Come and join the Oxford Adobe Groups for a social event for the summer.

Flash Oxford, Adobe CS Oxford (aka Oxford Dreamweaver User Group), and Premiere and Post, are having an informal pub gathering to network and chat. Just turn up, grab a drink, and help us thrash out ideas for future events. As ever, it’s free to attend, and there’s no ongoing committment to this volunteer led networking group for creative professionals.

You can RSVP and comment on our Adobe Groups page

The Time: 7.30 – 9.30pm
Venue: Far From the Madding Crowd pub, Oxford

Directions: It’s down the alley between Gloucester Green and Magdalen Street. Travelling up from Cornmarket, go past Debenhams then turn left after trying to buy a latte at Starbucks in the old Borders and before buying your sweater from Jaeger.

Or look at a map. Maps are good.

Adobe CS5 unleashes new ways to generate amazing work, collaborate effectively, and deliver virtually anywhere.

We’ll have screen demos of CS5 software at work, presentations, and plenty of time for networking and chat.

There’s a free drink for the first 30 and Flash Oxford are presenting their award for the best Flash animation/game entered into their competition.

RSVP at our Adobe Groups page (you’ll need to sign in to Adobe)

The Time: 7.30 – 9.30pm

Venue: The Vistors’ Room,  Malmaison Hotel, Oxford.
We’re delighted that Malmaison have very kindly agreed to allow us to hold this event in their Visitors Room at their Hotel in the centre of Oxford. This is the old prison building. Hop in a getaway car from the station and ask the taxi driver to take you to the prison. Follow these directions, or simply put OX1 1ND into your Global Positioning Hot Hotel Seeking System.
Oxford Castle
3 New Rd, Oxford, OX1 1AY (or OX1 1ND for Sat Nav)

Please note both the change of day (it’s on a Tuesday) and venue (it’s NOT at OFVM!).

Thanks!

Introducing the Open Source Media Framework with Jodie O’Rourke

The idea behind OSMF is to reduce the complexity involved in developing media players (particularly video players), and in doing so, lower the barriers-to-entry to allow many more developers to create unique and engaging players. OSMF aggregates fixes for many of the problems that other developers have toiled over, meaning you can build rapidly, safe in knowledge that your output will be stable. As a business, the standardisation of player development means that new developers should be able to join your team with relative ease, and become productive in less time.

Jodie will introduce the main features of the latest OSMF build and demonstrate some examples with code.

Venue

OFVM film oxford
54 Catherine Street
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX4 3AH

http://bit.ly/ofvm-loco

Good links stuff:

• Jodie
• Flash Oxford
• Open Source Media Framework
• OFVM

After a short overview of the ever-expanding Flash Platform, we will have a live demo of Flash Builder 4. To liven things up Flash Oxford have challenged Dreamweaver Oxford to a design smackdown.   The task is to produce a web app in just 30 minutes from scratch (well, almost from scratch). How much easier, better, and sexier is Flash Builder compared to Dreamweaver and associated tools? Join a team and help John, Tim, Alun and Glenn avoid public humiliation!

This will be followed by free pizzas and the prize giveaways. (Please RSVP email@flashoxford.com with your pizza topping request).

Prizes this month

• Two copies of Flash Builder 4 and Cold Fusion Builder 4 to be won.
• Adobe quality T-shirts
• Dreamweaver Oxford’s raffle: Adobe software to be won.*

http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/

Hope to see you at OFVM next Thursday night!

54 Catherine Street
Oxford
OX4 3AH

http://bit.ly/ofvm-loco

Advance notice: the next meeting is Thursday May 20th – the Flash group has a visit from Jodie O’Rourke to talk about Adobe’s Open Source Media Framework.

And don’t forget, you can get a free trial of Flash Builder straight away, and you can pre-order Adobe CS5.

http://flashoxford.com/

http://www.dreamweaveroxford.com/

*Remember, for the Dreamweaver group, the more times you’ve attended this year, the more chances you have to win, and if you speak at an event, or introduce a speaker, you get yet more chances. You will receive a serial number for the single Adobe product of your choice up to a value of $2100.

thanks to all who attended last night’s action packed session. Because there were a few hitches with my very own opening session, here are a few links.

Prezi.com – the cool presentation tool.

The CS5 Photoshop preview feature: content-aware deletion on John Nack’s blog. Also check CS5.org for rumours

Thanks to Glenn for the Adobe Browserlab overview. Don’t forget to get your free Adobe ID so you can log in, and also so you can access our Adobe Groups page.

Thanks to Andy Hall for the Premiere and Post chromakey demonstration using Premiere and After Effects, and to John for the FFD magazine overview.

Next month there will be a presentation about Flash Builder 4 – Adobe’s new release for the more code-oriented Flash users amongst you.

Suggestions for speakers, topics, venues, are always welcome, just drop us a line on info@dreamweaveroxford.com or via our contact form.

The three current Oxford based Adobe User Groups will hold a joint meeting where discussions and demonstrations will include:

Dreamweaver / Photoshop. For the Dreamweaver group, Alun will give a fabulous presentation about Prezi, the Flash presentation tool, using … Prezi, the fabulous Flash presentation tool!

Glenn will walk us through Adobe’s BrowserLab.

Flash. Flash Oxford will review the latest issues of Flash and Flex Developer Magazine (FFD).

Premiere & Post. Premiere & Post will give a demo on chromakey in Premiere & After Effects using key light plug-in, (including editing of After Effect compositions on the premiere timeline.)

In other news, Flash Builder 4 has now been officially released:

http://www.adobe.com/flashplatform/

Hope to see you at OFVM on Thursday night!

54 Catherine Street
Oxford
OX4 3AH

Find us.

http://groups.adobe.com/groups/6c54b074f9/summary

Flash Oxford, Friday February 26th

7.30pm at OFVM / Film Oxford

After an extended Christmas break the Flash User Group starts afresh this Friday. We have been working hard to come up with monthly themes to take us through the year. As ever we are hoping to cater for a wide range of Flash users and provide an opportunity for informally meeting other Flash users. We also will continue our regular software give- aways.

This month we will look at Camtasia. This is a screen recording software suite that allows you to record a presentation or tutorial to a video file. You can then edit and save the result as flash web page.

There are some great features in this package and John Twycross will demonstrate how to use it and also how he has used it to teach animation. TechSmith, the makers of the software, have given us a free copy of Camtasia and Snagit to give away on the night.

Tim Watts will be introducing a competition to take place of the Adobe software raffle entitled “Slapdash”. The winner of the competition will win an Adobe software bundle worth over $2000. More details will be revealed on the night.

Finally to round off the night we will have a Flash Surgery. This is an opportunity to ask for help or advice on any projects or ideas you are working on. Feel free to bring along any work to show. This is an open session where you should not be embarrassed to ask questions and join in the discussion.

We hope to see you there.

John Twycross | Flash Oxford

email@flashoxford.com

http://www.flashoxford.com

Venue:

OFVM Film Oxford
54 Catherine Street
Oxford
OX4 3AH

I hope you’ve all recovered from December’s session by now. There were even a few slices of pizza left at the end of that great evening! Thanks especially to the Brothers McLeod for a brilliant double act.

You’ll be relieved to hear that we have a date for the January meeting of the Adobe User groups. The Premiere and Post group are holding their first meeting on Thursday 21st January at 7.30pm at OFVM as usual.

Here’s what Richard Duriez and Gary Shenton (the manager and co-manager) have to say about it:

FREE EVENT

For the first meeting of the year the Adobe User Group Premiere and Post will be having demonstrations about particular aspects of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.

• Using sound compression
• Nesting
• Blend function

We will also be looking at the amazing playback and rendering engine for Adobe Premiere Pro called Mercury Playback Engine.

For further information contact production@ofvm.org

Who should attend?

Those using Premiere Pro, After Effects and other Adobe post production software in a professional capacity.

So, even if you’re not involved in those products, regulars might want to come along and relieve some of the snowy gloom.

OFVM Adobe Groups page

Premiere and Post Adobe Groups page - sign up with your Adobe ID here.

The award winning, BAFTA nominated Brothers McLeod (Greg and Myles) have a track record in creating animation for TV, web, and film. They are represented by Aardman Animations as Commercials Directors and have directed campaigns for Skittles, Stena Line, and Guinness amongst others. They have written and directed series for BBC (Pedro and Frankensheep) and Tate Galleries (Art Sparks), and written for a range of TV, Games and web projects (Noddy, SpongeBob SquarePants, NHS Relationships and Sex). They have a well established YouTube channel and have had several internet successes including Spamland and Fuggy Fuggy which was picked up by MTV and Mondo Media. In 2009, they were nominated for a BAFTA in the Short Animation category for their film Codswallop.

Check out loads of their animations online on the Brothers McLeod web site, You Tube channel, subscribe to Twitter updates, oh all of that!

As it’s the Christmas period, we’ll be having pizza, beer, juice and anything else you can bring yourself, and running the Dreamweaver group Adobe software raffle ($2,000 dollars worth up for grabs).

And please bring along your own short animations to show us too, to keep with the animation theme for the evening, or just be prepared to show us your favourite online animation.

Here’s the deal: a one minute recommendation or presentation = one pizza meal!

When: Thursday December 17th 7:30pm – 9:30pm, and afterwards most likely at the Rusty Bicycle pub.

Where: OFVM, Film Oxford. Map here: http://bit.ly/ofvm-loco

Since the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe, they have been busy integrating the Flash and PDF technologies. The best example of this is their LiveCycle Enterprise Suite platform. Livecycle is a J2EE server based platform for delivering improved user experiences and document automation. It is an area that runs in parallel with the main developments in the Flash platform so this session will be of interest to Flash and PDF developers/designers alike.

The presenter, Michael Ellis, formally of Adobe Systems, has now set up a company focused on the use of Livecycle. He will explain what the platform is, how the underlying technologies are being used, and why this is very relevant to those interested in Adobe technologies.

Alun Ward will take us through Photoshop.com the Adobe tool for editing images online and integrating with online photo collections like Flickr.

Glenn Clarkson will show how he created an award-winning presentation for a housing association using Illustrator, Photoshop and PowerPoint.

Bring along a friend or colleague, there will be lots of opportunities for networking with likeminded creatives.

OFVM Film Oxford are here: http://tiny.cc/yTEyB

P.S. A little local band promotion:  Les Clochards are performing free at The Chester Arms, off Iffley Rd, not too far away, from 9pm on.