Multimedia Books

Making web video involves a cross section of products and skills and "Producing Flash CS3 Video" puts it all together in one book both suitable a a good read and as a reference. While reading through this you'll also pick up on interesting facts about different video formats, After Effects tips and tricks and ways to tame Flash. All in all, this was a great buy for me.

This is an AMAZING resource for Flash CS3. I was really impressed with how concise and well-organized this book is. A must have resource for any developer!!

This book is an excellent multimedia experience for someone to learn Java Programming at home. It can also be used as a supplement to a lecturer or a hardcover Java book. I highly recommend it as the best way to learn on your own. This is what online or multimedia teaching is all about!

I loved this product. Like nothing else I have seen on programming, it makes learning programming and java easy and interesting because it is so visual and dynamic. The CD is a resource that you can keep for life. i would recommend this to anyone wanting to learn how to program in java from a master of the discipline.

The visual graphics of Q-Puncture rise above other acupuncture multimedia products. I'm a student of acupunture and I've done a great deal of searching to find tools to assist in my studies. I was so pleased to find Q-Puncture. The software includes beautifully designed 3-D animation for needle incertion and graphics that are visually stimulating and quick in locating points and pathways. I also liked the fact that Q-Puncture included OM diagnosis and even Western Medical references. Where I used to put tabs on my text books to help me save time in finding specific information, now it's just a click of a mouse! It's easy to use and packed with the acupuncture information needed to study for the California Licensing Board (the most challenging exam of its kind in the US). I highly recommend adding Q-Puncture to your study materials, as well as, a reference tool for your office.

I've seen numbers of acupuncture books and some softwares but by far, this was the best and easiest tool to learn about acupuncture. You have to see what they did with 3D technology to show the meridian points. Along with 3D illustrations, every point includes sections of "1) Where to find 2) What it does 3) When to use and finally 4) How to needle" I found these features to be the most useful and easy to understand. Other fine features included were, explanation and philosophy of Oriental medicine, demonstrations of 14 channel pathways, and therapeutic effects as well as clinical explanations of commonly diagnosed illnesses. You will find this book&software to be absolutely wonderful.

This book is the first of a two volume set on QuickTime programming on both Mac and Windows machines. This first volume is more concerned with the basics of controlling multimedia through a C program that uses the QuickTime API. You'll learn how to open, play, edit, and save a movie file. Besides just video you also learn how to use the Quicktime interface to work with images, text, timecode, and sprites. Fundamental Quicktime concepts are all introduced in this first volume. The author does all this by creating an application entitled "QTShell" that he adds to as he gradually explains each concept. This same application is used in volume two also. The author assumes the reader already knows his/her computing platform and OS, what QuickTime is, and how to program in C. This frees him to concentrate on the Hows of Quicktime programming. Both volumes of this programming guide began as a series of magazine articles, thus the style is quite accessible - it is not a terse academic style tome at all.

Tim Monroe's column in MacTech is as much a final word on QuickTime as Apple's developer docs. This book is the de facto official guide to native development with QuickTime and given the size of the QT API, you'd be hard pressed to know where to begin without it. Tim starts with a basic "shell" application that compiles and runs on Mac and Windows -- yes, Windows developers are very much part of the target audience -- and covers the basics of playing, editing, saving and exporting movies, then moves into tricky stuff like sprites (which takes four chapters), VR, and effects.

For C-language developers, this and its volume 2 companion are the books you want. I wrote a book on QuickTime for Java (QTJ being just a wrapper around the C calls), and I wish this book had been out before I started, because it would have saved me a lot of research time figuring out what my code was calling and why it worked the way it did. In fact, those who've mastered QTJ can probably read this book and do a mental "port" from C to Java to figure out material I didn't cover.

Recommended? Hell, if you're in the QT space, this is *required* reading.

I love comic strips...good comic strips and so I was delighted when I had a chance to read Greg Dean's "Real Life" collected edition of his online strip. This book collects the entire first year of the strip starting in November of 1999. Dean's strip revolves around the exploits of his main characters Greg (himself) and his two close friends Dave & Crystal. Call it kind of like a Drabble for today's twenty-somethings. Greg & Dave are a couple computer nerds whose life revolves around playing games like Final Fantasy, Ultima Online, Quake, Diablo and also playing computer-aided Dungeons & Dragons in true, Uber-nerd style. It fits all the clichés of geeky behavior and it's also damn funny. And I would be lying to myself if I didn't admit that some of the strips about Dungeons & Dragons didn't hit dangerously close to home.

Throughout the daily black & white strips and color strip on Sundays, the trio, when their not engaged in the above activities, have an assortment of adventures such as going camping...where Dave goes through withdraw symptoms due to being away from his laptop. There's also a hilarious romp back in time to France with a time machine built from old hard drive parts. Greg suffers through "transmission errors" due to his time pod being built out of Maxtor drives. Now that's a pretty deep in-joke but if you're familiar with Maxtor it's just about right on the button. There's a number of other hilarious diversion in the book such as Greg's ridiculous lemon of a Volvo, dealing with tech support, and his quest to find an original NES game system.

Since these cartoons are five years old now, a lot of the subject matter, especially as related to technology is outdated. But that's where the real fun of the strip comes in. You not only get a year full of strips, but much like a DVD, you get the creator's commentary. Greg Dean provides commentary on each and every strip of the Real Life, sharing his thoughts on the creative process, anecdotes about the real life incidents the strips were based upon, as well as taking some humorous jabs at himself for his writing or drawing style, particularly in the very early strips. This commentary helps you look at the book in a whole new light. Bear's self-deprecating comments are a scream...especially when you know darn well he could be talking about you! Dean used Adobe Illustrator to make his strip and the result is a simplistic, yet very clean cartooning style that makes good use of his character's expressions.

Real Life is a quality comic strip and very funny. It's subject matter may have a somewhat limited appeal, at least in these early days but it's extremely well done.

Reviewed By Tim Janson

I love comic strips...good comic strips and so I was delighted when I had a chance to read Greg Dean's "Real Life" collected edition of his online strip. This book collects the entire first year of the strip starting in November of 1999. Dean's strip revolves around the exploits of his main characters Greg (himself) and his two close friends Dave & Crystal. Call it kind of like a Drabble for today's twenty-somethings. Greg & Dave are a couple computer nerds whose life revolves around playing games like Final Fantasy, Ultima Online, Quake, Diablo and also playing computer-aided Dungeons & Dragons in true, Uber-nerd style. It fits all the clichés of geeky behavior and it's also damn funny. And I would be lying to myself if I didn't admit that some of the strips about Dungeons & Dragons didn't hit dangerously close to home.

Throughout the daily black & white strips and color strip on Sundays, the trio, when their not engaged in the above activities, have an assortment of adventures such as going camping...where Dave goes through withdraw symptoms due to being away from his laptop. There's also a hilarious romp back in time to France with a time machine built from old hard drive parts. Greg suffers through "transmission errors" due to his time pod being built out of Maxtor drives. Now that's a pretty deep in-joke but if you're familiar with Maxtor it's just about right on the button. There's a number of other hilarious diversion in the book such as Greg's ridiculous lemon of a Volvo, dealing with tech support, and his quest to find an original NES game system.

Since these cartoons are five years old now, a lot of the subject matter, especially as related to technology is outdated. But that's where the real fun of the strip comes in. You not only get a year full of strips, but much like a DVD, you get the creator's commentary. Greg Dean provides commentary on each and every strip of the Real Life, sharing his thoughts on the creative process, anecdotes about the real life incidents the strips were based upon, as well as taking some humorous jabs at himself for his writing or drawing style, particularly in the very early strips. This commentary helps you look at the book in a whole new light. Bear's self-deprecating comments are a scream...especially when you know darn well he could be talking about you! Dean used Adobe Illustrator to make his strip and the result is a simplistic, yet very clean cartooning style that makes good use of his character's expressions.

Real Life is a quality comic strip and very funny. It's subject matter may have a somewhat limited appeal, at least in these early days but it's extremely well done.

Reviewed By Tim Janson

Then this is the book for you. I've made 8 shorts now...and I wish I had this book 2 years ago! I've bought dozens of books over the last 3 years but this is the first one that's been wrote by real filmakers. How do I know? There are REAL tips in it. I mean those ones that come from really making a film...not the same moron advice that everyone gives.

There's a real good case study too. It reminds me of my first video shoot for 'The Clan'. There's real good focus in there, but I think they could go further with putting things together.

Buy this book if you're an editor or a director. Definitely if you're a director! I started out editing and some of the directors I worked with could really do with reading this book ;o)

For some reason the British have the best graphics magazines...always the best reviews and tutorials. Thus it is no surprise that the book, Revolutionary - Final Cut Pro 2 by Blissett et al, is such a fine book. About the first third of the book deals with planning a production, actually shooting the footage, and preparing the footage for editing. All of these discussions are accompanied by examples and real world comments.
The rest of the book deals with Final Cut Pro 2 (FCP2) in a logical progression from clip capture to editing, then on to special effects and concluding with sound. Throughout the discussions are examples to work along with as well as a continuing project called "yootclub."
This book gives an excellent introduction to video production, in general, and FCP2 in particular.

I though DILLARGAF had done me. I cried, I laughed, and pondered whether Ian would make to the end of DILLARGAF in one piece.

Now comes the second book in the trilogy following the life of Ian Foster. The author, B. Keith Jones takes the reader through some of the most hillarious as well as most painful, sad, and at times terrifying experiences one could experience. Many of the character of DILLARGAF are back with some new 'Wives, Lovers, Friends & Others' added in for pleasure. The result is more laughter, joy, sadness, and growth pain as Ian continues his journey toward self-awareness. The Roomie Do Me Blues is about God, love, trust, music, drugs and drags, good times, bad times, high and low times. In the end Ian shows us it really is 'OK to be yourself'.

Congratulations B. Keith Jones. You are the rainbow. I eargerly await the conclusion of the trilogy "ALL I Didn't Say"

from the beginning of the "roomie do me blues", i cried until i laughed myself silly, the rather bizarre chain of events that occurred in the lives of ian and dante were nostalgic, therapeutic and quite enlightening. underlying the trials and tribulations of the main characters was a very deep and spiritual message that caused me to look into myself, but also see others; friends, acquaintances, lovers relatives and co-workers, in a totally new light. the reading of this novel keeps striving to "be just be", and, accept that what is,is! a definite must read for anyone growing up in a state of why, why, whies. It is also an excellent follow up to it's predecessor, DILLIRGAF!

As a professor of worship, I recommend this book to all my students who seek to find appropriate ways to think about and to integrate the media arts into traditional and emerging worship. This book is theologically well-grounded and pastorally invaluable. Bausch takes the reader through the story of his own medium-sized UCC Congregational church's experience with introducing a media-intensive service. He gives practical advice on recruiting a team of volunteers, not only to run equipment but to actually produce the media art for the Sunday service. He provides the basics on licence and copyright issues, as well as equipment requirements for a "start-up" media ministry. Protestant pastors of small- or medium-sized churches who are discerning their own church's use of media -- versus trying to emulate the megachurch down the street -- would be smart to start with this book. The story of this rural Wisconsin church and what they learned in the process of using multimedia in worship offers many practical insights.

As a pastor, this book was invaluable in helping to clarify the mission and values behind beginning a multimedia ministry in our congregation. Dr Bausch not only discusses the theological background of using media in worship, but also mixes in many practical tips and practical applications for congregations to learn from. Highly recommended!

I lived through this era and my original 1972 copy is well used and full of loose pages. If you want to find out how the tracking of turtles is art, or how Lawrence Weiner came to write phrases on walls as his art work or simply how the synergy of people working with ideas about process as an artmaking technique came to rule this is an valuable piece of first hand reporting. Looking to explain Sol Le Witt to my college students on his recent death this book gave me samples of his interactive drawings they could try.

I first read this book about twenty years ago. I am glad to see that there is a new edition. It had a major impact on my development as an artist. The author discusses the trend called "conceptual art" which flowered in the time period mentioned in the title (late 60's through early 70's). These artists rejected the craft of art and the creation of objects themselves seeking instead something more fundamental. Ms. Lippard calls this "resonance" and uses descriptions of various pieces to explore this concept. Though "conceptual art" has long since passed by, the analysis in this book is still current and applies more than ever in our "post-modernist" period.

This is a colorful and attractive book that tells you everything you may ever need to know about creating multimedia presentations using SMIL 2.0, the second release of the World-Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language Recommendation. SMIL is an XML language for creating multimedia presentations, integrating media, temporal control and interactivity. A SMIL presentation can contain a combination of any types of media. SMIL itself is media "agnostic", and includes most media types by referencing their URL's rather than embedding them in the SMIL file itself.

The authors, Bulterman and Rutlege, are respected multimedia researchers and were key contributors to both the SMIL 1.0 and SMIL 2.0 Recommendations. They were personally involved in drafting and testing a significant portion of the standard, and the company that Bulterman used to lead, Oratrix, developed one of the first full implementations of the SMIL 2.0 language, Grins. So these guys know what they are talking about.

While the W3C SMIL 2.0 Recommendation (http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/REC-SMIL2-20050107/) is primarily written for SMIL implementors and XML language designers incorporating SMIL features into their XML-based language, the book is written for multimedia content authors. The book begins with an overview of SMIL 2.0, with six example presentations that show how SMIL can be used, some history, and a guide to the organization of the SMIL 2.0 standard. The next chapter gives a brief but useful introduction to SMIL 2.0 code including the major components of the language: structure, media, layout, timing, linking, and control.

Further chapters go into each of these areas in much greater depth, explaining all of the options and features in each component (terms module in SMIL 2.0) of the language. And there are many! To support fully featured, interactive, and attractive multimedia features that allow infinite flexibility in the look and feel of a multimedia presentation, SMIL 2.0 has a ton of features and options. In addition to the components already listed, there is animation (my favorite), transition effects, media clipping, advanced layout, extended control, and metadata. Bulterman and Rutlege do a good job of presenting a lot of material in an organized and attractive manner, with lots of examples.

By and large, the features in SMIL 2.0 are straightforward and intuitive to use, However, as is true in any standard developed to meet the needs of many separate groups (SMIL 2.0, for example), SMIL 2.0 is a large language with some potential pitfalls, and there are some also "doozers" and "gotchas". By necessity, the SMIL timing model is complex. While usually intuitive, in some particular cases the timing elements and attributes can interact in initially surprising ways. For another example, there are two kinds of SMIL XML for representing transitions, and all transitions may not be available in all platforms. The authors calmly guide the reader through all this. Backward compatability between versions of SMIL, including the oddly named 'skip-content' attribute is another complex subject clearly presented.

This book is both more comprehensive and much more attractively presented than any other book on SMIL that I have seen. The "insiders" view of SMIL that authors have is used to round out the explanations and rationale for things to good effect. Overall this is a great book for any multimedia content developer who is using or considering using SMIL 2.0. It will also be useful to SMIL implementation developers as another source of information when reading and implementing the recommendation documents. Lastly it should be of interest to students studying multimedia as an in-depth guide to a specific comprehensive multimedia presentation architecture.

Aaron M. Cohen
Chairman of the W3C Synchronized Multimedia Working Group (produced the SMIL 2.0 Recommendation)

This is a remarkable book, and by far the most authoritative guide available for the SMIL languages. It serves a broad audience, and combines a readable style with complete expertise in the subject matter.

For authors, the book provides an easy-to-understand explanation of the language principles and syntax. Many useful examples illustrate the features, and provide useful authoring templates. Bulterman and Rutledge's experience with multimedia authors and authoring comes through in the many tips and hints for addressing real-world issues and avoiding potential pitfalls. All examples are provided online as well, along with demos and other resources.

For the serious student or implementer, the book provides detailed explanations of the underlying models for layout, timing and animation. These sections benefit from the combined experience of the book's authors as leading members of the W3C standards group that developed the SMIL languages. Their understanding of the details is clearly beyond that of most other authors on this subject.

The book design itself is interesting and fun. Graphics in the margins mark the chapters, with key chapters featuring flipbook-like graphic "animations". It has a comfortable layout and organization and an excellent index. If I have a complaint, it is that I do not find the graphics summarizing syntax features to be very intuitive. Fortunately, the text and examples provide sufficient syntax reference.

Authors of web multimedia as well as academics and professionals integrating or implementing SMIL language features will find this an invaluable addition to their reference bookshelf - I strongly recommend it.