Main Principles of Interactive Media Authoring

Interactive media authoring is a process of composing interactive media products with text, sound, video, vector graphics, animation and images for a wide variety of formats such as CD/DVD ROM, web, presentation, interactive TV and handheld devices. For instance, web developers use interactive media authoring to add interactivity and assets such as sound, video and motion to their web pages; educators use it to create interactive learning and distribute it over the web or on CD; developers use it to create games and distribute it on CD ROM or DVD ROM; animators use it to create animations and distribute it on streaming web movies. Interactive media applications such as web pages, animations, games and presentations are especially used in order to entertain and educate the end user. In marketing such applications are used in order to promote different products.

Interactive media products are created using a wide variety of authoring tools such as Adobe Flash, Adobe After Effects, Autodesk 3ds Max, Adobe Director and Adobe Dreamweaver. All of them have similar workspace which includes panels such as timeline, stage, menu bar, toolbar, properties, preferences, library and help. They also support scripting languages in order to produce complex interactivity especially required for games developing. For example, Adobe Flash supports ActionScript programming language and Adobe Director supports Lingo script. Interactivity can also be achieved by sound and video controls and mouse and keyboard events. Production process of interactive media products includes these steps:

1.      Learn – The most important part of the production process is discovering and understanding what technology to use for building interactive product according to the scope and goals of the project (client needs, target audience, content, publishing format, visual style). Considering ethical and legal issues such as copyright, confidentially, privacy, libel and decency

2.      Plan – The first step will act as a foundation of the planning step which includes researching, note taking, layout sketching, storyboarding, mood boards, and brainstorming

3.      Design - Creating assets for an interactive product such as text, sound, video, images and vector graphics

4.      Production/Testing – Creating an interactive product using an authoring tool and the relevant script as well as incorporating the assets. Testing includes improvements and modifications of the product.

5.      Launch/Publish – The developer uses file transfer protocol (FTP) in most cases to connect to the remote web server and upload the website from a local folder to make the page publicly accessible; or distribute the final product on a CD ROM or DVD ROM; or publish it on a TV.

6.      Maintain - During the planning process, the web developer should be in charge who will maintain the website

      Each interactive media format has some limitations. For instance, MPEG-1 standard is commonly distributed on a CD ROM. Its small video file perfectly fits the CD ROM. A CD is an audio/video container. Its content is limited to audio and video files with a particular compression. MP3 file format is an audio compression supported by a CD. Flash movies can also be distributed on a CD as they have small size. Flash Video File (FLV) is the most common video file format on the web. In order to view this file, the user has to download an Adobe Flash Player plug-in. Plug-ins help the browser to process particular content from the web. The download speed of web pages is very important as it is a part of the success of a web site. This way, there are limitations of the web page file size in order to optimize the download speed. If a web site loads slowly, the visitor will leave it.