INTRODUCTION TO MAKING

INSTANT MULTIMEDIA
Authoring Tools
AUTHORING TOOLS
 Multimedia authoring tools provide the
important framework you need for
organizing and editing the elements of
your multimedia project.
 Authoring tools are used for designing
interactivity and the user interface,
for presenting your project on screen, etc.
With multimedia authoring software,
your can make:
 Video productions
 Animations

 Games

 Interactive web sites

 Demo disks and guided tours

 Presentations

 Kiosk applications

 Interactive training

 Simulations, prototypes, and technical

visualizations
TYPES OF AUTHORING TOOLS
AUTHORING TOOLS ARE GROUPED BASED ON
THE METHOD USED FOR SEQUENCING OR
ORGANIZING MULTIMEDIA ELEMENTS AND
EVENTS.THEY ARE

 Card-and Page- Based Authoring tools

 Icon- and Object-Based Authoring tools
 Time based Authoring tools
CARD- AND PAGE-BASED
AUTHORING TOOLS
 Here elements are organized as pages of a
book or a stack of cards.
CARD- AND PAGE-BASED
AUTHORING TOOLS
 Thousands of pages or
cards may be available
in the book.
 The authoring system
lets you link these pages
or cards into organized
sequences.
 You can jump on command to any page.
 It consists of media objects (buttons, text
fields, graphic objects, backgrounds, pages
or cards.)
 Each object would have contained
programming script, usually a property of
that object, that was activated when an
event related to that object occurred.

 E.g. Visual Basic

 Now let’s look at specific examples.
To go to the next card or page
when a button is clicked, place a message
handler into the script of that button.
An example in RunRev’s LiveCode language
would be:
on mouseUp
go next card
end mouseUp
 Card and page based systems typically
provided two separate layers on each card:
 Background layer that could be shared among
many cards
 Foreground layer that was specific to a single
card

 These systems allow you to play sound elements

and launch animations and digital video too.

 Eg: ebook(PDF)
ICON-OR OBJECT BASED SYSTEMS
 Icon-orObject Based, are organized as
objects in a structural framework or
process
ICON-OR OBJECT BASED SYSTEMS
 provide
a visual
programming
approach to organizing
and presenting
multimedia.
ICON-OR OBJECT BASED SYSTEMS
 Firstyou build the
flowchart of events,
tasks and decisions by
using appropriate
icons from a library.
ICON-OR OBJECT BASED SYSTEMS
 These icons can include menu choices, graphic
images and sounds.
 When the flowchart is built, you can add your
content: text, graphics, animations, sounds
and video movies.
 You can edit to rearrange the icons or their
properties
ICON-OR OBJECT BASED SYSTEMS
 Non-technical multimedia authors can build
sophisticated applications without scripting
 Authorware software has a complete set of
tools for editing multimedia elements.
TIME BASE AUTHORING TOOLS
 Time based tools are authoring systems, wherein
elements are organized along a timeline.
 Many authoring systems use a visual timeline for
sequencing the events of a multimedia
presentation
 These tools are best to use when you have a
message with a beginning and an end.
 Sequentially organized graphic frames are played
back at a speed that you can set.
 Other elements(such as audio events)are triggered
at a given time or location in the sequence of
events.
 Some tools let you program jumps to any location in
a sequence, thereby adding navigation and
interactive control
 Some time base authoring tools are:
 Adobe Acrobat Connect : is powerful tool from Adobe
with a broad set of features to create multimedia
presentations, animations, and blended learning
experiences
 Flash : Focused on delivery of rich multimedia content
to the Web.ActionScript is the scripting language of
Flash based upon the international ECMAScript
standard derived from Netscape’s original Javascript.
 Macromedia Director : is powerful and complex
multimedia authoring tool with a broad set of features
to create multimedia presentations, animations, and
interactive multimedia applications.