Digital Workshop

Hi
I'm new to the list and would like to take the opportunity firstly to wish you all a Happy New year. I've been using Director and Flash for a few years and have also created a college project on Opus 5 ( I am not an expert in any). I'm looking at developing a multimedia product which will allow school kids to insert their own text, graphics, sound and video content into the publication template I create for them. They will have no access to Opus, just the publication. Also, can the publication be published to Flash and used by Mac users? Is Opus 6 the package for me?
BTW I am running Windows XP Pro.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

eoinie --

Welcome to our "family" here at the Digital Workshop Forum!!! Yes, OPUS v6 is the product for you. You can publish using Flex which is a Flash compatible product. You will be limited in what you can do, compared to the full capability of OPUS under Windows.

Suggestion -- Please go into your PROFILE (top of this page) and under your Signature Block, add info like I have at the end of this reply. Each time you ask a question or respond to someone else, we will then see your hardware, operating system, and which version of OPUS you have. It makes life SO much easier then!

Start with a simple project. I'm always amazed at people who try to build an impossibly advanced project for first effort. While OPUS has a short learning curve, it does take time to get to the "expert" level. We'll be glad to answer your questions -- but we want YOU to build your Publication.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!

I'm wondering if there has been a slight misunderstanding as although Opus would allow you to easily create media presentations if you owned Opus, it would require more effort to build a program, using Opus, that allow students to do what you're asking and it's not currently possilbe to publish to a standalone EXE or SWF from an Opus publication only from Opus it's self.

I have seen more and more educational programs that do what you are asking and I think that this would be a great additional to Opus to developed 'closed' programs that could 'saved' in a viewable and distrobutable format such as SWF.

However, that isn't so say, that Opus as it stands cannot be used to develop something simular, except that you'd need to save all the student inputs (audio, video, pictures and text) as linked files and positions on screen etc (unless they were already included as additional resources) and these files would have to bve supplied manually with the source publication.

Regards,

Mack

Thanks for getting back.

Mack, Your linked file suggestion was the way I had planned to build the program. I thought that setting up the published Opus file with links to named files (video, graphics etc) in an assets folder would then display these assets when they were placed in the correct folder along the correct path. This way if they wanted to change the look of the program they simply exchanged one file for another. The only problem I see here is the accuracy required with the naming conventions - especially with kids. If they aren't perfect, they might as well not be there at all. Will this system work?

Fred, I've read about this issue in previous posts of newbies like myself not including our hardware etc details. Like the guy I read about I'm afraid I cannot locate the Signature Block you mention in my Profile area. The closest reference to it is when it asks me if I want to show my signature. If I come across it I'll certainly fill it in. javascript:emoticon

Regards

Eoin

Go to the top of this page.

Click on "Profile"

When the window opens, notice the first section is called "Registration Info" which has 5 fields. The second section is called "Profile Information" which allows you to post your 1) website, 2) Location, 3) Occupation, 4) Interests, and 5) SIGNATURE.

Click within the Signature field and list your computer, operating system, RAM memory, hard drives with capacity, version of OPUS.

This information will appear every time you post. It will also be added to previous postings you have made. Hope that helps.

Fred,
Done. Don't know why I didn't see it first time??

Regards

Congrats on finding the Signature field, and thanks for filling info on your computer.

Do you really have a Quad Core processor but only 512 MB RAM? I would have thought you'd have at least 1 GB of RAM to make everything work f-a-s-t. You have 80 GB of hard drive right (not 80 GHz)?

I would strongly suggest you upgrade to OPUS v6. There have been tons of improvements and much greater reliability added to OPUS since v5. Version 5.5 was very good. 5.0 was not the best version to be on.

This is exactly what I got from the System info. I use a Mac Pro nearly all the time but as it doesn't run Opus I need to use the PC. To be honest I don't know a lot about PCs except that I don't like them. HD is of course 80 GB. I'm not a great typist either!