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Reviewed by John Moorhead in Hardcopy, 11/96 As the introduction states, "the information presented within is designed to help you deliver animation, audio, and desktop video from a Web site with as little trouble as possible." That pretty much says it all. The author is an expert at multimedia design, and gives a wealth of knowledge on design tips and pitfalls to avoid. He tries to present the information, as much as possible and when available, on a cross-platform basis on both PCs and Macs. The book starts out with an overview of current technologies, including QuickTime, Video for Windows, JPEG, MPEG, MIDI, streaming audio and video, Macromedia Shockwave, VRML, and Java. Then the future technologies based around ISDN, T1, cable modems, Digital Subscriber Line service, and Internet-based digital video channels are discussed. The impact of Web-based media in the movie, broadcast and publishing industries is also covered. The heart of the book is a detailed discussion of each of the above technologies, comparing their advantages and disadvantages, and how to create the best multimedia product from each. The design rules and the theory behind them for each media type are presented in terms that a lay person can understand. The CD-ROM included contains shareware and freeware tools for creating Web sites and files, as well as sample media clips to show what a finished product from various programs should look or sound like. There are also two code samples that correspond with sections of the book devoted to Java and CGI scripting. The tools include: VDOLive, which allows you to compress desktop movies into VDOLive format for streaming video and set up a Web server to display them and also limited versions of Macromedia Director, Macromedia Shockwave, Macromedia Backstage Designer, Macromedia SoundEdit, and Deck 2. Director is one of the most popular and powerful multimedia authoring programs on the market today. Shockwave is used to make a Director production playable on a Web page. Backstage Designer is Macromedia's Web page creation tool, which uses point and click methods, rather than coding with HTML by hand. SoundEdit presents a professional approach to editing and creating sound files. Deck 2 allows you to record and edit up to 999 digital audio tracks. These are all demo versions, limited in their capabilities, but do give you a taste of the real thing--enough to make a buying decision. Director and Shockwave are provided for both PC and Mac platforms; Backstage Designer is Windows- specific, and Deck 2 and SoundEdit are Mac-specific. There are yet other attractions:
I feel this book would be well worth the money for a Web master who designs Web pages for a living and wants to create a visually and audibly stunning Web page. If you follow the techniques listed here and use some of the tools mentioned or included on the CD, you will be well on your way to creating a Web page that will win technical excellence awards. The price is well worth the investment; as careful reading will save you many hours of frustrating trial and error in developing your perfect Web page. The author writes about not only his own experiences but also those of many other professional designers, so the information here represents a distillation from a host of experts.
Reviewed in MacLife, 10/96 (Online) Web Developer's Guide to Multimedia & Video by Nels Johnson ($39.99 w/CD) gives step-by-step preparation of media for streaming from your Web site. It shows you how to configure your server to make the most of your Web media and explains how to use Shockwave, Java and animated GIFs. The accompanying Mac/Windows CD-ROM includes tools for creating Web sites and Web media files like those from Macromedia products including Shockwave and Director files, precompressed samples of audio and video files for Mac and Windows. In reviewing books on multimedia, I have found Coriolis books to be the most appropriate for Mac users. Their CD-ROMs include Mac audio and video clips, the books cover Macintosh multimedia features, and authors do a good job of explaining terminology and techniques so that both novices (and most of us are) and experienced users can easily become informed and productive. These two books are solid tutorials, not a lot of theory that doesn't show up on a monitor or Web page, and the CD-ROMs include media clips worth more than the price of the books.
Reviewed Online by Temple Hoff Temple Hoff (temhof@mohave.lib.az.us) is the Library Services Coordinator for Automation in the Mohave County Library District. Any book that comes with a free CD-ROM, as this one does, automatically scores extra points with me--even though they are usually next to worthless and end up in the same stack as all the America Online disks, as this one will. The quick and dirty review of this book amounts to a roaring--ahhh, not bad. It's heavily Mac-centric, a bit dated as all books are these days, and all but ignores the UNIX world. On the positive side it covers PC technology fairly well, hits all the multimedia products that one could arguably call standard, and comes with a CD-ROM full of dubious materials. Over all, this is a real borderline, take-it- or-leave-it book. I wouldn't pay the $39.99 Standard Retail Price myself, but I might put out $15 or $20 for it. I doubt I'd try teaching a class from it, but I might use it for a basic level streaming reference, which is its strong point. If you need an introduction to streaming multimedia, this one isn't bad! The layout of the book is really cool and worth noting. The page is divided vertically in two with a thin column on the left side. This strip is used for nifty snippets that really help the reading. The writing style is generally playful and very personable. The book scores big points here. The book is also littered with high quality screen shots from Web-sites and applications. Even though the book is overall very much a Mac thing, the screen shots are a good variety of PC and Mac screens. Definitely two thumbs up to the layout and writing style. The introduction claims that chapters one through three cover the "current climate" of Web-media. Chapters one through three do go through last year's "current climate." The video and animation standards-for-now are introduced, i.e., QuickTime, Video for Windows, JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) and MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group). Streaming, Shockwave, and Java are also introduced. Transmission standards are covered lightly with no more detail than is necessary for a multimedia book. The author does get into the bandwidth problems with "Webmedia" in chapter two, but for my money it should have really been hammered home better. Some reference to the Bandwidth Conservation Society would be in order to really stress to Webmedia developers the need to watch the bandwidth consumption of their creations. The author really seems to push Windows NT Server 4.0 here. No mention of the multitude of UNIX-based servers out there, like Yahoo, which I believe runs on FreeBSD. The best part of chapter three is a rip-roarin' discussion on the social fallout of Web-mania. Also, this chapter takes the reader on a nice little tour of some Web sites with some inside development information on each. The chapter ends with a light-hearted, but serious, talk on copyright. The discussion is one-sided, though, aiming solely at insuring that one isn't stealing something that belongs to someone else. How to keep your stuff from getting ripped off isn't even touched. I'm not sure I blame the author for that. There doesn't seem to be any way right now to keep people from lifting copies of graphics, etc. from your page once they have viewed it. Chapters four and five hit streaming hard and well. Being a novice streamer, I learned a thing or two here. This topic is a recurring one throughout the book, and is definitely its content strong point. Chapter six is entitled "Web Audio." It should have simply been "RealAudio." Nothing really is covered in this chapter but RealAudio, and it deserves it. It really has no worthy competition right now. The chapter includes some good how-to's for RealAudio servers. Pages 110 and 111 have an excellent strategic approach for RealAudio work. Photocopy this one and pin it on the wall above your server! Also worth noting in this chapter is a how-to on installing the RealAudio server for BSDI (Berkeley Software Distribution, Inc. UNIX). The UNIX world is finally given some voice in this book! Chapter seven covers other miscellaneous types of Webmedia, but mainly MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). Not much here to write home about. The author start falling back into Mac-mode again. Do they still make Macs? Why? Chapter eight begins with a Mac versus PC discussion. The role of CPUs (Central Processing Units) in digitizing is also discussed, and, of course, he who has the biggest and fastest wins--no surprise there. After more discussion on varieties of hardware, the author gets back to the Mac versus PC argument over which is the best platform. The author quickly writes off the question, stating that the true question is "how to make movies that look good on Windows and the Mac." A page and half answer follows. So how do you make good video on a Mac? Who cares! No one is going to be looking at it on a Mac! Okay, maybe, what, 5% of netizens will check out your site using a Mac. And how fast is that number declining? Unless you are creating a site specifically for diehard Mac fanatics that can't see the writing on the wall, I don't see the point or profit in worrying about these cross-platform issues. Chapter nine covers software tools for Webmedia. The first half of the chapter covers software for Windows, the second half covers Macs. At least the author got the order right but what about Silicon Graphics workstations, Sun SPARCstations, and UNIX? A whole plethora of software is mentioned for both PCs and Macs. The author wisely states at the outset that this is not intended to be a complete list. Chapter ten gets into programming for Webmedia. The author is honest with the reader about the complexity of programming Webmedia and the need for some UNIX knowledge. This is worth a few points. Several comparisons between Web authoring and CD-ROM production are drawn. If you've never mastered a CD-ROM, as I have not, this quickly becomes annoying. Chapter eleven covers connecting your media masterpieces to your HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) code. First, a brief and necessary rundown of HTML is given. The bulk of the chapter then covers writing references to specific flavors of media into your HTML, like RealAudio and VDOLive. The chapter concludes with a very insightful mention of the growth of third party browser plug-ins. Programming languages are cover in chapter twelve. I like the way several lesser languages are mentioned, then attention is focused on C++ and even more specifically on Java. The author stumbles a bit on the question of whether Java is C++. It isn't, technically. You must buy the compilers separately which is my argument, but the similarities are obvious. The chapter does a good job of stepping the reader through acquiring a compiler, writing an applet, referencing it in HTML, and viewing it in Netscape. VBScript is covered lightly, and JavaScript is covered a bit more. Chapter 13 covers authoring software. FrontPage, PageMill, Netscape Gold, and Webauthor are all introduced, but HotDog is left out to my surprise. Microsoft Internet Assistant is covered in excruciating detail. This is a big sales pitch for Bill Gates. By omitting Corel PerfectOffice Suite 7 and its wonderful Web-aware applications and utilities the book shows its datedness. Of course, next year as someone is reading this, they will be able to point out that I have not mentioned Microsoft Office 97. Well I have now, even though it's only in beta! Chapter 14 is a worthy chapter covering remote servers--namely, how to maintain your site on one. As more Webheads build their sites on space rented on other peoples' servers, this type of knowledge becomes more important. If another edition of this work is written, I'll bet this chapter gets bigger. Chapter 15 drudges up the old cross-platform issue again, PC development versus Mac. Someone on the net pointed out that there are four billion humans on earth and some-odd trillion cockroaches. His point was that numbers alone do not denote a higher form of life--this from a Mac fanatic, of course. My point is that when cockroaches start using Macs on the Web, I'll start worrying about cross-platform issues. Like it or not, PCs are the standard. Chapter 16 gets into making your own Webmedia studio. The author obviously has some experience here. There is good advice for anyone seriously building a studio. Chapter 17 is one long sales pitch for Microsoft Information Server. It's free as the author points out, but it requires Windows NT which isn't. Bill isn't dumb! The appendix takes the reader through a couple of really cool Web sites. I liked this part a lot--a very good way to end the book. Overall it was okay, but probably not worth the money unless you're serious about Macs and media. Copyright © 1996 by Temple Hoff. This document may be reproduced in whole or in part for noncommercial, educational, or scientific purposes, provided that the preceding copyright statement and source are clearly acknowledged. All other rights are reserved. For permission to reproduce or adapt this document or any part of it for commercial distribution, address requests to the author at temhof@et.mohave.cc.az.us.
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