RE: Multimedia authoring

 

There are many books, articles, etc. on the subject of

multimedia authoring, and a web search will probably turn

up a number of sources. There are as many newsgroups and

listservs as there are software applications. I've used a

few texts for my multimedia authoring course--and they are

more theory than practice: "Labyrinths" by Dominic

Stansberry (Thompson) and van Wodtke's "Mind over

Media" (McGraw). As to how to's, that depends on the

software you use. My own authoring was done in Asymetrix

Toolbook, which I also use in my classes. It has the value

of being as simple or complex as you need. For publication,

my CD-ROM was done by a professional production company in

Macromedia Director, the advantage of which is that it can

be developed for PC and Mac and is the industry default. It

is incredibly difficult and yields no better results than

Toolbook.

 

To get an image into your computer, you need a video

capture card, fed by either a VCR or (preferably) a

laserdisc.

 

It might be a good idea to decide first what kind of

project you want to do and then find the software that can

best handle it. It might turn out that nothing more than

Power Point is needed.

 

----------------------

Robert Kolker

English Department

University of Maryland

College Park, MD 20742

[log in to unmask]

http://www.otal.umd.edu/~rkolker

301.405.6250

 

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Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite

http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite