Is LiveMotion a FlashKiller?

A couple months ago, Adobe released it's ”Flash-killer”, LiveMotion. After one of the many sessions at the FlashForward conference (FF2K), Adobe was asked ”Why does LiveMotion only feature Flash 3 level of interactivity”. Michael Ninness, group product manager for Web Graphics at Adobe Systems, told the crowd that Macromedia had yet to published the Flash 4 specifications, so they were not able to implement it in the first version of LiveMotion. A Macromedia official promptly asked for the microphone and told that they had actually released the specs. One day later, we sat down with Michael to ask him a bit more about LiveMotion.

FM: The User-interface (UI) uses the approach from AfterEffects. Why?
MN: We actually started creating a different timeline, and as we got into development we realised: there's so many people asking have been asking for Â”Give us Flash with the AfterEffects timeline. It's object oriented, all the attributes are right there, it's a timeline that works for usÂ”. So basically, we listened to our customers. We started to go down another road, and the customers said: Â”No, no! You already got a timeline, use itÂ”, so we listened to them.

FM: It seems to us that LiveMotion is not Â”directlyÂ” competing with Flash. It's more like an animation tool?
MN: In one way, that's definitely true. We [LiveMotion] are an animation tool. Our target is the designer, the existing Illustrator or PhotoShop person that does not necessarily have Flash or has tried Flash. [When they open Flash, they'll say] Â”Oh my god. What am I looking atÂ”. It's not because it's bad, but it's not what they're used to. So you open up LiveMotion, and if you're a PhotoShop, Illustrator or AfterEffects user, you'll say Â”Aha, I get thisÂ”. We will be targeting the developers as well. We're being criticised for not having ActionScript in our 1.0 product.

FM: Yes, but during the session yesterday, you got a surprise? The Flash 4 specs have been released?
MN: Right. It's interesting how they worded that. It seemed like it's been out on the website for a while, but they posted that on Friday [ed.: 3 days before the conferenceÂ…]. We have been in development of this product for a yearÂ… They knew what we were up to, and they knew when to release the spec. They're going to play their game, and we'll play our game too. That's the way it works. Their strategy is very sound, and they'll continue to do this. With every release of a new product, they'll release the SDK of the previous one. They have a year to capitalise on new stuff. That's the position you get to be in when you own the formatÂ…
I want to encourage them, keep the format open and unproprietary. Not hide these tags and things like that, because of SVG as you saw during the SVG-session. SVG is not a replacement for Flash, but it is an open standard. It's a standard that everyone's agreeing to.

FM: It's extensible also?
MN: It's extensible. It's not that it's going to Â”killÂ” Flash, I really don't believe that, but I do believe it's an alternate format to solve some problems that necessarily Flash can't handle.

FM: LiveMotion will feature SVG as a later add-on. Will the SVG format be able to support all the functions in LiveMotion?
MN: Most of them, yes. I'm not a SVG expert, but as far as I know the SVG spec supports declarative animation. What's interesting is the bitmap effects in LiveMotion. They are actually supported natively in SVG. So I can actually have a piece of text, add a LiveMotion effect on that, and when it's exported to SVG it's still text. That's the difference between the SVG format and the Flash format.

FM: When will browsers be able to use SVG?
MN: I'm not on the SVG team, and it's not just an Adobe thing. This is an industry standard and a lot of people are involved. It's going to take a while, no denying that. Look at Flash right now, it's taken them 3 years to get there. Flash has been around since 1996 so it's evolved throughout the years, and every time you release a new player, there's a period of time where it takes a while to get the new player out there. That window of time is getting smaller and smaller because the market is getting educated. So once does become viable and it's manageable and people can download itÂ… Macromedia has actually done a wonderful job of educating the market about vector graphics.

FM: What about future plans for LiveMotion?
MN: I don't know if I can tell you thatÂ…, but to be a valid player throughout the future, we need to have some kind of scripting model. Our customers are telling us this, Macromedia is pointing the fact that we don't have ActionScriptingÂ…. It's not like we're sitting here saying Â”we don't care about actionscriptingÂ”. Of course we do. Ultimately, I don't think a proprietary scripting language is the way to go. I don't think we should have to force people to learn a proprietary, ActionScript-based language. I think it would be cooler if you could use JavaScript, C or Java as a scripting language to access the objects in your Flash-file and control them that way. I would even like it if Macromedia was doing that. Because then the developers could choose the language they want. That's where I'd like to see it go.

FM: But, you will support Flash 4-level of ActionScripting?
MN: Don't misinterpret me. On the front end, you can use whatever language you want. At some point you'll have to have an interpreter to put that into the swiff-player. It's very much like LiveMotion right now. We don't force you to create symbols and instances, we do that for you on the backend. You create a object, duplicate it four or five timesÂ… We've never said Â”you must make this a button symbol or a movie-clipÂ”. Why have to manage that for yourself? It's the same thing here. If you already know JavaScript and that's the scripting language you understand, why force you to use a proprietary scripting language you have never seen before? Why not just write JavaScript and have the program interpret that for you and map it to ActionScript?

FM: Will the SVG- and ActionScript-upgrade to LiveMotion be free?
MN: That depends on the timing of it. If it's a year from now, we are going to have a bunch of other features too so it wouldn't be free? If it hypothetically was a month from now, that would just be a 1.x upgrade for free.

LiveMotion 1.0 is released mid-May, but the Beta can be downloaded from Adobe's site right now if you have a look and judge for yourself.

Visit the Adobe LiveMotion HomePage
Visit www.flashkiller.com