Multimedia Sites

Introduction

Welcome to the Multimedia section of Web Publishing II. This section covers the addition of several multimedia programs to web sites, including audio programs such as midis and wav files, visual programs such as mpgs and simple video clips, to virtual reality programs such as shockwave.

It's really amazing what you can display on the Web. I want to encourage you to test out and use multimedia applications and editors, but remember that there are still a lot of problems that your viewers might run into that can be very frustrating. Giving options and alternatives is truly necessary when you remember the global scope of your users.

One problem with multimedia is the lack of standards. The field of multimedia is rapidly emerging. Because of this and the fact that multimedia is so new, standards are not being developed in a timely fashion. Many of the technologies for creating and displaying multimedia are proprietary. There are several common audio, video and virtual reality formats, but each plug-in can usually only deal with one format. This means for different applications on your site, your viewer would need to download separate plug-ins or programs.

No graphical browser is able to handle every kind of multimedia format that in encounters. Many users are not comfortable downloading and installing plug-ins. They may not be comfortable with the procedure itself nor with the possibility of downloading a virus. In addition, it will may also take them time to fill out a form and the information they give could end up being used for advertising purposes.

Multimedia elements are usually very large. Files can easily be one megabyte or more. Therefore, they take a long time to download and also place a strain on the Internet. If your viewers computer is slow and they are working over a modem, expect that they will be experiencing frustrating delays. Furthermore, on a slow system the results of displaying multimedia are not that impressive since, for example, the frames in a video may not be able to update quickly enough

Because multimedia files are so large, file compression plays an important role in downloads. Usually, when you go to play a large audio clip or a movie, the file containing the data will be buffered. For example, a portion of the movie will be downloaded and stored on the users computer before the movie actually begins playing. The data in the buffer is displayed whle in parallel more data is brought over. This process is known as streaming. For real-time applications such as videoconferencing where such buffering is not possible, the quality of the display over the Internet is usually less than desirable.

Despite all of these shortcomings, multimedia applications are continuously and rapidly improving. They can add excitment in their dynamic nature. If you decide to add multimedia to your site, assume your viewers do not have the "plug-in" or "player" it will take to run it. Prepare your viewers, let them know where and how to download the plug-in, explain why you think it's worth their time, and give them alternative options.

Audio

Guides

Having warned you about some of the limitations of audio, explore this way of including sound from an audio file in a Web page.

How to Add Audio to Your Site

Assignment

Name three problems in adding multimedia content to your site.
Read the Guide on Adding Audio to Your Site if you have not already done so.
How does a computer understand sound Waves?
What are the HTML tags that will play a background MIDI file whether the visitor is running Navigator or Internet Explorer?
Make sure your computer has the appropriate plug-in(s) needed to hear audio. The Audio Programs section lists a few of the more popular ones.
Choose a sound from the Audio Repositories below - or - create and edit a sound of your own. The Audio Editors section lists a number of audio editors for Web designers to use.
Upload the sound to your site and add it to your page either as a link or a background sound.
Send the instructor the URL with your sound sample.

Repositories

There is a truly amazing amount of audio available on-line. You can obtain music by many popular recording artists or obtain audio clips of historical interest. However, like written documents and images, remember that these clips may be protected by copyright.

Wav Sites

Midi Sites

Language Sites

Text to Multilingual Speech

Audio Downloads

Audio Programs

The following are several popular audio players.

Audio Editors

The following are several popular audio editors allowing Web designers the ability to make sound bits or fine tune saved files.

Video and Virtual Reality

Video
On-line video consists of a motion picture. A video may contain sound or be silent. Because video consists of many frames of images plus sound, video files are much larger than audio files. This means to download a 10 to 15 second portion of a movie can take a long time, particularly over a slow modem line.

As with audio there are a large number of video formats currently in use. The following is a list of the most popular ones:

AVI (.avi extension)
MPEG (.mpeg or .mpg extensions)
QuickTime (.qt or .mov extensions)
SGI-movie (.movie extension)

To include a video in a Web page, you make use of the <OBJECT> tag or the Embed tag. For example, to include the movie running.avi in a 200 by 200 pixel area on the screen you use the following HTML code:

Using the embed tag:
<embed src="running.avi" align="baseline" border="0" width="200" height="200">
Using the OBJECT tag:
<OBJECT DATA = "running.avi"
TYPE = "video/msvideo"
HEIGHT = "200"
WIDTH = "200">

<PARAM NAME ="autostart" VALUE ="true">
You are unable to play AVI movies.
Please install the correct plug-in for them.
</OBJECT>

Assignment:

Download and install a plug-in to play a movie format of your choice. How long did the download take?
Just as with audio clips, there are many sites that offer free music videos or very short blips from movies. Find a site containing free movies to download and watch.
How would you rate the quality of the display?
Provide the URLs of two Web presentations that offer free movie clips.

VRML
VRML is the Web-based language used for creating 3D virtual worlds. Like HTML, it is a text-based description language that use tags to describe online content. The big difference is that HTML describes a two-dimensional collection of text, graphics, and sound, while VRML describes graphical 3D environments, or worlds, that users can navigate.

As with the other forms of multimedia, the process of viewing a VRML site includes downloading a file, installing and configuring the plug-in, and obtaining the special VRML browser, which is time consuming for the viewer. Plus you need to have a fast and powerful computer system in order to obtain the full effect of a virtual reality world.

A VRML file is a plaintext or compressed text file. Such files have a MIME type of model/vrml and extensions such as the following:

.wrl
.wrz
.wrl.gz
.mov

Where HTML files create "pages", VRML files are rendered as "worlds." So interpret the .wrl extension as "world." The z at the end of the extension would denote a zip or compressed file. The .mov extension represents a QTVR (QuickTime movie) that represents a 360 degree image.

To include the VRML world right in your HTML document you would could use the OBJECT, Embed tags or a Frame. The following are a few examples:

Using the embed tag:
<embed src="sample.wrl" align="baseline" border="0" width="400" height="250">
Using the OBJECT tag:
<OBJECT DATA = "running.wrl"
TYPE = "model/vrml"
HEIGHT = "200"
WIDTH = "200">

<PARAM NAME ="color" VALUE ="brown">
We're sorry. Your broswer is unable to play this great video.
</OBJECT>
Using a Frame tag:
<FRAME SRC="running.wrl" NAME="3DPictures">

Assignment:

Read the documentation: 20 Questions on VRML
In your words explain how VRML works and how you install it on your site.
Where can you find 3D objects?
Visit two or more Sites from the Sites List below.
What advantages can you see to including a VRML world on your site?
EXTRA CREDIT:
- Download and use one of the VRML Editors from the VRML Editor List below.
- Include a VRML on one of your homepages.
- Send the instructor the URL to the homepage which includes the VRML.
- Tell the instructor your joys and frustrations.

Sites

SonicNet Flash Radio *Uses RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash3 and Java
HonkWorm *Uses RealPlayer
Web Trips *Uses Shockwave and Java
I-Ching*Uses Shockwave
NewMedia Division *Uses Shockwave
Kimon O' Gram *Uses Quick Time III VR
Wrinkle 2 - A Global Moment in Time *Uses Quick Time III VR
Thing World *Uses Thing World Tools
CollegeNet 3D VRML Campus *Uses Cosmo Player *must have Win-95/NT
or Intervista World View *must have Win-95/NT
The Internet Webmuseum of Holography *Uses Real Player Plus

A Few More Downloads

Video and Virtual Reality Editors

Intro into Using Flash
3D Create from Darwin 3D
Atlas 3D Modeler from Virtual Network Development
trueSpace3 from Caligari
Catalyst from Newfire
Community Place Conductor beta from Sony
Cosmo Worlds from Silicon Graphics (note: Cosmo Worlds is available on IRIX only; a Windows NT version is expected to ship in early 1997)
Internet3D Space Builder from ParaGraph International (now owned by Silicon Graphics)
VRCreator Learning Edition from Platinum technology, inc.
RenderSoft VRML Editor from RenderSoft Software and Web Publishing
Micrografx Simply 3D from Micrografx
SiteSculptor from Sculptware LLC
V-Realm Builder from Ligos Technology
Virtual Home Space Builder from ParaGraph International (now owned by Silicon Graphics)
AvatarMaker from Sven Technologies (note: builds avatars only)
GLView from Holger Grahn (view and create virtual worlds)
Spinner from 3D Web (note: Spinner can add only behaviors to objects)
Visible Decisions In3D from Visible Decisions (note: C++ class library only)

email your answers to: ecpatt@ptialaska.net

The Facilitator
ecpatt@ptialaska.net

SLC

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