Digital Workshop

We intended this part of the forum to be a place for general discussion of our mutual marketplaces as well as general Opus discussion. So let's broaden things a little...

What's keeping you busy these days...what areas of the authoring business are booming? Which are waning? Where will multimedia authoring go in the future? Is multimedia authoring still distinct from development? Is it going to get more technical or more design-oriented?

Look forward to hearing your comments.

Paul Harris

Ok, I'll start.... for us the whole multimedia business is booming. We've got three big projects on the go this month... more than normal. With each of these projects, a big selling feature has been the ability to create two versions of the multimedia... first a click-through version for use in major presentations with a speaker on stage, then a second voice-overed version that can be distributed more widely, telling the customer's tale perfectly every time, creating champions within a company.

The current projects are for:
- a London college selling courses to overseas students
- a Body lobbying the Government for a change in the law
- a vegetarian food company wishing to enthuse its distributors

Next month we start on one for a large construction company explaining their health & safety policy to their prospective customers.

So... all our programmes are to sell or promote products / services / ideas to other companies. Not to teach/score.

For us, the productions are far more design-orientated than technical (probably because I am)... our customers don't want anything that might possibly have been created using clip art in Powerpoint... they want to be seen as distinctly above that.

The integration of video is also very important... again it raises the presentation well above the level of the in-house guy with Powerpoint.

Now, what I could really do with is a simpler way of re-programming a click-through version (using select/case) to a voice-overed version with end-syncs to voice files... then I could go to bed at a reasonable time, instead of still working at this time of night...

hi,

i was waiting that someone begin... because i was not sure of my translate in english...

so :
i began to work in video there is 15 years.
Since aprox 5 years, a large part of my work is CD-ROM (with integrate video, text, graphs, animation...)
My customer like to regroup all their document in ONE visual presentation.

As Linda wrote :
"all my programmes are to sell or promote products / services / ideas to other companies. Not to teach/score.
For me, the productions are far more design-orientated than technical (probably because I am)... my customers don't want anything that might possibly have been created using clip art in Powerpoint... they want to be seen as distinctly above that.
The integration of video is also very important... again it raises the presentation well above the level of the in-house guy with Powerpoint."

I think that the future (A future) is in much more animation and the ability to control it (3d animation, text animation, graph animation...) because my customers don't want anything that might possibly have been created using clip art in Powerpoint ...

Benoit

While I'm deliberately not as busy as I used to be with multimedia-related stuff (other fish to fry), I ditto Linda's comments - for me/us recent work is Flash and Video, with platform-independent display being essential.

To this end we no longer have Opus installed (sorry bout that Paul) - for the limited amount of interaction our customers need, DVD menus are sufficient - plus it means our customers can display the programme without the hassle of keeping a PC (or Mac) available and running ...just a suitable DVD player and screen.

Rob Kirkwood
www.visibleform.co.uk

Hi,

In the Sunday Times at the weekend the usual "The Month" CD-ROM was replaced with a DVD. I was a bit disappointed with the DVD expected more interaction, but this seems to be where multimedia is heading. The DVD was very nicely presented and it was possible to navigate through it easily.

If Digital Workshop enabled Opus to DVD publish and burn it would be very exciting.


Joe

I second Joe's appeal to DW to move into software for DVD production as it's definitely a future that has arrived and they need to play catch-up. I am in the process of producing a family history DVD. The genealogical research is almost complete and there is a massive number of documents to digitally archive. There is also a large number of photographs to incorporate into the material. This along with narrative makes DVD the medium of choice for this project. Also, it's being produced on DVD because this is the medium that most of the recepients will use with a DVD player, not a computer. I would love to produce this project with Opus, but I am having to use DVD authoring software that isn't as easy to use or gives a tenth of the flexibility and functionality of Opus.

If the family history project works out well I shall be moving into the area of reminiscence therapy producing material to help people suffering dementia. In an aging society with increasing health care costs this is a vital area of health care support to families, health and social care professionals. My professional background is as a psychotherapist in Mental Health services and I shall also be looking at producing self-help material for health problems related to anxiety and depression. In a stress-riddled, highly pressurised modern society the need for such material produces a vast and sustainable market.

This should keep me out of mischief in retirement!

Paul

Paul, you talk about wanting software for DVD production as you have "a massive number of documents to digitally archive".

And you want people to use a DVD player rather than a pc.

I'm interested to know how you're intending to display these using a DVD player (rather than on a pc)?

As a video company, we produce videos on DVD all the time.... but the reason we use Opus is to add documents etc, that couldn't be viewed on a DVD player alone. So we make CDs.

So I'm clesarly missing something....

Thanks, Linda

The main reason this is, has to do with the limitations of the DVD video format itself. The things that Opus does will never be possible on a Video DVD, unless the medium itself is re-done. This is mostly due to the fact that a DVD player is not a computer and can not process what is needed to interact like a computer does. With the ever expanding technology in all areas the day may come when this is possible but for now DVD is very limited.

What makes more sense and is much closer to what Opus already does is to get further into Web Site authoriing. Opus already does this with Flex and should work further to develop this area. IMHO

Thanks for clarifying what I'd thought.... personally I can't see any reason for developing Opus as a DVD product.

Well - yes and no!

- If you're comparing the full range of what Opus can do against template-based DVD authoring software, then YES I agree.
- But if you're comparing what many people use Opus for (glorified Powerpoint stuff) against DVD authoring software that can directly access the underlying Virtual Machine script stuff that makes DVD tick, in many cases the answer will be NO.


Strictly speaking a DVD player really is a "computer", albeit with a very specialised and limited set of commands - but let's not get bogged down on semantics.

The problem is that most low-cost DVD authoring software forces you into a limited box - a template-based solution, with maybe one standard structure for your finished DVD - one size fits all.

So, if you find a piece of software that doesn't impose these restrictions, and also apply a good amount of lateral thinking to what you're trying to achieve, you may well find that you can do much more with DVD than you first imagined. For example, random selection is possible, and I can think of a way you could even do elementary scoring - of course nothing would be written for posterity, but you would still be able to give immediate score feedback to the viewer. The commands are easy enough to research, but you'll understand if I don't blurt out the lateral thinking processes!

The major limitation with DVD remains resolution - you are ultimately tied to PAL (or NTSC) screen resolutions, and as Linda rightly points out above you will never be able to display detailed documents this way.

Rob Kirkwood
www.visibleform.co.uk

I agree entirely - Opus is already many different things to many different people ...having DVD output would, I think, be unmanageable in the one package.

However, maybe there is a gap for a new product that allows 'point and squirt' programming of the rarer features of DVD output?

Rob Kirkwood
www.visibleform.co.uk

Linda,

The reason for putting the family documents (obituaries, letters, certificates, armed forces papers, reports, maps etc.) is to make them available to the widest possible audience. I agree that putting such documents onto the TV screen isn't an ideal way of displaying them, but it definitely adds to the interest and historical storyline.

The genealogical data follows a tree structure. It is this structure that I want to provide as a way for the viewer to navigate (chapters following bloodlines) the material. As the tree expands some viewers may have no interest in remote family relations, but they are likely to want to follow their own family ties. It may be a 'glorified Powerpoint show', but it's a very complicated one! Having the ability to write code to navigate the DVD would be a definite plus for me.

I can produce very sophisticated learning material on the computer and my point was that it would be helpful to be able to produce material that the user could navigate in a variety of ways using an ordinary, inexpensive DVD player. Perhaps I'm wishing for too much?

Paul

Your work sounds very interesting, Paul.

My question, though, was not WHY you would want to put docs on a DVD, but HOW you could do this.

In your original thread you said " I am in the process of producing a family history DVD... ...there is a massive number of documents to digitally archive"

Yet you were talking about using a DVD player rather than a pc.

So naturally I thought you'd made an enormous technology leap... I hadn't appreciated that it was just wishful thinking!

Ah well... back to the CDs....

Yes, sometimes my head gets ahead of the capabilities of the technology. However, using graphics files I have been able to produce DVD video output that allows the viewer to read the material clearly. For instance, my wife's grandmother worked as a 'Girl Messenger' for the Post Office and on leaving this job she was given a 'Certificate of Character' which reads:

1st October 1921.........she resigned owing to girls being replaced by boys.....During her service she gave every satisfaction. Punctual, honest & willing.

So much for employee loyalty and hard work! The document is in a poor state and the graphic image needed some TLC with Paintshop Pro, but in the video of the family history material the document is very readable, even on a small TV/DVD screen; and, it is a very interesting slice of British social history is preserved and available to many people. The frame has to be held long enough for slow readers to read it, but that's a small price to pay for such an interesting piece of social history. We have many boxes of documents that reflect the lives, loves, careers and disputes of our forebears. These sat in storage and we decided that now was the time to put them all together, so that we can leave to future generation the only real legacy we have, i.e. our heritage. I could put these onto several CDs and use Opus, but this would limit viewing only to those with computers whilst many kids will have their own DVD players in there bedrooms these days. Of course, we have to compete with the soaps and cartoons, but as Bessie said when she received the character reference........'that's life and we have to live with it!'

I know you were asking about the 'how' of digitally archiving these documents onto DVD and this basically comes down to making a good graphical image of the document and splicing this into a DVD film with other images ~ mainly photographs. However, this limits the production to a linear storyline and I would really love a much more flexible way of navigating and retrieving the material. I don't know that retrieving parts of the material is technologically possible on DVD at the present, but flexible navigation might be possible using a very clever bit of software like Opus perhaps utilising indexing in some way.

I'm sure that CDs will continue to have there place for many years, but the capacity of DVDs and the wide availability of machines on which to play them certainly gives scope for developing really exciting projects. It will just need the technology to rachet up a notch or two and that's certainly on my wishlist.

Best wishes

Paul