Re: "bump it up a notch"

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

Ben Bradley wrote:
>
> Has anyone integrated multimedia (dynamic content) into their online
> documentation or knowledge bases?

We've never had anybody in a pubs group ask for it, but we're currently
working on two video projects that might qualify for the kind of
multimedia project you're talking about.

1. A video kiosk system for a major university's Athletic Dept., wherein
people can use a touchscreen to select and then see any of several
hundred video clips about sports programs, particular teams or athletes,
Olympic stars, etc.  The video clips are stored on a database which is
updated regularly.  We're doing both the software and the docs.

2.  A video coaching system, where somebody can take video from a game
or a practice session, load it into a database, and then an individual
working at a desktop can view the footage on a frame-by-frame basis.
We're doing the integration software, the installation, and the docs.

We have had several clients ask us about including video and audio in
intranet material we were doing for them, but ultimately back away from
it because of the bandwidth problems at their site in getting video to
the desktop.

The people who asked to add video to what amounts to docs were NOT pubs
people, but were engineering support groups and the consulting/training
arm of a software maker.

> Has anyone measured the impact of "bumping it up a notch?"  Even informally,
> I'm curious to know
> if the extra effort of learning an authoring application is worth the added
> impact that dynamic content
> brings to the communications process.

Depends on what you're trying to do.  If you're trying to do the kind of
animation you can currently get on CD-ROM (and some people call that
"video"), the authoring packages are worth the expense.  If you're
trying to do a simple animated screen capture, the little utilities that
let you do that are well worth the investment. If you're trying to do
full MPG video, the tools are fairly expensive and somewhat difficult to
learn, at this point, though I expect that to change soon.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems

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