#Authoring System
10 messages in this thread
By video I meant AVI. I agree, Windows does offer ease of use for
authoring. One package I looked at was Icon Author, great package
for the author. A pain in the neck for the user who has to set up for
it. We are looking for something a user can pop in his machine, not
worry about installing drivers in Windows etc. even if it means a
extra work or working with a language rather than icons. We all have
programming backgrounds so I won't be too much of a problem working
with scripted languages. I appreciate your reply and have checked
GRASP and it seems like the best candidate so far.
PMJI, Jim, but since you are possibly looking for a Windows-based
development program, I have tried a few and keep going back to Visual
Basic Professional for Windows (now on Version 3.0). The coding
involved will be a breeze seeing as you have programming background,
and I find the code much easier to comprehend than Toolbook's
Openscript. I've developed a few "point-and-click" type demos with
VB, and find that it has all the power I need. With VB, you can make
an executable file of your program, and include the custom controls
and DLL's used (the Setup Toolkit figures out what files you need)
along with your AVI, FLI and WAV files. VB is great for multimedia
development, though it will run at slower speed than what you would
get with C programming. The advantages that VB would have over
"regular" multimedia presentation programs is its flexibility.
Version 3.0 incorporates OLE2 support, some hefty database features,
serial communications, etc., etc., as well as the multimedia control
interface (available in the Professional version, not the Standard
version).
Now that's something I hadn't thought of. Thanks Denise. Certainly would have
some major flexibility with VBP. (Picture Jim knocking the palm of his hand
against his forehead…) I can have Windows, an EXE and pretty much do anything
I want.
Thanx,
Jim
[PGC]
Glad I could help! Good luck with your MM development! BTW-being
that I'm of Italian descent on mom's side and express myself with my
hands quite a bit, my forehead is VERY flat from all the times I've
come to realize simple solutions to problems, too! <g>
Nice to meet a fellow Italian, I guess with a name like "Alabiso" its
not too hard to tell I come from the same line.
You're right – it sure wasn't difficult to determine that you are of Italian
descent, too <g>!
I should have mentioned that I tried a couple of DOS multimedia
programs, and got somewhat frustrated with them because of the driver
issue. Both of the presentation programs I tried didn't have support
for the two sound cards I have (an old Soundblaster and a new
MultiSound). It made it rather difficult to develop anything, so
that's when I decided to go the Windows route and use Visual Basic
Pro, seeing as I already had that. I've been tempted to try out
Visual C++ as well, but because graphic and animation development is
my first love and consumes enough time already, I don't have the
patience or time to learn a new programming language. I'd dabbled
enough with BASIC in the past to feel comfortable enough with VBP,
but I'm not what one would call a power programmer! Even given
that, with VBP, I developed my first animation demo in less than a
week. It didn't have sound because I wanted to fit it on the fewest
amount of disks as I could. Now that I also have Video for Windows,
I can convert the FLI's and add sound, and have the file sizes
smaller than the original FLI's.
If you get VB Pro, let me know what you think! I love it!
Denise
Question for ya! Say under VB Pro I'm playing a FLC and the user clicks a
button say on frame 90. Can I, in VB, have a variable that I can interrogate to
tell me what the current frame is (ie 90) at the click event so I can branch to
a given routine based on the current frame??
Jim
[PolyGone Cafe']
Though I've never done something like what you've said, I would think it would
be do-able. I checked in the Help file furnished with VBPLAY.VBX, Autodesk's
custom control fli/flc player for Visual Basic, and it did have a property for
calling up the frame number. The rest of what you intend would be accomplished
by coding, I imagine. If you're interested in seeing what other properties of
FLI/FLC's you can play around with in VB, download VBPLAY.ZIP, which is posted
somewhere here on ASOFT, I believe. You can view the help file in Windows and
it will give you a good idea of what you'd be able to do with FLI files.
If you want to play around with AVI files, I'd highly recommend Ron Wodaski's
book "PC Video Madness" – it has over 70 pages of code and examples for Visual
Basic programmers. There are also sections on several other development tools,
including Viewer, Multimedia Toolbook and a few others that I can't recall just
now. He sometimes pokes his head here, and also runs the Hands On Multimedia
section of the Multimedia Forum.
Ciao for now! <g>
I want to echo Denise's comments about VB. I have used Authorware and
Toolbook and really do prefer VB. You might want to check out my
BROWZ.ZIP file in the libs. The source will be handy particularly if
you want to size the dimension of a window playing the flic to the
size of the flic file in pixels.
Check out the message I sent to Angelo about ImageQ.