Creating and Distributing New Media Content The process of creating a multimedia product usually results from the effort of a group of professionals who follow a multistep process. The development process involves defining the audience, designing the product, choosing development tools, creating content, multimedia authoring, and testing. Multimedia developers must gain a detailed understanding of the audience who will use the final product to make sure it will succeed. Using basic tools such as outlines and storyboards, designers lay out and organize the content and flow of the information for their products. Because a multimedia product can use so many types of media, designers use a wide variety of tools to create individual components, ranging from text editors to video editors. After the individual components of a multimedia product are created, the developer uses sophisticated multimedia authoring tools to assemble them into a single working program.
A wide range of new technologies has been created to support multimedia on CD-ROM and the Internet. These technologies enable developers to create sophisticated content using almost any type of medium and allow the end user to play the content in a seamless manner.
The MPEG, AVI, and QuickTime formats are just a few technologies that allow full-motion video files to be compressed and played back on a PC, whether from a CD or an Internet connection. The RealAudio and RealVideo formats are the current standard for streaming audio and video played over an Internet connection. Formats such as Macromedia's Shockwave allow developers to create entertaining, colorful animation that not only displays directly within a browser but also accepts input from the user.
Distributing New Media Content
The three primary means of distributing new media content are CD-ROM (or DVD-ROM), the Internet, and television. CD-ROM is the most widely used vehicle for distributing multimedia programs. Because of its storage capacity and ease of use, CD-ROM is used for games, references, CBTs, and many other types of multimedia products. The Internet is rapidly becoming an effective way to distribute new media content as new technologies emerge to enhance interactivity and performance. Television is seen as the ultimate multimedia delivery vehicle, but its interactive capabilities are limited. This limitation may change, however, as two-way Internet and satellite connections are integrated into television programming.
