• A multimedia presentation differs from a normal presentation in that it contains some form of animation or special media. It includes video, graphics, audio, music etc. along with text for the presentation.

• Multimedia Authoring Tool is a development environment where one can merge a number of media into a single application.

• Typically a multimedia presentation contains at least one of the following elements:

Video or movie clip

Animation

Sound (this could be a voice-over, background music or sound clips)

Image

• Authoring systems can also be defined as process of creating multimedia application.

• Multimedia authoring tools provide the framework for organizing and editing the elements of a multimedia project.

• Authoring software provides an integrated environment for combining the content and functions of a project.

• It enables the developer to combine text, graphics, audio, video and animation to create an interactive presentation/project. E.g. MS PowerPoint

• Authoring tools are used for designing interactivity and the user interface, for presentation your project on screen and assembling multimedia elements into a single project.

Features of Authoring Tools:

• Editing and organizing features

• Programming features

• Interactivity features

• Playback features

• Cross-platform feature

Design issues of Authoring Systems:

• Display resolution

• File format and compression issues: Authoring systems should be capable of handling different file formats.

• The first – and hardest – part is to choose the technology for your presentation. The choice comes down to two main contenders,

Adobe Flash

• Flash allows you to create presentations where you can build in powerful animation. It also has very good video compression technology.

• Perhaps the best part of Flash is that it also allows you to put presentations directly onto your web site.

• The biggest problem though is that Flash is a difficult system to get to use.

Microsoft PowerPoint.

• The easiest way to create a multimedia presentation is in Microsoft PowerPoint. You can add in video, a soundtrack and also a reasonable degree of animation.

• By far the biggest advantage of making multimedia presentations in PowerPoint is that it is easy for anyone to be able to edit the presentation.

• Types of Authoring Systems

Icon based authoring system

• Each part is represented an icon (symbolic picture)

• Each icon does a specific task, e.g. plays a sound

• Icons are then linked together to form complete applications

• Can easily visualize the structure and navigation of the final application

Dedicated authoring system

• Dedicated authoring systems are designed for a single user consisting of single track for playback.

• In the case of dedicated authoring system, users need not to be experts in multimedia or a professional artist.

• Dedicated authoring systems are extremely simple since they provide drag and drop concept.

• Authoring is done on objects captured by video camera, image scanner or objects stored in multimedia library.

• It does not provide effective presentation due to single stream.

• Examples of Dedicated authoring systems are Paint, MS PowerPoint etc.

Telephone Authoring Systems

• There is an application where the phone is linking into multimedia electronic mail application.

• Telephone can be used as a reading device by providing full text to-speech synthesis capability.

• The phone can be used for voice command input for setting up and managing voice mail messages.

• Digitized voice clips are captured via the phone and embedded in electronic mail messages.

• As the capability to recognize continuous speech is deployed, phones can be used to create electronic mail.

Programmable authoring system

• Structured authoring tools were not able to allow the authors to express automatic function for handling certain routine tasks.

• But, programmable authoring system has improved in providing powerful functions based on image processing and analysis and embedding program interpreters to use image processing functions. E.g. Visual Basic, Net beans, Visual Studio

Timeline Based Authoring

• It has an ability to develop an application like movie.

• It can create complex animations and transitions.

• All the tracks can be played simultaneously carrying different data.

• Best to use when you have a message with a beginning and an end.

• 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.

• Jumps to any location in a sequence

Example of Timeline Based Authoring system is Flash software.