| Writing Academy 5 Authoring Workshop II 501-503 Enhancing Your E-Book with Multimedia |
| Special Offers & Featured Items for Your E-Book Multimedia | ||
| 501 Media 1 Home--Collecting & Creating Multimedia |
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501 Collecting & Creating Multimedia
Art, Photo, Audio, Video Clips in Your E-Books The web offers a wealth of media that you can include in your e-books. You can find clip art, photos, audio clips, and video clips often organized in categories making those that pertain to your topic easy to find. Use your favorite search engine or try Aware or products from Copernic. Many items are free while others are for purchase. Be careful to observe license and copyrights when using materials from the web. There are also software programs of media clips that you may find useful. Go to Media 2: Clips Using Graphics & Illustration Software to Create Your Own Art for Your E-Books You don't have to be the world's greatest artist to include illustrations in your digital books! If you can't find the clip art you need on the web or in software programs, you can create artwork yourself with graphics and illustration software. See Media 3: Graphics Photo Editing and Management for Your E-Books In addition to collecting photos from the web and software, you should also consider using your own digital photos. Those of you writing travelogues, how-to manuals that show what you've done (home improvements, gardening, crafts, etc.), poetry, and many other types of e-books will include photos in your multimedia digital book. This section of the WP Writing Academy includes information on photo editing and management software and a few cameras for you to consider. This is merely an introduction for those who may need it; obviously, more in-depth information on digital photography, software, and cameras can be found on any number of web sites.
ArcSoft Panorama Maker® is highly recommended as a useful photo tool for e-book creation. A photo panorama maker produces certain types of ultra-wide photos you may want to include in your e-book. Wide angle photos may not be sufficient to show some scenes such as those for a travelogue e-book--landscapes, cityscapes, and tall buildings, for example. You may also want to use panoramas for gardening and landscaping how-to e-books. For such cases, a photo panorama maker such as the one from ArcSoft, a major provider of photo and video software, should be considered. ArcSoft Panorama Maker® transforms any series of overlapping photos into a single, large panoramic image in just a matter of seconds. After the program quickly analyzes each sequential photo for matching points, it instantly produces a seamless digital photograph that can be used in your multimedia e-books. The application also includes an option for stitching photos into 360° files that can be viewed as a movie file in your e-book created with DeskTop Author. Try ArcSoft Panorama Maker Now Panorama Maker is but one of a multitude of programs for working with digital photos. We have included descriptions of some of the best ones in Media 4: Photo p.1 and Photo p. 2. Check these pages for more information on software as well as digital cameras for preparing photos for your e-books. Also see more photo editing and management software in the WP Media Catalog. Audio Production & Editing for Your E-Books You may want to enhance your e-book with audio narration you record yourself. This could include narrating instructions in academic e-books or how-to manuals in digital format, reading your short fiction or poetry, and other uses. When working with audio clips to include in your e-book you may need to convert the format. So many formats, so little time! Fortunately, there are software programs to help. AVSAudioEditor is an advanced and powerful, full-featured digital audio editor. You can use it to record your own music, voice or other audio information, edit it, apply different effects, mix it with other audio or musical parts, add effects like Reverb, Chorus, Echo and many others, create MP3s and other compressed audio. AVSAudioEditor supports all major audio file formats. The program can be expanded through DirectX plug-ins. Supports all major audio file formats. Try AVS Audio Editor Now. You may also want to check out Audio & Video Converter Go to Media 5: Audio for more information and software. Video Production & Editing for Your E-Books Muvee autoProducer is one of the best products for creating media for your e-book. It quickly and easily combines photos, videos, and audio to automatically generate video clips in a format suitable for including in your e-book as well as burning to disk for viewing on your TV. According to PC Magazine, my favorite and most trusted source for product reviews: "This latest version of autoProducer provides the best range of styles to generate music-video–like productions automatically from video and background audio. Each style varies dramatically in appearance, which is autoProducer's key competitive advantage. muvee ships 24 styles with autoProducer and offers dozens more for sale on its Web site. By contrast, Pinnacle Studio comes with just five styles." Mar 2, 2005 PC Magazine Read other reviews of Muvee. Download a Free Trial of Muvee autoProducer If all the different media formats are overwhelming, you may want to check into Audio & Video Converter or consider a Free Trial of Digital Media Converter. Either of these products would be very useful in converting the formats and compressing the file sizes of audio and video clips for inserting into your DeskTop Author e-books. Go to Media 6: Video p. 1 and Video p. 2 for more information on preparing videos for your e-books, video editing and management software, and camcorders.
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*****End of 501 Media 1: Home, continue with any section below***** | Download a free trial of DeskTop Author--Deluxe Edition | |||
| -->501 Media 1: Home Media 2: Clips Media 3:Graphics Media 4: Photo p. 1 Photo p. 2 Media 5: Audio Media 6: Video p. 1 Video p. 2 502 Adding Multimedia to Your E-Book 503 Using Interactive Features in Your E-Book |
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While DeskTop Author includes some photo editing capabilities within the program, you will need to prepare video clips prior to inserting them. The key point to keep in mind when working with videos for e-books is that just as no one wants to read hundreds of pages of just text on a computer screen, they also don't want to read an e-book only to pause on one page on the screen for a 30 minute video. TV is more appropriate for such lengths. It's more effective to use brief video clips of 30, 60, and 90 seconds. If your video clips simply much be several minutes long to make a point, use them sparingly.
