Authoring Tools
Authoring tools
• Multimedia authoring tools provide the important framework you
need for organizing and editing the elements of multimedia like
graphics, sounds, animations and video clips.
• Authoring tools are used for designing interactivity and the user
interface, for presenting your project on screen and assembling
multimedia elements into a single cohesive project.
• Authoring software provides an integrated environment for binding
together the content and functions of your project.
• Authoring software provides an integrated environment for
combining the content and functions of a project. It enables the
developer to create, edit, and import data.
Authoring system in multimedia
• In multimedia authoring systems, multimedia
elements and events are often regarded as objects.
• Objects exist in a hierarchical order of parent and
child relationships.
• Each object is assigned properties and modifiers.
• On receiving messages, objects perform tasks
depending on the properties and modifiers
properties and modifiers.
Authoring tools capability
• Authoring tools should possess the following capabilities: g p g p
• Interactivity
• Playback
• Editing
• Programming / Scripting
• Cross Platform
• Internet Playability
• Delivery/Distribution
• Project organization
Types of Authoring Tools
• The various authoring tools can be classified in three categories
based on the metaphor used for sequencing or organizing
multimedia elements and events.
• Card or page based tools
• Icon base, event driven tools
• Time base and presentation tools
• Web Page Authoring Tools
Card or page based tools
• In these authoring systems, elements are organized as pages
of a book or a stack of cards. These tools are best used when
the bulk of your content consists of elements that can be
viewed individually, like the pages of a book or cards in a
card file.
• The authoring system lets you link these pages or cards into
organized sequences. You can jump, on command, to any
page you wish in the structured navigation pattern. It allows
you to play sound elements and launch animations and
digital video.
Card or page based tools
• This tool provides a simple and easily understood
metaphor for organizing multimedia elements.
• It contains media objects such as buttons, text
fields, and graphics objects.
• It provides a facility for linking objects to pages or
cards.
• Software:
• Hypercard – linked cards
• ToolBook – each page is a screen
Card or page based tools
• Advantages:
• Easy to understand metaphor
• 1 screen = 1 card = 1 page
• Easy to use
• Provide template
• Short development time
• Disadvantages:
• Some run only on one program
• Tools not as powerful as equivalent stand-alones
Card or page based tools
Icon based, event driven tools
• In these authoring systems, multimedia elements and interactions
cues are organized as objects in a structural framework or process.
• Icons or objects based authoring tool is the
simplest and easiest authoring process.
• Simple branching is the ability to go to another
section of the multimedia production.
• Multimedia elements and interaction cues are
organized as objects in a flowchart.
• Flowchart can be built by dragging appropriate
icons from a library, and then editing the content
• Software: Authoware and IconAuthor
Icon based, event driven tools
•Advantages
• Clear structure
• Easy editing and updating
•Disadvantages
• Difficult to learn
• Expensive.
Icon based, event driven tools
Time based tools
• In these authoring systems, elements and events
are organized along a timeline, with resolutions as
high or higher than 1/30 second.
• Time based 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 are triggered back at a given time
or location in the sequence of events. The more
powerful time based tools let you program jumps to
any location in a sequence, thereby adding
navigation and interactive control.
Time based tools
• These tools are best suited for messages with
a beginning and an end.
• Some time-based tools facilitate navigation
and interactive control.
• Software: Adobe’s Director and Flash
Time based tools
• Director:
• A multimedia database, ‘Cast’, contains still
images, sound files, text, shapes, scripts,
movies and other Director files.
• Score is a sequencer for displaying,
animating, and playing Cast members.
• Lingo is an object-oriented scripting
language that enables interactivity and
programmed control.
Time based tools
•Advantages:
•Good for creating animation
•Branching, user control, interactivity
•Disadvantages:
•Expensive
•Steep learning curve for advanced
features
Time based tools
Time based tools
• Flash
• Flash is used for delivering rich multimedia
content to the Web.
• It allows the creation of simple HTML pages with
the Flash Player plug-in
Advantages
• Easy to put animated and interactive movies
• Interactive menus
Disadvantages
• Increase in file size.
• Music and sound files embedded in Flash movies increase
file sizes and increases the download file.
Web-Page Authoring Tools
• Allow users of all skill levels to create Web
pages.
• Some application software programs include
Web page authoring programs.
• Adobe Dreamweaver allow creating web
pages without learning the underlying HTML.
• Software: Adobe Dreamweaver, Front Page.
Web-Page Authoring Tools
Features of Authoring Tools
• Editing features
• Organizing features
• Programming features
• Interactive features
• Performance tuning features
• Playback features
• Delivery features
• Cross-Platform features
• Internet Playability
Editing features
• The elements of multimedia – image, animation,
text, digital audio and MIDI music and video
clips – need to be created, edited and converted
to standard file formats and the specialized
applications provide these capabilities.
• Editing tools for these elements, particularly
text and still images are often included in your
authoring system.
Organizing features
• The organization, design and production process for
multimedia involves storyboarding and
flowcharting.
• Some authoring tools provide a visual flowcharting
system or overview facility for illustrating your
project’s structure at a macro level.
• Your storyboard should describe not just graphics of
each screen but the interactive elements as well.
• Features that help organize your material, such as
those provided by Super Edit, Authorware,
IconAuthor and other authoring systems, are a plus.
Programming features
• Authoring tools that offer a very high level language
or interpreted scripting environment for navigation
control and for enabling user inputs – such as
Adobe Flash, HyperCard, MetaCard and ToolBook
are more powerful. The more commands and
functions provided in the scripting language, the
more powerful the authoring system.
• Some authoring tools offer direct importing of
preformatted text, including facilities, complex text
search mechanisms and hyper linkage tools.
Interactivity features
• Interactivity empowers the end users of your
project by letting them control the content and flow
of information. Authoring tools should provide one
or more levels of interactivity:
• Simple branching, which offers the ability to go to
another section of the multimedia production.
• Conditional branching, which supports a go-to based on
the result of IF-THEN decision or events.
• A structured language that supports complex
programming logic, such as nested IF-THENs,
subroutines, event tracking and message passing
among objects and elements.
Performance tuning features
• Complex multimedia projects require extra
synchronization of events.
• Accomplishing synchronization is difficult because
performance varies widely among the different
computers used for multimedia development and
delivery.
• Some authoring tools allow you to lock a
production’s playback speed to specified computer
platform, but other provides no ability what so ever
to control performance on various systems.
Playback features
• When you are developing multimedia
project, you will continually do assembling
elements and testing to see how the
assembly looks and performs.
• Your authoring system should let you build a
segment or part of your project and then
quickly test it as if the user were actually
using it.
Delivery features
• Delivering your project may require building a run-
time version of the project using the multimedia
authoring software.
• A run-time version allows your project to play back
without requiring the full authoring software and all
its tools and editors.
• Many times the run time version does not allow
user to access or change the content, structure and
programming of the project. If you are going to
distribute your project widely, you should distribute
it in the run-time version.
Cross-Platform features
• It is also increasingly important to use tools that
make transfer across platforms easy.
• For many developers, the Macintosh remains the
multimedia authoring platform of choice, but 80%
of that developer’s target market may be Windows
platforms.
• If you develop on a Macintosh, look for tools that
provide a compatible authoring system for Windows
or offer a run-time player for the other platform.
Internet Playability
• Due to the Web becoming a significant delivery
medium for multimedia, authoring systems typically
provide a means to convert their output so that it
can be delivered within the context of HTML or
DHTML, either with special plug-in or embedding
Java, JavaScript or other code structures in the
HTML document.
Authoring Tools
