Published: Dec. 13, 2012

We’ve got a workingof our curatorial project built in Korsakow.

For now, we’re using the default interface and have a few glitches and details to work through but we feel that already Korsakow is proving an efficient curatorial tool – making the media richer in its connections.

Some of the issues we are working through include the design and layout as well as the limits of the technologies: the software, the platform, the media formats, and so on. There’s been a lot to consider.

Stuff we’ve learned so far (which may be a reiteration of the software FAQ):

Naming your files properly is important. Don’t put in any spaces or weird characters or else the path isn’t likely to work in certain browsers, like Chrome.

The web can handle much better video compression than it once could, and formulas could be revised to reflect this progress. Depending on the source of your video, video online can be of high quality using the H264 codec with mp4 as a container. In our experience mp4 looks better and generates smaller files, but mov load faster. This requires further explorations.

For audio, acc and mp4 don’t work so stick to mp3.

Another audio bug seems to be that it can play overtop other media assets – as in audio from one clip continues to play when another one has been selected. Not sure if it something on our end – in the programming – or with Korsakow.

The playhead the comes with the software seems to run off the page.

Transparent png don’t work – they come with a boxy background.

On our end, we need to add titles to some of the images to give them context and guide users. We also need to rethink the trajectory – while nonlinear, it is thought out to guide the user in a choronological order i.e., you can only go forward in time, not back, but you have many options for moving forward. I’ve noticed in testing it out, however, that some trajectories are less likely to the point of being likely passed by completely. This will need tweaking. Some “main” SNUs don’t have enough previews popping up to complete the three, which becomes a design consideration. I’d like for us to test out the Preview text that comes in Korsakow, and a few of the other features we haven’t yet explored… look forward to Demo 2 in the next few months.