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Multimedia Design and Development Sound, Animation and Video Sound, animation, and video can add a great deal of appeal and sensuality to a piece But there are always tradeoffs. David Ludwig of Interactive Learning Designs says, Let the content drive the selection of media for each chunk of information to be presented. Use traditional text and graphics when appropriate; add animation when ‘still life’ won’t get your message across; add audio when further explanation is required; resort to video only when all other methods pale by comparison. How many of you like the use of audio in The Universal Machine or the CIMEL prototype? Why or why not? Does your preference reflect a particular learning style? Will any of you be using audio in your projects? How? Sound is measured in decibels (db), the pressure or volume: Typical voice conversation is ~70db, a soft whisper is 30db, a jackhammer is 120db Decibels measure the energy required to make sounds logarithmically A jackhammer’s noise is about 1 watt, but voice conversation is 1/100,000 watt Two major ways to create and deliver sounds are MIDI and digital audio MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is to audio what vector-based graphics are to images and Postscript is to text, while digital audio (such as WAV files) are analogous to bitmaps MIDI is a notation (similar to a musical score) and communications standard for describing how electronic instruments and synthesizers play musical sound Advantages: MIDI files tend to be much smaller than digitized wave form files Can be stretched or edited more easily May sound better if the playback quality of the instruments is better Disadvantages: Doesn’t provide reliable playback, depends on what’s available Can’t play speech Windows 3.1 introduced standards for MIDI playback Authorware and other multimedia authoring tools support MIDI Do any of you have experience with MIDI? How easy is it to work with? For what kind of multimedia applications might MIDI b