Skills for Access: The Comprehensive Guide to Creating Accessible Multimedia for e-learning

This web site provides you with a comprehensive resource on issues relating to multimedia, e-learning and accessibility. Whether you're new to e-learning, want to know more about specific accessibility issues, or are an expert multimedia developer, we believe you'll find information relevant to your needs.

Skills for Access. Resources>Education>Accessibility>Multimedia

Will Write for Metamucil

I am ill equipped to write for an emerging segment of the marketplace. But that doesn't mean I'm used up like a worn-out number two pencil stub (my favorite simile these days). But it does mean that I need to reevaluate where and how I add value.

Hughes, Michael A. User Assistance (2008). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Multimedia

Creating Blu-Ray Disc Pop-up Menus in Adobe Encore CS4

One of the coolest new features in Adobe Encore CS4 is the ability to insert pop-up menus over video in Blu-ray Disc projects, a feature unique among authoring programs in Encore’s class. In this tutorial, I’ll describe how to implement that feature, as I did in a simple project I produced in early fall.

Ozer, Jan. Event DV (2008). Design>Multimedia>Interaction Design>DVD

Cut Lines: Creating Cool Compositions With Nested Sequences in Apple Final Cut Pro

In this installment of Cut Lines, we’ll look at cropping and rotating several images at once and how nesting your composition can make it easier to manipulate your images together.

Ozer, Jan. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Final Cut Pro

Correcting Color in Sony Vegas

We’ll begin this series by discussing one of the most important features in any pro nonlinear editor: color correction. The first thing you need to do before beginning any type of color correction work is to determine what "correct" color looks like. Rarely does your computer screen display colors correctly.

McKnight, David. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Color

EventDV.net: In the Studio: Apple Final Cut Server

There’s a lot of mystery and misinformation surrounding Final Cut Server, and I’m going to try to sort that all out for you in this article. You can limit which members of your team can access its contents and what they can do with the contents, including who can make changes and who can only look at it.

Baiser, Ben. Event DV (2008). Articles>Content Management>Multimedia>Final Cut Pro

Time Remapping, Part 2: Variable-Speed Time Remapping in Final Cut Pro

When I teach Time Remapping in the Apple classes I lead, we all work on the same clip. But I often find that giving this overview of the tools right off the bat helps my students grasp how to control Variable-Speed Remapping faster and easier.

Baiser, Ben. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Final Cut Pro

Time Remapping in Final Cut Pro, Part 1

This installment of Cut Lines is Part 1 of a two-part tutorial about Time Remapping in Final Cut Pro (FCP). We’ll take a quick look at Constant Speed Remapping and the mechanics that go into FCP creating it so that you more fully understand why your results look the way they do. My hope is that this understanding will enable you to visualize what the effect will look like before you even apply it, making your workflow faster and your creativity more enhanced.

Baiser, Ben. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Final Cut Pro

Have Demo, Will Travel: Presenting Demos Outside the Studio

When I was asked to write about the process in which I show demos of my company’s work, I initially thought of what I used several years ago to show clients my samples—a time when DVDs didn't even exist and my home office setup was not such that I could do demos effectively there. Those were days when I had to travel to a meeting with a VCR deck, a tube-style TV, a bunch of cables, a cart to carry everything on, and, of course, VHS tapes, all properly rewound to the correct starting points.

Levy, Marshall. Event DV (2008). Articles>Presentations>Multimedia>Video

Set Design for Online Corporate Video

In this article, I’ll discuss four design-related areas: how to create a simple set for in-house use; how to choose the best background for location shoots like case studies and testimonials; current trends in set design for internet-only media sites; how to dress your subjects for optimum compression. The importance of many of the set design principles discussed in this chapter relate to your distribution data rate. If the bitrate of the video you’re delivering is very high, say in the 400Kbps range for 320x240 video or 650Kbps or higher for 640x480, you have a lot more flexibility, since the compressed quality of your video will remain quite high. Once you sink below these rates, quality degrades. Choosing a poor background or set will only make the problem worse.

Ozer, Jan. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Business Communication

Producing Corporate Web Videos

Website videos are a natural for event videographers. We use them to demonstrate our work to prospective clients, and they have proven to be a vital marketing medium to showcase our range of products. We might even post short video testimonials from happy clients or put our own talking heads on our sites.

Sweetow, Stu. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Business Communication

Adding High-Impact Filters to Your Titles

Words go so well with video. They can give an emotional punch to a scene or simply announce what is going to happen next. I love using romantic quotes, Bible passages, and other forms of text in my work. The best part is that you can be just as creative with how those words are presented as you are in picking out the text in the first place.

McManus, Joe. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Image Editing>Video

Posting HD: How Much Power Do You Need for Speed?

When working with HDV footage in post, your computer is constantly trying to compile editable frames from frames that include only a portion of their own frame information, and thus needs to work a lot harder to process HDV natively than DV. Which raises the question: How powerful a system do you need to make HDV postproduction as smooth as DV editing is today?

Franklin, Marc. Event DV (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>High Definition

Why Text Remains King of the Web

I am starting to believe that despite all the hype around online video, text remains King of the Web. Why text? There are at least five reasons.

Micro Persuasion (2009). Articles>Web Design>Multimedia>Writing

Working at DreamWorks  

Once upon a time, a technical writer got a job at an enchanted studio called Dreamworks Animation.

Brooks, Steven. Intercom (2005). Careers>Multimedia>Technical Writing

Multimedia Content Management  

Strategies for developing and delivering multimodal content via digital media. Focus on the principles on database design, interface development, usability testing, and collaborative content management within technical communication settings. Projects include training modules, online documentation, dynamic interfaces, and document management systems.

Sauer, Geoffrey. EServer (2009). Academic>Courses>Content Management>Multimedia

The Ears Have It (Notes)

Some people call it blogging out loud. Podcasting is a fairly easy and fairly inexpensive way of presenting your ideas and opinions. But podcasting is more than a platform for reviews or polemic. It's also a powerful tool within the enterprise for training, for marketing, and for documentation. Imagine being able to carry product information or supplementary material with you and not have to worry about stacks of paper? You can do that with a podcast.

Davis, Aaron and Scott Nesbitt. SlideShare (2008). Presentations>Multimedia>Audio>Podcasting

Video Format Guide

When people talk about video formats, they're referring to something called a container format. The container format is a detailed description of what's inside a video file. It describes the structure of the file, as well as the kind of data that the file contains.

Geeks.com (2009). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Standards

The Moving Picture: Mistakes and All

The first and most common mistake made when producing for streaming is shooting in an interlaced mode. All streaming video is progressive. And if you shoot interlaced, you start with two fields that may not combine into one clean frame (even if you check the deinterlace box before rendering), especially when motion or sharp diagonal lines are involved. This can result in simple jaggies or bizarre artifacts, such as a table edge that looks like twisted wrought iron in a video produced by one of the largest retail chains in the world. Second, if you do shoot interlaced, remember to deinterlace the video. Streaming producers make this mistake all the time and end up with horizontal slices, almost like Venetian blinds in higher-motion sequences.

Ozer, Jan. Event DV (2009). Articles>Multimedia>Streaming>Video

Cut Lines: Using the AVCHD Format in Final Cut Pro

One issue with AVCHD is that (like HDV) it’s based on a codec that is not really built for editing in the way that DV is. DV is an intraframe codec, which means that each frame of video is compressed using redundancies within the frame itself, and thus can be reconstructed and interpreted by your computer’s processor without having to refer to other frames in the video stream to gather the necessary image information. HDV, being MPEG-2-based, and AVCHD, being H.264-based, use both intraframe and interframe compression, which means most of the frames in your video stream need to be referred to other frames to gather all the image information that constitutes the frame. Because all this cross-referencing is so processor- and memory-intensive, it can really slow down your editing.

McManus, Joe. Event DV (2009). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Final Cut Pro

Measure Audience Engagement with Internet Video

A video's Engagement Curve is a visual representation of the audience's cumulative interactions with the video. An Engagement Curve quickly reveals which parts of the video clip the audience finds compelling -- in the example above, viewers are clearly rewinding to re-watch a segment in the middle -- and which parts do not hold the viewers' attenion -- in this case, the end. An Engagement Curve is read from left-to-right, with the left edge representing the beginning of the video and the right edge representing the end of the video. The dashed grey line shows the view-count, while the blue line shows many times that particular segment of the video was watched

Visible Measures (2009). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Assessment

Engaged Reach Case Study of the Nike Hyperdunk Viral Video Campaign

In support of their Hyperdunk basketball shoe, Nike recently launched a viral video featuring basketball superstar Kobe Bryant recklessly leaping over a speeding Aston Martin. The video's low-end production quality makes the clip appear to be user-generated. As our analysis uncovered, this video was spread far and wide as the online viewing audience tried to figure out if one of the world's biggest sports stars would actually attempt such a stunt. Watch the clip below and read on to see just how effectively this campaign drove audience reach.

Visible Measures (2009). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Social Networking

How Video Can Turn Your Career Around

When I talk to most technical writers, video is a format they haven’t done much with. This surprises me, because I find that, as a user, video tutorials are often the most helpful type of material for me to learn software. Video most closely simulates the universal desire we have for a friend to show us how to do something in an application. Perhaps I’m a visual learner, but the majority of us (some say 60 to 65 percent) are visual learners. But video doesn’t appeal only to end users. Video can be an appealing format for technical writers as well. Creating videos can turn your career around, especially if you find technical writing a little dull.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Video

The Multimedia Résumé

Ryan Dougherty made a video résumé and decided whenever he applied for a job online that he would upload a cover letter with a link to the video instead of a standard resume. Bingo! Not only did employers start calling, but he ended up landing a job as budget manager and assistant to the dean of the University of San Francisco’s nursing school in March. He believes the video resume set him apart.

Tahmincioglu, Eve. MSNBC (2009). Careers>Resumes>Multimedia

Screen Space

A blog and podcast about users, texts and technology.

Bowie, Jennifer L. Screen Space. Resources>Multimedia>Blogs>Podcasts