© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Chapter 8: Multimedia Authoring Tools

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Overview Stages of a multimedia project What You Need: The Intangibles What You Need: Hardware What You Need: Software What You Need: Authoring Systems

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Software Text editing and word processing tools –Word processors such as Microsoft Word and WordPerfect are powerful applications that include spell checkers, table formatters, thesauruses, and prebuilt templates for letters, résumés, purchase orders, and other common documents. –OpenOffice is a free, downloadable word processing program.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Software (continued) OCR software –Converts bitmapped characters into electronically recognizable ASCII text. –Makes use of probability and expert system algorithms. –Is very accurate and saves time and effort.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Painting tools allow you to create and modify bitmap images. –PhotoShop, Fireworks, and Painter are examples. –Bitmapped images provide the greatest choice and power for rendering fine detail and effects. What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Drawing tools allow you to create and modify vector graphics. –CorelDraw, Illustrator, and Canvas are examples. –Vector graphics are used by Adobe Flash to reduce download time and scaling problems with web graphics. –Many authoring systems can only import bitmap graphics. What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Painting and drawing software features include: –An intuitive graphical user interface –Scalable dimensions –Multiple undo capability –Scalable text font support –Support for third-party special effect plug-ins –Layering capability What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Painting and drawing software features include (continued) –Painting features such as smoothing coarse-edged objects into the background with anti-aliasing. What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved 3-D modeling tools allow rendering of objects in a three-dimensional perspective. –VectorWorks, AutoDesk Maya, and Strata 3D are examples. –Many applications allow you to export and save moving images as QuickTime or AVI animation files. –3-D graphics usually take a long time to render, so plan accordingly. What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Software (continued) 3-D modeling tools allow rendering of objects in a three-dimensional perspective.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved 3-D modeling software features include: –Good color and palette management –Multiple dimension windows and unlimited cameras –Lathe and extrude features –Ability to drag and drop primitive shapes, sculpt organic objects –Color and texture mapping What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Image-editing tools –Are specialized and powerful tools for enhancing and retouching existing bitmapped images. –Many painting and drawing programs also serve as image editors. –Features include conversion of image-data types and file formats, masking features, employment of virtual memory scheme, etc. –Support third-party plug-ins. What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Sound-editing tools –Enables the user to see music as a waveform as well as hear sound. –This is done by drawing a representation of sound in fine increments. What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Animation, video, and digital movie tools –Animation is a sequence of bitmapped graphic scenes or frames, rapidly played back. –Animations can be made within some authoring systems by moving objects or sprites to simulate motion. –Moviemaking tools take advantage of QuickTime and AVI formats to create, edit, and present digitized motion video segments. What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Helpful accessories –Screen-capture software enables the user to move bitmapped images by placing them on the clipboard. –Format converters are useful for projects where the source material originates on different platforms. What You Need: Software (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Authoring Systems Multimedia authoring tools provide the framework for organizing and editing the elements of a multimedia project. Authoring software provides an integrated environment for combining the content and functions of a project. It enables the developer to create, edit, and import data.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued) Helpful ways to get started: –Use pre-made templates, wizards, and styles to save time on page setup. –Improve document appearance with tables, bulleted and numbered lists, and symbols.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Helpful ways to get started (continued): –Help readers find information with tables of contents, running headers and footers, and indexes. –Use quick-change, spelling, and grammar checker features. –Include identifying information in the filename. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Making instant multimedia –The scope of your project determines the appropriate production tool. –Modern office productivity software can perform many simple multimedia tasks. –Most modern PCs have some multimedia creation tools built in. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued) Most word processing programs allow you to include various image formats, movies, and digitized sounds (including voice annotations).

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued) Spreadsheets can include embedded objects made with other applications.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued) A FileMaker Pro employee database can include image and sound resources.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued) Microsoft PowerPoint provides multimedia linking and embedding features.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Types of authoring tools –Card- and page-based authoring tools –Icon- and object-based authoring tools –Time-based authoring tools What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Card- and page-based authoring tools –Elements are arranged like pages of a book or cards in a stack. –These tools contain media objects such as buttons, text fields, and graphic objects. –Runtime Revolution and ToolBook are examples of page-based systems. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Card- and page-based authoring tools (continued) –Characteristics of objects are defined by properties. –Objects may contain scripts that specify a related action. –One or more intermediate files are usually required for handling script actions and routines. –Cards or pages can contain multiple layers. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Icon- and object-based authoring tools –Icon-based and object-based tools provide a visual programming approach to organizing and presenting multimedia. –Multimedia elements and interaction cues are organized as objects in a flowchart. –Flowcharts can be built by dragging appropriate icons from a library, and then adding the content. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Time-based authoring tools –Time-based tools are best suited for messages with a beginning and an end. –Adobe’s Flash and Director are time-based development environments. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Time-based authoring tools (continued) –Adobe Flash Flash is used for delivering rich multimedia content to the Web. It allows the creation of simple static HTML pages with the Flash Player plug-in. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Time-based authoring tools (continued) –Adobe Director A multimedia database, “Cast,” contains still images, sound files, text, shapes, scripts, movies, and other Director files. Score is a sequencer for displaying, animating, and playing Cast members. Lingo is an object-oriented scripting language that enables interactivity and programmed control. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Objects –Authoring tools generally treat multimedia elements as objects. –Objects exist in a hierarchical order of parent and child relationships. –Each object is assigned properties and modifiers. –On receiving messages, objects perform tasks depending on the properties and modifiers. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Choosing an authoring tool –Editing and organizing features –Programming features –Interactivity features –Performance tuning and playback features –Delivery, cross-platform, and Internet playability features What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Editing and organizing features –Authoring systems include editing tools to create, edit, and convert multimedia elements such as animation and video clips. –The organization, design, and production process for multimedia involves storyboarding and flowcharting. –Visual flowcharting or an overview facility illustrates project structure at a macro level. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Programming features –Visual programming with icons or objects is the simplest and easiest authoring process. –Authoring tools offer “very high level language” (VHLL) or interpreted scripting environment. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Interactivity features –Interactivity gives the end user control over the content and flow of information in a project. –Simple branching is the ability to go to another section of the multimedia production. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Interactivity features (continued) –Conditional branching is an activity based on the results of IF-THEN decisions or events. –Structured language supports complex programming logic, subroutines, event tracking, and message passing among objects and elements. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Performance-tuning and playback features –Achieving synchronization is difficult, considering that performance of the different computers used for multimedia development and delivery varies. –Authoring system should facilitate precise timing of events. –These features should enable developers to build part of a project and then test it immediately. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Delivery features –Delivering the project may require building a run- time version of the project, using the multimedia authoring software. –A run-time or standalone version allows a project to play back without the complete authoring software and all its tools and editors. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Cross-platform and Internet-playability features –It is important to use tools that facilitate easy transfer across platforms. –Authoring systems provide a means for converting their output to be delivered within the context of HTML or DHTML. What You Need: Authoring Systems (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Summary The basic stages of a multimedia project are planning and costing, design and production, and testing and delivery. Knowledge of hardware and software, as well as creativity and organizational skills, are essential for creating a high-quality multimedia project.

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Multimedia authoring tools provide the framework needed for organizing and editing multimedia elements in a project. The three types of authoring tools are card- or page-based, icon-based or event-driven, and time-based. Summary (continued)

© 2011 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved Choose an authoring tool based on editing, organizing, programming, interactivity, performance-tuning, playback, delivery, cross-platform, and Internet playability features. Summary (continued)