The ultimate multimedia application is to write your own multimedia presentation and publish it. While it is theoretically possible to do this using software development tools such as Visual Basic and the built-in features of Windows, the overwhelming majority of authors will use a multimedia authoring package. The authoring applications available are first and foremost integration or packaging tools. They provide a logical sequence for the author’s words, sounds and pictures to run in, including the ability to time each segment; to provide continuity between the pages of the presentation in terms of backgrounds, dissolves, fade-ins, fade-outs and so forth; and they enable the attachment of presentation controls for the end-user – buttons to push and links or concealed areas to explore. Finally, they provide some means to distribute or publish the finished work. There are packages available for the Macintosh and the Windows, with the emphasis overwhelmingly on the latter. One important point to notice at the outset is that few of them contains any advanced origination capabilities. The vendors expect authors to provide their own video, their own sounds, their own animation, their own text.

Hot spots

Authoring packages are simply a means of bringing all these items together, and packaging them in an attractive and informative way with the necessary controls to provide an effective educational, training or entertainment package. Thus the quality of the material displayed will be determined not only by the authoring package but primarily by the source of video, animation or whatever, and by the capabilities of Windows. The key elements of any authoring package must include the ability to assemble and link the separate screens or pages that make up the presentation; time the beginning and end of sound and video sequences; place buttons, hypertext links, ‘hot spots’ and other controls on the page to give the user some interaction with the presentation; package together all the chosen resource files with the sequence, timing, linkages and controls of the presentation and distributing the end product to users. To understand the basic mechanism of authoring packages it may be helpful to think of still slide presentation packages such as Microsoft Corp Powerpoint or Micrografx Inc Charisma. Authoring tools tend to work in a rather similar way but with the added complexity of sound and video (and hence the need for timing signals) and the ability to add interactive controls for users. One exception to the rule of creating the elements of the presentation is text. All the packages on the market have powerful text creation and manipulation facilities. Text files can be prepared elsewhere and imported but there seems little advantage to be gained from this. More importantly most manuals on how to prepare presentations advise against excessive use of text – it is far better to let a photo, or a video or an animation make the point, aided by a few simple labels. All multimedia applications make heavy demands on hardware and this is especially true of authoring packages. The authoring stage demands a high specification machine with a lot of memory and a lot of free disk space, but the machines on which the published product runs may well be run of the mill, lower specification, machines. In the case of applications that are created to run on a single central machine (a ‘kiosk’ type application in a school or college, say) the specification of the machine may not be a problem. But in the case of applications that are being rolled out across a large organisation (for instance a computer-based training presentation for staff) the local machines may on the whole not be very high specification. Most packages available take up substantial disk storage space and one or two are enormous – Asymetrix Corp’s Toolbook, for instance takes up a massive 35Mb. And to do a full installation of Aimtech Corp’s IconAuthor with its 11Mb of sample applications, will take up 25Mb, not including the 9Mb of thoughtfully provided drivers fo

r Microsoft Corp’s Open Database Connectivity standard.

By Richard Milton

Authors can expect their hard disks to become clogged up with some big files very quickly. How exactly is the finished product distributed? If it’s not too long, it could be sent out on one or two floppies. But to get the benefits of true multimedia, the finished product should really be published on CD-ROM. If the print run is fairly short at just three or four copies the CD-ROMs can be individually burnt by a production house with its own drive capable of writing as well as reading, for around ú15 per disk. This price per disk can be reduced substantially, to ú5 or less, but only for quantities of hundreds. (Authors who are going to use an external production company should check the quality of the final product before a large volume manufacture. Most production houses are thoroughly reliable but it is not without reason that the acronym exists, WORN – Write Once, Read Never!) The market is dominated at the top end by two major players, Aimtech, which produces IconAuthor and CBT Express, and Macromedia Inc which also has two products, Authorware and Director. These are large, complex expensive packages, but it should not be assumed that they are directly competitive. CBT Express, for example, is specifically designed to produce computer-based training courses and is used to this end by organisations like British Airways Plc, where cabin crew learn the safety procedures for each new aircraft by computer presentation. Director, though capable of producing a full multimedia presentation, is primarily a tool for generation animated films (it calls its presentations ‘movies’). On the other hand, Authorware and IconAuthor are designed to do pretty much the same job – that of putting together a multimedia presentation and publishing it. Both are large complex packages, costing a lot (Authorware Professional is ú3,750; Icon Author is ú4,000) and both are richly functional. Breathing down the necks of the biggest players are companies like Asymetrix Corp with Multimedia Toolbook. This is also a richly functional product but with a substantially lower price tag at ú800. Asymetrix was an early player in the field of Hypertext packages with its original Toolbook product. Multimedia Toolbook develops that software technology into the areas of video and sound. All of these packages are complex and require a substantial investment of time and effort to learn and use successfully. There are also a number of relatively cheap packages on the market, such as Astound from Gold Disk Inc (ú190), Multimedia Scrapbook from Alchemedia Inc at around ú320 and Illuminatus from Digital Workshop Inc at only ú100. These packages lack the advanced features and functionality of the big expensive software, but are correspondingly easy to learn to use. At the same time, it would be a mistake to imagine that they are deficient in all advanced features simply because they are so cheap. Astound, for example, really is astounding in value for money terms and can give the big boys a run for their money in many important areas. Picking up objective information from users of multimedia packages is no easy task and as yet there is very little in the way of published information – indeed, authoring seems to be regarded still in most circles not as simply another computer application like computer-aided design, but as more of a black art practised by the design studios of Hollywood and advertising agencies.

Black art

It is, no doubt, this black art aspect to multimedia that is one of the main obstacles to more widespread adoption of the technology, especially among computer-literate but non-specialist executives in large corporations. Computer-based training is currently the most widely used application niche and the one the software vendors are chasing. But this is small beer in the longer term compared with the scope for corporate use of multimedia presentations, not least for sales and marketing. Unsurprisingly, one important source of solid factua

l information and users’ experiences is the Internet where there are several Usenet news groups dedicated to multimedia and related topics – the Authorware product has its own news group for users. The value of the Internet is that the material is, in general, not confined to marketing platitudes but carries the experiences of real users who will call a spade a spade.