becoming larger and more advanced all the time and the complexity of the projects increases exponentially.

Being ambitious about music and sound does not pay off well. More sound means more time spent on instructing music and sound producers. The management of the increasing number of sound files in different versions becomes a problem in itself. Controlling several layers of sound when the user starts clicking around generates a lot of code, which means more bugs and more testing, just when you need it the least.

Video is great for all the things that’s still not possible to render at runtime, but it also adds a new beautiful process to the management palette: create a clip, send clip to sound producer, add sound and master it, send sound file to web production company, add file to master clip, export as .flv, add to dev site. Which has to be repeated every time a clip is altered or the sound is changed. Not to mention the problems controlling levels, transitions, timbre etc when mixing with other sound elements.

And the evolution will continue regarding the visuals and functions. And the sound will follow just a step behind. Together with a severe management and development headache…

Getting on top of it

The web is a complex medium that requires a lot from those involved. The expectations and complexity will only increase. If we want to raise the level of music and sound on the web to that of movies we need to find ways to handle these challenges.

This is the driving force behind DinahMoe. DinahMoe combines competence in web, sound and music production in the same company. This makes it possible to work in a creative way with the end result in mind through the whole process. A work process has been developed where the web production company does not have to handle sound at all, neither as files or in the code. The sound post production is done in parallel with and independent of the programming of the site. The work process makes it possible to handle larger and more complex sound productions than ever before….

DinahMoe might be the first company working this way, we actually don’t know, but we are certainly not the last. The solutions might differ but the goal is the same: to simplify handling of audio for the web and to create completely new possibilities.

…so the question is: how are we going to use all these possibilities?

The future

The future is very cloudy to be honest. We at DinahMoe started getting our act together just six months ago, and we are still in the process of learning what the web should sound like. I do have some ideas though where it might be good to start digging.

The web is experienced linearly

The web is a non-linear medium where user interaction etc creates the final result at runtime. Deciding what music and sound are needed are most often based on the site map and flow charts with their little squarish boxes. Each box gets its own sound like it was a static object. But these boxes are far from the user experience, where a story unfolds in real time. The user experience is very much a linear experience. What does that mean for music and sound? That we have to focus on the flow as if it was a film, how the sound elements should enter the stage and evolve over time.

Often several sound elements are mixed together in order to minimize file sizes and simplify sound control. But this must by definition create a static sound track. By keeping the elements separated and controlling them independently we can create much more organic and dynamic sound track that dramatizes, emphasizes, comments the user’s linear experience. Like in a movie.

The web is adaptive

If movies are a reference for the richness and quality of music and sound of the future web, computer games are a starting point for interactivity and adaptivity. 

At any given time there are data in the application that could be used to control music and sound. Input devices – mouse, keyboard, camera, microphone – all can be used to create a more immersive, dynamic, organic experience. 

It might be tempting to reduce this to a cool feature that is the first thing to be cut in the budget. But actually it does not have to be a question about money as much as learning to use the medium. Each new tool takes years before its real potential starts to get untapped. The web has evolved enormously the last 15 years and we are still in its infancy. Interactivity and adaptivity will eventually become a natural part of the toolbox. Until then, just keep it in mind and try to include it in every project.

The web is limited/unlimited

Being ambitious will get you into problems. Fast. The web is very clear: you can’t do this, you can’t do that. But we have to get better at playing with these limitations. A loop is boring, a dynamically generated ambience done right is much more fun. Repeating the same sound again and again is annoying, to let sounds change over time is way cooler. 

Once again, this is not a cool effect that you do just once and you’re done. For every music part, for every sound we use we should think how we can make it more interesting. Never stop making the web a more natural, organic, interesting, fun place to be.

The web needs audio POST production

There are very good reasons why things are done in a specific way. Sometimes the sound should be done before the visuals, more often the end result gets better the opposite way around. You just don’t do the sound track to a movie before it is done, right?

The web is so young so I think time will solve it all. But in the mean time, let’s just try our best to get a little more POST in the process, OK?

About the author

Johan Belin is founder and Creative Director at DinahMoe AB. In 1989 he founded PLOP Production, focusing on music and sound production for commercials, where he was active as Director, Creative and music producer until 2000. During the years 2000-2007 he was the driving force behind several IT concepts and companies which gave him invaluable experience in system and application development, web technologies, mobile development, complex project management etc.

About DinahMoe AB

DinahMoe AB is a music and sound production company focusing on the web. Services include all stages from pre to post production. The company was founded in Stockholm, Sweden in February 2008 but has already worked with some of the best web production companies in the world, among them Acne Digital, B-Reel, Perfect Fools. DinahMoe’s goal is to constantly raise the bar and set new standards for audio on the web.

juni 12th, 2009

Top 5 reasons to keep your video files silent

Adding sound to a video file is in almost all cases a really bad idea. This goes for video and animations on the timeline too.

Here are the top 5 reasons to NOT put your sound in the video file:

1. Takes time
Adding a mastered sound to a movie is quite a process: you get the master movie, create the sound and music needed, master it, deliver the audio to the production company which adds it to the master movie, exports it as a flv and adds it to the dev site. And if anything need to be changed the whole process must be repeated.

2. Creates dependencies
It is not possible to judge the final result until it is in the site. So please all developers, stop developing and start converting video instead.

3. Generates lots of files in different versions
There are versions of the video clip, there are versions of the audio, these are combined into yet another level of versions. We have seen file names such as intro_test3_final2.flv. And we are lost and so are you.

4. Gives an unpredictable result
It is very hard to know how the final result will be until you hear it in the right context. Is it the right volume, balance, timbre, compression, dynamics, transitions? And since the process of changing the sound is so complicated you are likely to go for a not perfect result.

5. Ooops, the file ended
When a video stops the sound stops, kind of logical huh? But this limits how you can use sound in an application. And if you want it to blend with other aounds it simply won’t work.

Please note: none of this applies for crappy sound productions where nobody cares :-)

maj 11th, 2009

How we work

DinahMoe is a digital production company 100% dedicated to music and sound. We do adaptive music and interactive sound design for the web and other media. We are not the average production company – far from it!

As you can tell from the picture, we are quite far from the average production company.

In shorts
DinahMoe is a digital production company 100% dedicated to music and sound. We work with all interactive media, but web and Flash is still by far the largest. We are experts in adaptive music and interactive sound design. Our clients are production companies and agencies that have understood the importance and possibilities of great music and sound.

So what’s the difference?
Working with music and sound for interactive media is fundamentally different from linear media (such as film). We have developed tools and processes to solve each and every challenge that music and sound for interactive media poses.
    This allows us to be truly creative and create productions that sounds better than everything else on the web today.

Changing the game
When working with traditional music and sound production companies (often mainly involved with sound post production for movies and TV) they only take care of the actual sound design/music production – they deliver audio files for you to implement. Working with DinahMoe means that you can focus on the creative part, and no longer have to manage anything that sounds. We take care of all you normal audio business, and we also do the stuff that you never have the time to do, that is too complicated or would cost too much to do, and in some cases things that you could not do even if you wanted :-)

Our expertise and experience from music, sound AND web production makes us unique.