Multimedia In The Twenty-first Century Should Not Look Like Something From the Nineteenth Century!
by Bob Chambers
Look around and you'll see people still using multimedia techniques on the Internet that went out in 1929. And the reason why is probably the same as those used by other silent movie actors who never made a "talkie" and never acted after those new movies became the rage.
Of course, I'm talking about Video (or movies) with...
AUDIO!
Too many multimedia producers on the Internet are still using simple text boxes to explain how to use software, navigate a website, or how to send email. Is that really necessary?
Some excuses I've heard are that the producer's voice is not good enough, or the file sizes of the multimediawith text boxes are smaller, or it's easier. I've heard recordings of some really difficult to understand people before... I can remember a teacher in college that it took me several months to understand. And no, I didn't ask for my money back. Do the best audio's that you can and speak slowly if it's difficult for others to understand you.
As for creating texted based multimedia, they are not simpler to create. It takes about four to five times as long to create the text captions as compared to combining audio and video. I know because when I first started making multimedia tutorials I used one of the screen capture software programs that made it easy to add text captions. And I used it to make quite a few tutorials. Until I finally changed over to Camtasia and found that adding audio with the video, while it did make the file sizes larger, was much easier than trying to add text captions after making the video. I've never gone back to text captions again unless it's to enhance my audio.
I want to emphasize that the best type of multimedia is video with audio. And yes, today lots of people are still creating silent videos for the Internet. The only communication they give the customer is through text captions.
But Silent Movies Went Out In 1929!
This takes us back to the days of the silent movies and these silent Internet videos are just as effective
Well, not really as effective as those silent movies.
Because even in the silent movie days the theaters had a piano player who contributed audio to the movies. And the music helped set the mood for what was going on in the movie.
So unless you want to supply a piano player with your silent videos I suggest you add sound to your multimedia.
By the way, in my research on the subject I found that everyone I talk to said they want audio with their videos. And in an online study that I did about a year ago I found that 82.4 percent wanted multimedia WITH Sound! Only 17.6 percent liked those caption boxes.
That's one reason I recommend using Camtasia along with a microphone so that you can record both video and audio. And I also recommend doing both at the same time. I've found that trying to record the video and then go back to re-record the audio is almost impossible. I either have too much video or not enough for my audio.
Plus doing each separately takes more time.
So for your multimedia productions make your audio and videos together and save time. And they will be better.
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Bob Chambers, The Multimedia Guy(TM) has been producing Multimedia in his own company since 1992 and is the creator of the award winning streaming video program "How to Create & Publish Outrageously Profitable Multimedia Products!
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