Cacophony

An interactive video player in HTML5 and Javascript.

Cacophony is a tool for creating and viewing interactive videos, especially music videos, using HTML5 and Javascript. Interactive elements include visuals/story adapting in response to user input as text, mouse movement, drawings, and choices (choose-your-own-adventure).

Input from the viewer can affect the subsequent video, and also be sent to a server for integration with other web applications (social networking, sharing, geotagging), which is possible because effects are rendered on-the-fly in the browser, not pre-rendered like traditional video. Input can also come from external sources (RSS, JSON), so you can integrate external data, or previously generated data, back into subsequent views of the video.

New effects can be written in Javascript, and several frameworks are already integrated into existing effects, including:

The basic elements of a Cacophony video are:

An HTML5 Video on the base layer
A series of HTML5 Canvas layers above that
A timeline of effects to be triggered to the beat of the song
Images and other elements to be used by the effects

The official homepage of Cacophony is www.cacophonyjs.com.

Download/Links

Usage

Step 1: Include the scripts and stylesheet in your <head>:

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/cacophony.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/settings.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/story.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/cacophony.min.css" />

Step 2: Create an element like this in your page, note the ID must be 'cacophony':

<div id="cacophony"></div>

Step 3: Add the following script to your web page:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready (function () {
    cacophony.init ();
});
</script>

Step 4: Copy the build/settings.js and build/story.js files into your site and follow the instructions found in each.

You can also refer to the examples/demo.html file for a complete example, including a functioning storyline, and callbacks for integrating the player into your page in various ways.

Examples

Tutorials

API Documentation

Cacophony
Settings
Story
Built-in effects:
- Core
- Circles
- Context
- Cube
- Datafeed
- Flicker
- Input
- Lyrics
- Ribbon
- Sparkles
- Skyline
- Three
- Volume

Compatibility

Cacophony is compatible with the following browsers:

Firefox 3.6+
Safari 5+
Google Chrome 7+
Opera 10.6+
Internet Explorer 9
Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 through the Google Chrome Frame plugin

The core player is also compatible with iOS 4.2+ devices, however some effects will render videos unplayable on current iOS devices (iPhone 4G, original iPad). As such, iOS support is disabled by default, but can be enabled in your settings.js file with the following setting change:

cacophony.enable_ipad = true;

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