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by John Jung
By now, you know how to create some nice-looking Web pages with some general HTML tags. But there's so much more you can do to get your point across on your Web page. Most people use pictures and lots of links, but you need something more. If you want your Web page to really stand out, you're going to need something that really gets a person's attention. You need multimedia. I'm not saying that multimedia is necessary for all Web pages; it does have its bad points.
If you want to know about multimedia and Web pages, you can find the answers in this chapter. You learn when you should and shouldn't use multimedia files and why multiple multimedia formats should be provided. And you also go through some of the more popular multimedia formats and how to view them.
In this chapter, you learn about the following:
Multimedia is many things to many people. Unfortunately, no universally
agreed upon definition of multimedia exists. Generally speaking, multimedia
is a combination of sights and sounds. It can be pictures and words, words
and sounds, or pictures and sounds. Multimedia might not sound terribly
difficult, after all, because TV
and movies use it all the time. The difference is that with traditional
forms of media, the images and sounds are in a physical form. When it comes
to computers, multimedia can be a processor and disk space intensive process.
The results are astounding, but you get a payoff.
So what is multimedia, really? It's simply just moving pictures and sounds. You don't necessarily need both components to have a multimedia file, although that would be nice. Each element of multimedia is often considered to be multimedia itself. That is, many people consider just playing sound files over the Net to be using multimedia. Similarly, they also feel that because they can see a movie using their computer, that movie is multimedia. By and large, whenever somebody mentions multimedia, he or she is talking about moving pictures, hearing sounds, or both. The fact that this process is accomplished using a computer is what's amazing to them.
Computers that can play sounds are nothing new; they've been around
for years. The problem was always getting a computer that had a speaker
of reasonable quality. With improvements in computer technology, the sound
quality has dramatically increased. Also, the fact that computer
prices are now cheaper and more reasonably priced makes the use of sound-capable
computers even more widespread.
All of this information is pretty unimpressive to many people who use
computers. The truly impressive thing is that sound files can now be played
over the Internet.
This fact is significant because the capability to play sound overcomes
a few of the shortcomings that exist on the Net. The first big obstacle
that was the desire to support the lowest common denominator. This always
meant supporting generic text terminals with no graphics or sound. The
second obstacle was the lack of demand for such features. The Net was originally
made up of mainly programmers and engineers working from workstations.
Workstations have little or no sound support, and what exists is not consistent
across different platforms.
A number of sound file formats are in fairly wide use, such as Dialogic VOX, SoundBlaster VOC, and Amiga MOD. You can listen to most of them if you have the correct sound player utility. You must then use each of these players as a helper application for your browser.
Probably the most widely supported sound format is the WAV
file format. This robust format allows you to encode stereo and mono sounds.
You can also specify the degree with which to store the sounds. Most sound
playing utilities
support the WAV
format without a problem.
Another popular sound format is the Audio IFF (AIFF), introduced by
Apple. This was intended to be used as a means of storing high-quality
sound and musical instrumentation. It's also been adopted by Silicon Graphics
(SGI) in their workstations. This format has spawned the AIFF-C format,
which is basically the AIFF format, except compressed. Aside from Apple
and SGI, a handful of companies also support the AIFF format. Most sound
players will have no problems supporting the AIFF
format.
There is also the sound file format developed by Sun
Microsystems and NeXT, the audio (AU) sound file. This is typically seen
and supported the most in workstation environments. Also, some browsers
will natively support the AU format without the need of getting an external
program. Because of its strong workstation roots, many sound playing programs
can handle AU files.
Besides sound, the other aspect of multimedia involves animation. Animation is, simply put, just a bunch of still pictures, one slightly different from another. This process is exactly how movies are shown, with each frame of the movie being played for a fraction of a second. When the frames are played backed at a certain rate, the frames show the animation. And in animation, just like movies, you don't necessarily need to have sounds. The silent films are still movies, and considered multimedia, even though they have no voices or sounds.
A number of attempts have been made to standardize the animation
portion of multimedia. Often these formats were either too machine dependent
or not robust enough, such as the GL, DL, and ANIM formats. The majority
of these older animation
formats basically took a bunch of pictures and strung
them together. Almost none of them used any degree of sophistication to
reduce the file size of the resulting movie. The most prevalent animation
format in use is the MPEG format, which you learn about later in this chapter.
People
Know about Multimedia Even though you might want to rush out and put multimedia files all over your Web page, don't. You should tell people what, when, and where certain multimedia files are located. Multimedia files should be a means of enhancing your Web pages, not replacing them. Don't include critical information that can be found only in the multimedia files.
Multimedia
files require fairly computer-intensive
programs to view properly. Very few Web
browsers provide support for multimedia
files by themselves. As a result, most of the time you must configure your
browser to run programs capable of showing multimedia files. Getting multimedia
viewers is no trivial task, which means most people's computers don't automatically
support multimedia files. Because of the amount of undertaking required
for making a browser multimedia-capable, you should always warn people
where you have multimedia files (see fig. 18.1).
Fig. 18.1
Letting people know where multimedia files are located is always a good idea.
Users
Decide When to See
Multimedia Another good idea is to not force multimedia
files onto users. Although you can have sound files play as soon as a user
accesses a page, that's not a good idea. The file has to be downloaded
from the Web
server to the person's computer. After that, the user has to wait for the
sound player to start up and play the sound file. Although this process
might be fast and unnoticeable for people with high-powered machines directly
on the Net, most people don't have setups like that. Most people accessing
the Net are doing it from modems, and they have to wait to get your files.
Putting in automatic multimedia
files simply wastes users' time and detracts from their enjoyment of your
home
page.
A large number of computers can access your Web
page, and most of them have their own particular brand of multimedia
file formats. You should not make a multimedia file available in only one
format. Cover your bases and convert (or redo) your multimedia file into
multiple formats (see fig. 18.2). This way,
you can make your pages more accessible to the typical users and make them
more interested in coming back.
Fig. 18.2
Convert your multimedia file into as many different formats as possible. The more formats you have, the more people you attract.
When you're making multiple file formats available, try to make the multimedia files in the different formats show the same thing although doing so might take a lot of work. Don't leave the sound out of one of the formats just because including it is a lot of work. You can use any of a number of multimedia converters (which are covered later in this chapter) for different computers.
Some converters convert all aspects of a multimedia file, whereas others won't. If necessary, don't be afraid to re-record your multimedia file through a different interpreter for a different format. This process may be time-consuming, but the users will appreciate the work. Re-recording is especially important for people running commercial Web sites.
Obviously, re-recording multimedia files into different formats is a big undertaking. As a result, only companies running commercial Web sites should do it.
Another aspect of making your multimedia files available to everybody is the format in which they're stored. I'm not talking about multimedia file formats, but the format in which the data is stored.
On Windows 95 and UNIX machines, files are stored in a particular fashion.
On Macintosh computers, certain aspects of a file can be stored differently.
Because of this format, some Mac files (of any sort) can't be properly
read in by Windows
95 or UNIX
programs.
Typically, the programmers leave it up to the users to get the files into a format recognizable to a particular program on a certain machine. This process often involves having the users get a Mac-to-PC conversion program, putting the file on a PC disk, and reading the data off that disk.
Because the Mac has a slightly quirky file storage method, Mac multimedia
people found a way around this conversion process. They allow some multimedia
formats to be stored in only one manner. This process basically involves
loading a Mac multimedia file into a program and saving all the data into
a file that everybody else can read. Any multimedia file that goes through
this process is "flattened."
Currently, you can flatten only Apple MOV files on the Mac. Unfortunately, you must have the complete QuickTime developer's package to be able to flatten MOVs.
There are two attributes to any files stored on a Macintosh. These two attributes are known as the "resource fork" and the "data fork." Every file on a Mac disk has these attributes, but it isn't necessary to use both of them. Unfortunately, no other popular computers support the resource and data forks. As a result, when you try to copy a file from a Mac to a PC, both resource and data forks are squished together. This is bad.
A "flattened" MOV file is one in which all the
In contrast, the files stored on Windows
95 and UNIX
machines can be read by Mac multimedia players without being flattened.
Other multimedia file formats don't have this problem because they were
designed with either Windows 95 or UNIX in mind.
Another major concern in using multimedia files in your Web page is
that you should look out for is the size of the multimedia file. Because
multimedia formats can have animation and sound, they can be quite big.
Therefore, always telling people how big your multimedia files are is a
good idea. This way, you can let people know about how long they have to
wait before they can see what you have on the page. Remember that the majority
of people accessing Web sites are doing so from the comfort of their homes.
Many large multimedia
files will take well over 5 minutes to download on a typical system.
Giving solid numbers on when a file becomes too big to be useful for a home page is very difficult. You should always consider your target audience before you include any multimedia files on your Web page. Most company and personal home pages try to attract everybody on the Net. Because of the different file formats, giving a good estimate for a file size is also difficult. Also, because there are so many possible system configurations, the same file won't necessarily play at the same rate on all systems.
If you're determined to have multimedia files in your home page, then
make sure the file is about 300K in size. This size gives you about 10
- 15 seconds of animation without sound. Include sound, and you'll half
the amount of time to 5 - 7 seconds. Also, a typical 300K multimedia
file can be transferred in 2 - 3 minutes. If the size seems a bit small,
that's the point. You can't have large multimedia
files that aren't intrusive to a significant portion of people on the Net.
You need to use small multimedia files for points you really want to emphasize.
If you're interested in making multimedia files only for those users who are truly interested in your topic, then you have no restrictions. Because these people are already interested in seeing what you have, they'll wait for the download to complete. Just be sure to tell everybody how big your files are so that people with slow connections don't get upset at how long it takes to get the files.
Should you compress files? This question is also tough to answer because
whether you compress files depends on how much you want to emphasize multimedia.
If you have large multimedia
files available for users truly interested in a topic, file compression
is always available.
Some file formats compress better than others, but typically you get a 1 - 30 percent smaller file. Compressing allows you to cram in an extra few seconds of multimedia. The trade-off here is that the users typically have to decompress the files on their end.
File compression is the single biggest reason that home pages cannot have integrated multimedia. Most browsers are smart enough to run a downloaded file automatically through a particular application. However, they aren't smart enough to run the resulting file through a two applications. This means that if you have multimedia as an integral part of your home page, you can't compress the files.
If you choose to compress your multimedia file, you should use popular
compression software. For Windows 95 users, that means you should use ZIP,
by PKWare, to compress your files. ZIP offers good, but not the best, compression
available, and is the most popular format. Mac users should use StuffIt,
or one of its many derivations, by Aladdin
Software. Again, it's a very popular program that offers good compression
rates. Both these programs are widely available on many FTP sites.
One of the most popular multimedia
formats is MPEG. Numerous
MPEG viewers are available for Windows
95 and the Macintosh.
There are also a handful of UNIX MPEG players, typically requiring you
to compile it yourself. Most MPEG
animation files are either silent or have an accompanying sound file. Very
few MPEG files on the Net have sound embedded within the animation files
themselves.
MPEG is perhaps the safest
multimedia file format you can use for your home page. It has the widest
support of all multimedia formats on all platforms[md]not just in software,
but in hardware as well. Most new video
cards released have built-in MPEG
support. And if that weren't enough, MPEG files are almost always smaller
than any other multimedia format.
MPEG got its name from its creators, the Moving Pictures Experts Group.
This group defined a method of storing animation and sound files efficiently.
Their first attempt at this standard resulted in what is known as MPEG
1 (more commonly called simply MPEG). The target audience for the MPEG
1 standard, is the casual computer user playing animation files over a
CD-ROM. Since that time, the group has improved MPEG by making it more
efficient and producing better quality. Their next upgrade of MPEG
1 resulted in MPEG
2, which is targetted for the broadcast market. MPEG
3 was intended to be a modification of MPEG to be aimed at the HDTV
(High Definition TV) market. It was abandoned when it was discovered that
MPEG 2, could be slightly altered to meet that need. The latest modification
to MPEG is the MPEG
4 format, and is being targetted for the fiber-optics
market. It is still under discussion and is targetted to be completed before
the turn of the century. Most MPEG players currently in use can display
only MPEG
1 files because very few people are interested in making MPEG
2 files.
The MPEG
1 standard involves encoding
each frame of the MPEG file through a number of mathematical gymnastic
feats. The audio and video frames of an MPEG file can each be encoded by
three different methods. Rather than my explaining all the math involved,
just be happy to know that the process is complicated. As a result, very
few MPEG players can handle all aspects of the standard.
A rather large number of MPEG players are available for Windows
95. The leader of this pack is VMPEG Lite by Stefan Eckhart. VMPEG can
decode all MPEG
1 video frames and a limited number of audio
frames. VMPEG is a native Windows 95 application, meaning that it's a 32-bit
program. VMPEG
Lite is a demonstration version and limits the amount of audio that can
be played to 60 seconds. The full version of VMPEG has no such time limitation
and includes video
CD playback. When you first run VMPEG, a window with a menu and four VCR-like
buttons shows up. Underneath this window is a separate window where the
MPEG animation is shown (see fig. 18.3).
Fig. 18.3
VMPEG gives you two windows; one controls the output of the other.
The menu in the main window mainly consists of configuration of VMPEG. You can go to the Configure menu to configure each component of VMPEG playback. Under the Configure menu, the Audio menu item allows you to specify the sound output of MPEG files. Most of the sound configuration options should be obvious.
The video configuration for VMPEG is similarly straightforward. The four buttons in the main window allow you to play, stop, pause, and step to the next frame of the MPEG file. You can get VMPEG Lite from the following:
http://tucows.niia.net/files/vmpeg17.exe
Macintosh
users can also view MPEG
files with a very good viewer, Sparkle by Maynard Handley. This program
runs under System 7.0 or later and offers you the ability to read and play
back most MPEG 1 files. Simply run BinxHex and StuffIt to decompress the
file into its own directory, and then double-click on the Sparkle icon.
The result is shown as in figure 18.4.
Fig. 18.4
Sparkle is a good MPEG player for the Mac.
After a file has been loaded, you can play the file by clicking on the Play button in the lower-left corner. You can also drag the scroll box at the bottom to anywhere in the MPEG file. The two buttons in the lower-right corner allow you to go forward and backward one frame. Sparkle offers no configuration options and no sound support.
You can get a copy of Sparkle in BinHex at the following:
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/mac/info-mac/gst/_Movie/sparkle-245.hqx
Since MPEG was first introduced, there haven't been a lot of MPEG creation
utilities. This is because MPEG was designed to encode broadcast television
signals. As a result, the most common place you'll find MPEG
encoders are with specialized video
cards. These cards allow your computer to accept television
signals and play them on your monitor. Most of these video cards have software
that let you save a captured sequence from the television
as an MPEG
file.
Apple
has their own standard for storing multimedia
files; it is known as QuickTime Movies. The standard was designed with
the Apple
Macintosh line of computers in mind. It has since migrated to other computers,
most notably Windows 95. As mentioned before, MOV
files can be correctly viewed on computers other than the Mac if the files
have been "flattened." Apple
also provides a fair amount of support for people wanting to develop MOV
applications.
Because MOV was designed by Apple,
several viewers for the Macintosh are available. Despite this wide variety
of MOV players, however, the best one is, logically, from Apple itself.
Movie
Player implements all aspects of the MOV
standard.
To play a MOV file using Movie Player, you simply choose File, Open. The first frame of the movie shows up in a window with some control buttons (see fig. 18.5). You can adjust the volume of the playback using the lower-left button (it looks like a speaker). Next to this button is one that starts the playback process. As the movie is playing, this button turns into a pause button, which you can use to stop the animation. Also while the movie is playing, the thumb moves across the play bar's region. If you paused the playback of the movie, you can drag the slider around, and the window updates to that portion of the animation. You can resize the Move Player playback window by clicking on and dragging the lower-right button.
Fig. 18.5
A great QuickTime
MOVie player is Movie
Player by Apple.
Playing QuickTime MOVs using Windows 95 is just as simple as it is on
the Mac because Apple
has faithfully ported their MOV
animation player, Movie Player. The interface, menus, and behavior are
all the same with the Windows 95 version as they are with the Mac version
(see fig. 18.6). Some minor features aren't
present in the Windows 95 version, but most users won't notice them. Because
this version isn't on the Mac, it can play only QuickTime movies that have
been flattened. You can get the QuickTime movie player by pointing your
browser to http://quicktime.apple.com.
Fig. 18.6
QuickTime for Windows is a faithful port for Windows
95 of Movie Player for the Mac.
Because of the way QuickTime was designed, you can create your own QuickTime
movie relatively easily. The first thing you need to create your own animation
is to have the images of each frame in PICT format. You also need a MOV
creation program for the Mac, such as MooVer. To create a MOV file, you
must first have all the frames
of the QuickTime movie stored in Apple
PICT format. Next, you highlight all the frames you want to make into an
MOV file. Now, with all the frames selected, drag all of them onto the
MooVer program icon.
After you've done this, you will be presented with a dialog box asking
you for some settings. Simply click on the ones you want your destination
MOV to have and click the OK button. Next, you'll be shown another dialog
box (see fig. 18.9) to help you control
the quality of the MOV. By default, MooVer will create a QuickTime
file of Medium quality. The higher and better the quality, the larger your
MOV file will be. You can also specify how many frames should be shown
per second. The more frames you want shown each second, the smoother the
QuickTime movie.
Fig. 18.9
When you create a QuickTime MOVie with MooVer, you have to specify a few attributes.
If you have a digital camera, you can also create MOV files. Digital
cameras are hardware devices that automatically digitize whatever's in
front of it. Most digital
cameras come with software, that enable you to use the digital camera as
a digital camcorder. Simply have the software record whatever the digital
camera sees, and store it as a MOV file.
Another format for multimedia files is the Intel Indeo format, more
commonly known as AVI. This format was designed by Intel, the maker of
most CPUs in personal computers. The specifications for AVI
files are well documented by Intel.
However, Intel has left the implementation of its standard up to others.
The platform that supports AVI the most is the Windows 95 operating system.
In Windows 95, all you need to do is install the Media Player, and you'll
have AVI support. Despite this wide userbase, AVI hasn't received as much
support outside of the Windows 95 market, as other platforms. You should
consider using AVI multimedia files only if you expect a large number of
Windows 95 users to access your home page.
There are a number of reasons why AVI didn't take off, until recently.
It's distributed nature, in which one company defines the standard, and
others interpret it, didn't help. Instead of going to one company for questions
about the format, the average developer had to go to two. Another reason
for AVI's initially lukewarm reception, is because the companies that were
supposed to push it, didn't. In the beginning, Microsoft
and IBM
were the two biggest supporters of AVI. However there was little mention,
or support, for AVI in either Windows 3.1 or OS/2.
Another possible reason why AVI was largely ignored is because it hasn't
changed much. MPEG has been updated numerous times in the last few years
for different target audiences. Apple
has added a virtual reality aspect to QuickTime, creating QuickTime
VR. Compare these changes to the mostly unchanged, until recently, AVI
format.
Because Windows
95 supports AVIs natively (see fig. 18.7),
the only other major platform to be concerned with is Macintosh. The Mac
version is available at the following:
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/mac/info-mac/gst/mov/video-for-windows-11p.hqx
Simply download the file and decompress it into its own folder using BinHex and StuffIt. No installation is required, so you can simply double-click on the corresponding icon.
Fig. 18.7
Windows
95 supports playing AVI
files without needing a player.
Whatever AVI's past, however, its future seems bright. It is now more
heavily emphasized and supported by more companies than it has in the past.
This is partly due to Microsoft's desperate attempt to catch up in the
Internet browser market. Here, Microsoft introduced their Web browser,
Internet Explorer in the largely Netscape-dominated market. Along with
introducing some minor new HTML extensions, the browser also provides native
multimedia support. The support is provided by allowing the browser to
play AVI
files, without needing an external program.
Another factor that is helping AVI
make a comeback is digital
cameras. Most digital
cameras allow the user to have realtime video
capture in the computer. That is, the digital camera will automatically
digitize and store an image of whatever's in front of its lens. Most digital
cameras allow you to save these sequences of images as animation files.
Typically you can save one of these animation files as an AVI file.
Because of AVI's long neglected past, there aren't many software-based
programs to help you create them. However, if you have a digital camera,
chances are very good that it will come with such software. These types
of programs will continually read in the data from the digital camera,
and store it as an AVI file. For those people who don't have such a device,
your best bet would to convert an existing file to AVI
format.
Generally speaking, most people make multimedia files available just
like other files. That is, they make people download the files and then
use helper applications to play them. This approach, however, isn't always
the best way to get your point across to people. Another method would be
to have the multimedia
file play directly over the Net. That is, as the data is received from
the remote host, it plays through an application. One such real-time multimedia
application is RealAudio.
RealAudio is a generic
Web browser helper application, created by Progressive
Networks. This add-on allows you to play sound files in real time. When
you click on a RealAudio sound file from your browser, it starts the RealAudio
program. This application takes the URL from your Web
browser and retrieves the sound file over the Net. As the data is received
from the remote host, it's instantly played by RealAudio.
Because RealAudio requires its own server, it's not something many people want or can use. More often than not, RealAudio is supported by sound-related companies. They typically include radio stations and music companies. Many of these entities make samples of their format or their artists available in RealAudio format.
You may be interested in RealAudio if you're running a corporate Web site. This application takes the burden of sound playing off Netscape. Where Netscape would have to download the file and have a helper application play it, not so with RealAudio. Netscape passes the sound-playing responsibility to RealAudio. This means that while the sound file is being played, you can continue to use Netscape.
Unfortunately, because RealAudio delivers sound files in real time, you need to modify the server. You don't have to replace it, just add on to it. The RealAudio server works with any Web server that supports configurable MIME types. Most server software falls into this category, but a complete list is available from RealAudio at the following:
http://www.realaudio.com/products/server/software.html
Also, because the sounds are sent in real time, the sound files must
be converted. The conversion
program automatically converts most common sound formats into the RealAudio
format. The biggest drawback is that the file conversion is slow. If you
want to convert a sound file that takes 20 minutes to play, on a fast computer
the file takes 20 minutes to convert. Converting sound files on slower
machines can take up to twice as long.
Because Progressive Network is so protective of its invention, they want to know who's getting it. As a result, you simply point your Web browser to the following:
http://www.realaudio.com/products/player.html
Just fill out the forms on the page, making sure to fill in all the requested information. If you don't have a particular bit of information they want, such as company name, just put anything in. After you've filled out the form, you can download the RealAudio player.
The RealAudio player that you download is a self-extracting archive file. All you have to do is double-click on the file, and its installation program automatically starts up for you. You specify which components of RealAudio you want to install, as well as the destination directory.
Then, any time you're in Netscape and click on a hyperlink that points
to a RealAudio
file, the player runs, as shown in figure 18.8.
The player gets the URL from Netscape, get the sound file itself, and plays
it for you. This way, you can continue using Netscape while the sound file
is being played.
Fig. 18.8
RealAudio's sound player is automatically activated when you click on a sound file from a Web page.
The biggest drawback to using RealAudio is that it currently works best over 28.8 kbps modems. Although RealAudio can work over 14.4
As complicated as using RealAudio may sound, putting it in your Web page is easy. All you really have to do is create a hyperlink that people can click to access the sound file. Instead of putting in an anchor reference that points to an image, for instance, just have it point to the sound file. A typical example of supporting RealAudio would be
Hear my <A HREF="myvoice.ram">voice</A>.
This line creates a hypertext
link with the word "voice" to the RealAudio
sound file. When a user with the RealAudio plug-in clicks on the link,
the URL is passed onto the RealAudio player. The player then gets the sound
file directly from your Web
server and plays it back in real time.
See chapter 15 for more information about what a "plug-in" is.
One of the most impressive things you can do with your home
page is to access interactive
multimedia files. As complicated as this process may sound, it's not really
that hard. You can use a new Netscape plug-in from Macromedia; it's called
Shockwave. Shockwave plays multimedia
files created with Macromedia's
Director program. Currently, this new plug-in is available to Macintosh
and Windows 95 users. Unix and Windows NT versions will be released soon.
Can
I Do with Shockwave? Netscape
Navigator allows for something known as plug-ins. Plug-ins can expand the
capabilities of the Web browser by transparently supporting newer file
formats. Although some plug-ins are essentially glorified helper applications,
Shockwave takes full advantage of the power of plug-ins. You can easily
have a regular home
page that contains Director
multimedia files.
See Chapter 15 for more information about plug-ins.
Director allows not only for regular multimedia
files but also interactive multimedia. Putting files on this level onto
your Web
page may require a bit of work, but it is well worth the effort. You can
have a multimedia tour of your office facilities, for example. When a user
clicks on your Director file, it can play some animation.
Shockwave is really just another file type that needs to be supported by both the browser and the server. The browser is automatically supported after you install the Shockwave plug-in. Whenever you access a home page with a Shockwave multimedia file, Netscape downloads the file. After it's received on your end, the Shockwave plug-in plays the multimedia file. The really impressive aspect about Shockwave is that the multimedia file is played within the current home page. The browser keeps playing the multimedia file until you go to another home page.
Most Web
servers can easily support Director
files if you add the new MIME
file type. Director has only three file extensions: DIR, DXR, and DCR.
They are of the MIME type "application" and the sub-type of "x-director."
After you or your administrator add these extensions, your Web
site can support Shockwave. For example, if you're using NCSA's Web server,
you'll want to add the following lines to the end off the conf/mime.types
file:
application/x-director DIR,DXR,DCR
You can retrieve the Shockwave plug-in directly from Macromedia. Simply point your browser to the following:
http://www.macromedia.com/Tools/Shockwave/sdc/Plugin/index.htm
Select the appropriate operating system that you're using. Next, specify which browser you're currently using, and then specify from where you want to download it.
A number of Internet-related
programs support Director files natively and don't need the Netscape plug-in.
These programs include Microsoft's
Internet Studio, Silicon
Graphics's WebForce, and Navisoft's
NaviPress. After Shockwave is installed in your system, you can seamlessly
view Director files.
Director is a commercial program sold by Macromedia for $850. Because of its hefty price, it's unlikely that you'll find Director files in personal Web pages. Director allows you to create multimedia projects such as presentations and interactive Web pages. You can create and import two- and three-dimensional objects with Director.
For the serious multimedia developer, Macromedia also sells Director
Multimedia Studio. The Studio is a collection of many Macromedia titles,
including Extreme3D, xRes, and SoundEdit 16. If you get the Macintosh version,
SoundEdit
16 comes with Deck
II, while the Windows
version comes with SoundForge
XP. Director
Multimedia Studio has a list
price of $999. You can purchase Director and Director Multimedia Studio
from Macromedia, or one of their retailers.
After you've bought Director and created some multimedia files, you
can use them in your home page. Unfortunately, the current HTML
standard has no provision for having multimedia
files in your home
page. The most widely used of the different extensions is the Netscape
tag <EMBED>. This tag is basically the same as HTML's <IMG>
tag, except that it refers to a multimedia file. The simplest way of making
use of a Director file, is by simply adding a line to your home page. The
line would look something like this:
<EMBED SRC="mymulti.dcr">
This will put the Director file as a separate HTML object by itself. This is fine in many cases, but you have to learn to treat the <EMBED> element as any other HTML tag. You can use the <EMBED> element as you would use an <IMG> tag. You can easily put in a Director file in your Web page, as you would a graphic file. Because of <EMBED>'s flexibility, you can create interesting effects with Director files. For example, you can make Director files stand out by adding the following lines to your Web page:
<table border=8> <tr> <td> <embed SRC="MYlogo.dcr"> </td> </tr> </table>
This will create a table with one data cell. In that cell will be the Director file "MYLOGO.DCR." This is great if you want to make your Director file stand out particularly well. MYLOGO.DCR will be displayed in a table by itself, which makes it very hard to not be seen.
Another useful application of the EMBED tag is using it as a test of the user's browser. For example, suppose you have a Web site where you want people with Java-capable browsers, and have Director files. You cando this by putting in the following lines:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="LiveScript">
<!--Beginning of LiveScript code-->
document.write('<EMBED SRC="http://www.mysite.com/mybanner.dcr">');
<!--Ending of LiveScript code-->
</SCRIPT>
<EMBED>
If you don't see my spinning logo above, you need:
<UL>
<LI>A Java-capable browser.</LI>
<LI>Shockwave installed for that browser.</LI>
</UL>
</EMBED>
For Java-capable browsers, this code loads the Director file. If the browser doesn't have Shockwave, the user will be asked if he or she wants to get the plug-in. Those browsers that can't handle Java will display the contents between the <EMBED> and </EMBED> tags.
You may optionally choose to specify the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes of the <EMBED> tag. These values indicate the height and width, respectively, of the multimedia file you're using. After your browser comes across the <EMBED> tag, it automatically retrieves the multimedia file. The browser then hands off the file to Shockwave to display it properly in the browser window.
If you're planning on using sound files in your Web page, there's a good chance you already have a sound file. As a result, this sound file is probably in one particular format. To insure that your file can be heard by as many people as possible, you'll probably need to convert the sound file. There are a number of applications on both the Macintosh and Windows 95 that can help you here.
GoldWave, by Chris Craig, is a solid Windows
95 sound editting program (see fig. 18.10).
It allows you to read in .WAV, .AU, .IFF, .VOC, .SND, .AIFF, and raw sound
files. You can easily convert an existing sound file by clicking on the
Open icon. Next, you'll be presented with a standard file open dialog box.
Locate the sound file you want to convert and click the OK button. Select
the File menu heading, followed by the Save As menu item. This will bring
up a dialog box (see fig. 18.11) that lets
you specify what you want to save the file as. Simply use the Save
File as Type
drop-down list and select the file format you want to save it as. Next,
use the File
Attributes drop-down list and choose the attributes you want for the sound
file.
Fig. 18.10
GoldWave is a good editor available for Windows
95 and Windows
3.1.
Fig. 18.11
The File
Attributes drop-down list will have different options, based on the format
you want to save it as.
"Mono" sound files are smaller than "stereo" sound files. If your sound isn't recorded in stereo, you shouldn't convert the file as such. Also, "8-bit" sound files are smaller than "16-bit" sound files. 16-bit encoded sound files sound much better than 8-bit sound files. As a result, if you're not too concerned with the clarity of the sound, you should use 8-bit encoding. You can find out more about GoldWave at http://web.cs.mun.ca/~chris3/goldwave/.
Mac users can also easily convert sound files to other formats with SoundApp. This program, by Norman Franke, allows you to read in AIFF, AIFF-C, AU, WAV, and VOC file formats. Unfortunately, although it can read in many formats, it can only write out a handful of formats. The most prominent Windows 95 sound format that SoundApp can convert to is the WAV format. To convert a sound file, simply click the File menu heading, followed by the Convert menu item (Command-K). You'll be presented with a file open dialog box (see fig. 18.12).
Fig. 18.12
You only use this one dialog box to convert your sound files.
Select the file you want to convert from the list of files in the dialog
box. You can specify what format you want by using the Specify To pull-down
list. Once you've selected the file you want to convert, click the Open
button. After a little while, SoundApp will return from the conversion.
A new folder in the folder of the source file is created, and it's called
"SoundApp
Converted Files". In that folder, you'll find all your converted sound
files from the previous directory.
Since SoundApp doesn't let you specify where to save the converted file, you could easily clutter up your hard drive. If you're converting sound files all over your hard drive, each conversion will create a new folder. All these folders will be called "SoundApp Converted Files." To reduce the number of extra folders, put all files you want to convert into one folder.
Just as with sound files, you'll probably want to make multimedia files
available in many formats. For Web
authors who work for large corporations, it should be easy to simply re-record
the data into a new format. However, many people don't have that luxury
and will have to convert between file formats. This has the noticable drawback
that sometimes the converted file doesn't look as good as the original
file. Still, for the most part, the conversions are typically very good,
with little noticable quality degredation. Most of the following multimedia
converters can be found at http://www.prism.uvsq.fr/public/wos/multimedia/medias.html.
SmartVid by Intel (see fig. 18.13) is a good Windows 95 program that lets you convert between AVI and MOV. To convert from either format to the other, click the File menu heading, followed by the Open Source (Ctrl+O) menu item. You'll be presented with a standard file open dialog box, where you indicate the file you want to convert from. You can specify the format for the source file by click on the List Files of Type drop-down list. When you've found the file you want, click the OK button.
Fig. 18.13
SmartVid by Intel
for Windows
95 lets you easily convert MOV files to AVI files.
You can toggle warning messages by clicking on the Options menu heading.
Simply select either Silent or Warnings, and it will control SmartVid's
behavior. Next, click on the Convert
menu heading, and select the Start
(Ctrl+S) menu item. Once again, you'll be presented with a dialog box that
lets you specify the name and type of the file you want to convert to.
Click the OK button will start the conversion process. During the conversion
process, warning messages will appear, if you've enabled them. SmartVid
will tell you once it's done converting. You can get SmartVid at ftp://ftp.intel.com/pub/IAL/multimedia/smartv.exe.
Mac owners can easily convert between MPEG and QuickTime
MOVies with Sparkle. This program is a combination of an MPEG and MOV player
and converter. To convert between the file formats, simply load the file
into Sparkle as if you wanted to play it. Next, click the File menu heading,
followed by the Save As menu item. If you're converting to an MPEG file,
you'll be presented with a dialog box (see fig.
18.14), which asks you for various MPEG information. The default values
are usually fine, so you can simply click the OK button. Next, you'll be
presented with a File Open dialog box. Specify where, and under what name,
you want the converted file to be saved as, and click the OK button. Sparkle
will perform the conversion and notify you when it's done.
Fig. 18.14
To convert from QuickTime to MPEG, you need to specify some MPEG information.
If you're like most Web authors, you probably don't have a budget to
create multimedia files. That doesn't mean you can't put in existing multimedia
files into your Web page, however. The Net is filled with archives full
of sound and multimedia
files (see table 18.1). But, since the Net is an ever-growing entity, it
will undoubtedly get more large collections of sound and multimedia files.
Table 18.1 Sound and Multimedia Archives
| URL | Content |
| http://homepages.udayton.edu/students/siefert/movies/MOVIES.HTM | Large collection of various MPEG and MOV files |
| http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/DigitalGallery/DG_science_theater.html | Large collection of science-related animation files |
| http://www.uslink.net/~edgerton/index.html | A collection of animation that span various topics |
| http://deathstar.rutgers.edu/people/bochkay/movies.html | Various scenes from television and movies in various formats |
| http://tausq.resnet.cornell.edu/mmedia.htm | A collection of mainly movie clips |
| http://users.aol.com/ojwavs/waves.com | Small collection of movie samples in WAV format |
| http://www.io.org/~cme/ | A small collection of music from Canadian bands |
| http://www.valleynet.com/~ericmort/dd.html | A directory
of original songs along with links to music samples |
| http://www.iuma.com/IUMA/index_graphic.html | A collection of music from bands and labels around the world |
|
