Intention: to create a tutorial designed to take students through the Facts-Interpretation-Analysis process I use in all my classes. This must be something that can be accessed by students on-line, in both Internet and on-site sections. It must load easily and be trouble-free, both because the subject is so crucial and because on-site students are less willing to deal with technical problems than on-line students.
I have been trying to use PowerPoint. When I spoke to Greg Hope last semester, he had recommended that I look at PowerPoint because I wanted the text to move, not just appear as a slide. I have been creating a draft in PowerPoint and have noticed a couple of things:
With these things in mind, I am going to export each slide separately, hoping to retain the elements (moving text, individual image fade-ins) that drew me toward PowerPoint in the first place. Then I can at least control the audio codec by doing the voice narration in QuickTime.... Spending a lot of time here reading "QuickTime for the Web"! |
| Wrote the script in TextEdit. Set up my little PC microphone and recorded audio for each slide. |
OK, a tricky thing already. In QuickTime Pro, you add music/voice to a slide by selecting all of the visual slide, then using Add Scaled to paste the visual into the audio file. When I tried to do that with a song clip on Slide 1, it said I couldn't because it couldn't read the slide. When I looked at the properties of the slide, I noticed that PowerPoint had saved it as two tracks, a Basic and a Sprite track. I had to extract the Sprite track, then select it, then Add Scaled it into the music. I'll have to do this for each of the 24 slides. Sheesh..... PowerPoint is acting erratically, refusing to save some of the single-slide files, and saving others with improper backgrounds. I'm having to restart the program periodically..... So as to be an equal opportunity complainer (not just a Microsoft basher), my Appleworks timesheet won't open so I can't record my hours. I'm thinking to hell with it and I'll just put my timesheet in HTML too. Once I can get the file open.... |
With help from Willie Byrd and Mike Nolte, got the new microphone to work by adding some sort of impedence adapter he gave me and pulling out the 1/8" plug just a bit from the iMic. If in all the way, it doesn't work as well. I've now dragged Greg Hope into helping me compare the themes presentation for sound quality. Posted a couple of samples on the shared drive now that I've done some sound files with the new microphone. It sounds better to me when compressed, but I need another pair of ears to make sure it's worth re-recording the audio. Doesn't matter anyway, as I changed the script this morning, adding more slides to explain the inductive and deductive process of doing themes. Also have an e-mail in to Jeff Uhlik to try and find out what codecs Microsoft uses for PowerPoint.... |
| Set up the mike on my desk at San Elijo, and Alan brought me a microphone stand. Tested several files at different levels, then re-recorded all the slides. |
Well, this is getting fairly frustrating. I put together the whole presentation in its large size and it is indeed huge, around 84 MB. The frustration started when I tried to make the small version, and came to realize I'd have to do almost everything over: export each slide from PowerPoint in its smaller size, then put each one with the new sound file. I had to go back into Word to redo each of the text files because the size is encoded in each file; Word let me make the global change but kept crashing when I tried to save 24 files in a role. Microsoft KNOWS I'm on a Mac. Reply from Jeff indicated he couldn't help because he doesn't use Microsoft either. Can't say I blame him. Despite my bad attitude, I don't think I deliberately MAKE Word and PowerPoint crash. Plus, the files keep changing; PowerPoint retains the slide backgrounds most, but not all, of the time, so often I'm exporting the wrong thing. If a Microsoft program did dishes, it would break every sixth dish. |
| So upon opening the new smaller files, I note that some of the words are cut off at the top of the slide. This may well be on the text slides in the larger version (I'm afraid to look, since I already put the whole thing together and don't know if I'll even use the big one). Having to go back into PowerPoint to move little text boxes down and export again. This is turning into a 19-step process to create the slides. I'm thinking the time would be better spent pedagogically. I do not intend to use this cumbersome method once I'm done with this unit.... |
| More challenges. When I export the small version, which I have to do to combine the tracks, it compresses the text track and it's hard to read the words. Separating the text track would involve making a huge text track file with time counts. The question is whether to even bother, since the test versions are coming out too large anyway (7 MB for the first 10 slides). Perhaps I should just do one slide at a time, and let the student press the go-ahead arrow. I discussed this option with a colleague last week, who said he liked to control each slide. I was afraid to let students do this, but on a slow modem it might be easier to load one slide at a time. Would students really click on 26 slides in a row? Maybe I'll try a test version.... |
| Putting together an HTML version using Dreamweaver proved time efficient and produced a better product. This way, the student only downloads one slide at a time, inside the browser. A colleague I showed it to said I'm speaking too slowly now that the words are so clear on the screen, but I think I need to go very slowly because they have such trouble with these concepts. Besides, since it's now discrete web pages, they can just skip to the next slide if they don't need the audio. I'm thinking for long slide shows HTML pages might be the way to go.... |
| Cut-and-pasted my script into each HTML page. That should make it ADA compliant. Saved and uploaded. |
Considering adding some kind of self-grading quiz to the end, to make sure they did go through it all and really think about the process. Soooo much class time is spent explaining these same things.... Found a cool free javascript on the Internet to create a self-grading quiz as an form. Created a 5-question quiz. |
| Went back to the idea of having me as a talking head at the beginning, since students won't know me yet. Borrowed the DV camcorder from Media Services, and used a tripod to film footage of me. Then used a firewire cable to import footage into the computer, using iMovie, then editting it and adding it as a slide into the show. |
| Finally got to try it on a 56k modem. Forget it. It's way too slow. Each slide took 3 minutes to load. With the text right there, no one will wait. I wouldn't wait. Planning now to do a different "still" version for modems, without the groovy fadeouts and PowerPoint pseudo-fadeouts. This project is taking forever. It's titanic. |
| Made a whole HTML version without movement, and pared down the talking head section to just over 200 KB. Wanted to have the sound load automatically, but realized they might just read it and move on if I don't have a play button or something....I'll try it first with automatic load and test it to see if it's fast enough. But first, I'll have to re-record the audio, since Greg Hope and another colleague have made me aware that I'm talking too slowly (especially since the text is on the screen anyway). |
| Re-recorded each slide's sound again, speaking faster. It looks OK. Compressed each sound file. Then used Dreamweaver to recreate each page from the still images, with Javascript to load and play the sound automatically. I've lost all the animation doing this, but it should load and play quickly. It tests fine, but it's dull without the movement. Bought Flash MX for Dummies, and tried importing the PowerPoint animations, but it only wants to import from the .mov files, which don't look as good. Tried to get the movie imported, but couldn't get the audio in sync, even when being sure to do everything at the same frame rate. |
| Becoming determined that Flash will not beat me, I begin for the seventh time to try to learn the program. Read pertinent sections of Flash for Dummies, wielding a highlighting pen. Stayed up late to try to do it. Got the intro slide and first section, but the video won't work well. But I know I CAN DO IT now. |
| Read Dreamweaver appendix on Timelines. I figured it's a knock-down version of Flash, and it would be easier. Certainly sounded that way when I read it. Tried it for three hours before I realized that since it's just as hard as Flash, I might as well keep doing Flash. Took five tries to line up the first seven slides without gaps and weirdnesses. Wrote down some instructions for myself. Sometime around midnight realized I am bored. Lots of housekeeping moving individual frames around. But to my joy, the first seven slides exported at 80% quality with 20 kHz sound is only 324 KB. Everything I read about the extraordinary size advantage of swf compression seems to be true. Size DOES matter. |
| I'm giving up. Flash has reduced me to tears. I can't figure out how to add the keyframes properly and get things to tween, and it doesn't undo properly. I think I've got it, then I lose it. It'll work in one layer perfectly, then not on another. I guess my brain just can't hold the many rules in the order Flash wants them. There is nothing intuitive about it, and it can take hours to do just one little thing. I have no idea what to do. It took me 5 hours today to do two slides, and I still can't get the next one to work properly. I've kept notes on the whole process, writing things down when it works, and it still doesn't matter; I can't duplicate the success of one slide on another. This will take the whole rest of my sabbatical and when I'm done I'll have a product I have no idea how to change. Better go back to those sound files and figure out why the HTML version takes so long to load. |
| No, I'm not giving up. Started recording, step by step, exactly what I'm doing when it works. Felt I had a handle on it by bedtime. |
| Have separated it into two files, one with parts 1 & 2 (coming out at undre 600 KB) and part 3 (themes, coming out about the same). Frustrating not to be able to back up all the frames when I need to move everything up. Have created hundreds of layers to make everything move properly. Tweaking is hard, as the whole thing demonstrates both my weaknesses at the beginning and my learning it better as I went along (but I guess that's appropriate). It's all assembled finally, so I can just tweak now to make sure it goes faster and smoother. |
| Three full days tweaking it in Flash. Now I really need to make a tutorial for myself or I'm gonna forget how I did this! |
| Bloody hell. Tested it on a slow modem and the QuickTime version won't stay in synch while it's pseudo-streaming. I'll have to change it to not autostart and put it on a seperate page! Tried to change the settings when exporting from Flash, but it didn't work. Had to open each .mov file in QuickTime Pro, get Movie Properties, check Preload, then Save As. Nope, that didn't work. Went back into Flash, deselected Play Every Frame, tried with Quicktime sound but the file's too big, am already using Paused at Start. Can't figure out why this isn't working. The project, like the ship, is cursed. It's Flash or nothing. I'll add a button..... |
| The curse continues. Buttons in Flash are impossible. In finding out they were impossible, however, I have discovered that by moving the first frame of the music to frame two, then making frame one a Keyframe, then using Actions and setting Movie Control to Stop and Stop All Sounds, then Publishing in QuickTime using Pause at Start, I seem to be able to create a QuickTime version that starts still. Then QT controls can be used. This might be the beginning of the end of this project! Dare I hope....? |
| I have had to jettison the last link to the quiz. Apparently there is a known issue of Flash's "Get URL" command not working properly when exported to QuickTime. That's it. I'm done. |
Intentions: to create a "mood piece" demonstrating the first uses of film at the turn of the 20th century, which can show both interesting scenes and the state of movie-making at the time, accompanied by period music. This need not be "web size", since my intention is to use it in the classroom, making a smaller version available on-line but not assigned separately.
| Exploring American Memory website, and downloading clips. Finding music file that works. |
| Beginning work on the Edison project. LiveSlideShow, which would be much easier than QuickTime, doesn't do video, and this is all full-motion video. Going to try iMovie for this one.... |
| Enjoyed the iMovie experience up to the point where it crashed because I was out of room on my portable hard drive. This software seems to need a LOT of room to work, since there were hundreds of MBs of space on the drive. Now I need to clean out the drive. I ordered a DVD burner so I could save my big files off the drive, but it's tied up in PeopleSoft Financials since October or something. I'd better track it down. |
| I have no idea whether the subtitles I'm doing are going to compress and still be readable. Tried making them really big, but then they look stupid. I'll finish a huge draft and see what happens. The video clips I'm downloading from the Library of Congress are MPG files; I'm accessing the best quality they have but the file size is enormous. ... |
Well, for video at least, iMovie is a joy to work with, although it doesn't let you know what size the damn thing is till you Export. I've heard it has something called the "Ken Burns Effect" where you can pan and zoom on still photos, just like my documentary hero, Ken Burns. But I didn't get to use it, because it's all video. Tried to track down that DVD drive, and found out it never left the SPIT approval process. Ugh. Tried to find places to stash my files on the various hard drives, but to no avail. This makes it so I can't carry big projects back and forth, which slows me down. I'm the type of person who gets up at 2 am with a great idea, and now I'd have to go to campus to try it. ... |
Solved! It was approved by SPIT, so now we have to get me one. I copied a couple of big files to another computer to make some room in the meantime. I saved the movie as Movie - Self-contained from iMovie, then opened it in QuickTime Pro, then exported to Sorenson 3, high quality, 15 fps, keyframe every 30 frames. It took FOREVER to export (over an hour and a half) but it looks OK full size (720 x 480, at 102 MB). The first two clips look a little bright and hazy. The rest is good; the subtitles are OK though the San Franscisco one looks a bit strange. I'll export to half size and see how it goes... |
| It looks OK, but I'm unable to move that SF subtitle. Had to keep moving bits to get the show to line up with the music and not let the information scroll too fast. The amount of rendering time continues to be enormous for this big a file. |
| Trying to get the file size down, went to Media Services and discovered the "Media Editing" room which has a Mac and two programs that might help with compression: Cleaner 6 and Final Cut Pro. Worked with the student worker, Jim, and Brad Hinson to try compressing with Cleaner. Hard to figure out. Went home and downloaded the demo, and played with it for some time. Then went back and used Cleaner to compress it better. At first it kept coming out with zig-zag lines on it. I tried smaller clips to test, but it didn't help. It looked fine in Cleaner, but when opened in QuickTime it looked like the horizontal hold on a TV was haywire. I think it's the file type. I'm going to export the whole thing as a self-contained movie from iMovie first... |
| OK, that didn't work. I'm not sure Cleaner is recognizing the iMovie file, so I exported as a .mov with not as much compression, and now Cleaner seems to get it. Compressed it several times with different settings, but still got weirdness. So I stopped thinking I was smarter than the program and let it use its defaults for "Film". It worked! Smaller file sizes, not amazing, but OK, and very good quality. Exported different sized files. |
| Unhappy that subtitles aren't centered, and read on the web that I could help by adding spaces in front of each title. Went back in and did that, and edited a bit more as well, then exported again. |
| Using Greg Hope's suggestion, recorded an audio track within iMovie of me explaining the footage. Can't tell whether it's more like a second sountrack on a DVD movie or Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Better have someone take a look. Exported again. |
| Remembered I have to embed the link on the page in order for the movie to come up in the QuickTime Player, otherwise students can't resize it. That meant creating a "click here" image (I can't figure out how to embed from an anchor or text link!) to embed into. Noticed when I played it that the music is too loud on the narrated version. |
Intention: to create a slideshow for my modern Western Civilization classes (on-line and on-site) that will contrast the stately/dramatic/orderly/elegant/multistylistic forms of Baroque art and music with the moral/realistic/lyrical/formal/refined forms of Classical art and music.
| Cruising websites for art samples, I begin with Mark Harden's Artchive because he has been so nice to me in the past, giving me permission to use images. I quickly discover I can't get the variety I want, and need to access WebMuseum and other sites as well for material. Collecting images will take time, and I want the unit to flow from the material. The only pre-conceived notions I have about this unit is that I want to use some Handel for the baroque part and some Mozart for the classical part, since I use their music in the on-site class (playing it for them) and in the on-line also (selections on the first lecture page).... |
I'm starting to figure out the limitations of the software for this project. I want to use LiveSlideshow because it's easier to use and I'm thinking I'll want subtitles for hearing impaired students. What iMovie calls "subtitle" isn't a subtitle; it's superimposed on the video or image. There's no way to add black or white space under the image to put plain text. I don't want long narratives printed over the images of works of art. Then again, the music should be the heart of the audio. I'm not recording narration. And what I want to do in iMovie is that "Ken Burns effect". I could use it on Bernini's statue of St. Teresa. Of course, in LiveSlideshow I could use a succession of images to gradually pop out to a larger or smaller view. In thinking about it, the Baroque part should MOVE. Pan and zoom would make it move. Baroque is about drama. Thinking I'll make separate graphic slides with the text I need, and use small "subtitles" to identify each work only (superimposed, unfortunately). Ugh, it just occurred to me I'll have do to the whole thing twice again for different download speeds.... |
| I have the music, having used iMovie to insert and edit the segments after using SoundStudio to rip them. Dramatically, it would make perfect sense to create the sound file first, but then I'll be limited in the visuals. Guess I'll create a draft with visuals first. Shoot, I'll need those subtitles to tell them what music it is. No, wait, I can do that on the informational slides.... |
| Again, frustration with text movement. I made title slides in GraphicConverter. Then I made two similar slides, but with bottom text absent. Importing both slides into LiveSlideshow, I was able to do a cross-dissolve that made it look like the bottom text was fading in. But the .mov file it exported didn't seem to fade in iMovie. So I tried to put the slides in iMovie, but the Ken Burns Effect applied to both, making them move in a disconcerting way. Found out on the web that if I use the Esc key AS IT IMPORTS, it stops the effect. So for each slide I want to keep still, I must choose Import, then let it start importing, then press Esc while it imports. How cheesy. But when I tried the cross-dissolve, it seemed to work. |
| Have now discovered that slides look the wrong size because iMovie only understands 640 x 480 and those proportions. I may have to redo slides since they were 300 x 400, not quite the same.... |
| Oh no, I can tell it's going to be huge. To get the effect I want, I have to import each picture, do the Ken Burns thing, then split the clip at the playhead, insert the subtitle (so it doesn't come in during the panning too early), then do the transitions (cross dissolve). No, wait, it looks like I have to do the transitions before I split the playhead and add the title. This is going to be beaucoup megs! Eeek. Well, an export of the first few minutes was only 3 MB, so maybe it's OK.... |
| Figured out a trick. At the end of the pan and scan, it just stops. If I insert a still image of the same thing after the movement, it doesn't show the transition and stays still for a few seconds so you can look at it.... Doing it on all the slides now.... |
| Insanity, insanity. I'm not happy with the Ken Burns effect, because it pans on its own trajectory, often showing the edges beyond the painting before showing the complete painting if I start the pan in a corner. Have looked into other software (Photo to Movie, Still Life), but they run on 10.2. Have been on phone to AIS a lot trying to get upgrade to 10.2. That's getting complicated. If I'm lucky I'll have it by the time my sabbatical's over. |
| So, by looking in an iMovie book at Fry's (I didn't buy it) I figured out how to mimic the effect I want in this software by doing the panning in two sections. First I import the image, letting iMovie apply its Ken Burns Effect. Then I create the pan from the portion where I want to start, finishing at a middle zone. Then I copy this clip and hope I can reverse the clip to put the Finish spot as the Start, then zoom out to the whole picture. It kind of works, but keeps hanging iMovie. I'm having to restart the program a lot, and redo a lot of the importing and mucking about. It greys out the Ken Burns thing for no good reason. Found a web page that tells me it isn't me, it's the software! |
| Got desperate at midnight and paid for Still Life. Got it working and discoverd it stalls when the pan shifts direction. I'll write to the company, but figure I'm out $25 for being lazy. Coulda done a better job cutting, pasting, crashing, and restarting. |
| Exporting and re-exporting to try to find the best quality/file size balance. |
| Went back to the Media Editing room with my little hard drive and used Cleaner, but it didn't look any better and wasn't any smaller. Must be because there are so many stills. I'm going to leave the exported versions the way they are. |
| Having done it successfully with Edison, want to straighten out those damn subtitles in iMovie. I read they've fixed this but in iMovie 4, but I also read you don't want to switch versions of this software in the middle of a project. In doing so, discovered that you can change titles more easily than I thought. "Delete" erases the title only first, not the whole slide containing it, so pressing it once deletes only the title. "Update" makes the new title "stick." |
| Created a "sound only" version by opening sound track in QuickTime Pro, recording while watching movie in SoundStudio, then opening those files in QT and adding to sound track. |
Intention: to create a unit that makes it possible for students to connect course material to actual historical sites in England. This will be a free-standing unit with both external links to the websites of these places, and internal links to sections of the course. The History of England class is fully on-line.
| Finally got to work more thoroughly inside Dreamweaver itself. The first goal was to create a splash-screen or other fancy intro page from which students could link to pages and, ultimately, websites of historical sites in England. Researching a few of these sites was easy; England's historical places websites are plentiful and very well-done. Rather than making a huge list of URLs at this point, I'll just start on the images. |
| Scanning the photos has not proved so easy. I am using exclusively my own photos from my trip there in 1992, figuring they are good pictures and I'll avoid any copyright issues. My HP scanner does not like OS X. I have contacted HP and heard back with tips about unistalling and reinstalling software, but many of the scans have black horizontal lines across the left edge of the photos. This will not do! Ah, well, I've been wanting one of those all-in-one things anyway; maybe I'll get one for home and say goodbye to this one.... |
| OK, have purchased an Epson CX5200 at a bargain ($100), but although I followed the directions for OS 10.2, it doesn't work properly for printing. Scans OK, but I have to print too. I logged hours for fighting with the scanner because it was directly related to the project, but I'd better not for getting this worked out since the printing portion is for my personal rather than professional use. Am returning the machine to CompUSA because the hour on the tech support phone line led to the conclusion that I did everything right and there must be something wrong with the RAM in the machine.... |
| So having exchanged the all-in-one, and having it do exactly the same thing, I read on a website for Mac people a single forum entry saying that installing the scanner driver they tell you (5.75a) is not the best choice, and that if you're running 10.2 you should go to Epson's site and find TWAIN driver 1.28 instead. So, I uninstalled everything and reinstalled using this driver, even though it is not the printer driver and my problem is with printing and....it WORKS! I'm in business to scan my photos.... |
| A most joyful time using Dreamweaver MX. I thought it would be very difficult to create and image and have hotspots that change and link users elsewhere at the same time. It isn't! It took a long time to scan my photos and make a good composite, but using Dreamweaver I learned how to use the Javascripts Behaviors feature. I can exchange the whole image ("swap image") on a mouseover, then have a click to anything I want, like go to another page or even do a drop-down menu. I first tried the links to other pages, which was fine, but then I'd have to make a page for each topic (cathedrals, castles, etc.) when I'm really thinking it'd be better to get them to the sites as quickly as possible.... |
| The image with the drop-down menus looks terrific, very professional. But now I have a pedagogical problem: what is this sucker for? It's turned into a travelogue. Am considering re-doing the whole thing by period (i.e. by week for my 105 course) so that students can use a drop-down menu to go to sites related to that week's course material.... |
| Upon further consideration, this isn't necessary. After designing the whole thing in my head, it's occurred to me that really I could just link to these places from inside the lectures, where I already have the links. There simply isn't any need for a separate page, however lovely, where they can visit historical sites. Everything else they do is week by week, topical. Forget it. This will have to be the part of the project that didn't work. However, I don't think anything's been wasted here. I learned Javascript behaviors and can now make imagemaps with roll-overs and drop-down menus. It may be that such menus would be a better way for doing the syllabi for my online, and maybe even on-site, classes. It might be easier for students to just go to a week and drop down to assignments, lecture, quiz, etc. instead of "reading" a chart. Plus, I discovered that Dreamweaver can even use this feature to open up a precisely-sized browser window. Wish I'd known that before; I've been hand-coding little browser windows for when a student needs to reference the terms "fact", "significance" or "theme" from the quizzes. Now they could just mouse-over a term (instead of clicking) and such info could appear. So I'll use these skills again, just not for this. |
| Whoops! Caught at the last minute that some links don't work because I forget the "http://" so they revert to MiraCosta's error page. Last fix. |
Intention: to create a web-based overview of world societies for students entering History 101 (World History to the present). Most students entering 101 have not taken History 100, or badly need the review. This project will be based on a handout I've used successfully and shared with colleagues, called "Ways of Thinking", which reviews the salient points of each major civilization's society, religion, politics, economic, etc.
| I think my new skills might work for this one. Each of the six societies could have its own page, with images from each of its own traditions. When a student mouses over an area (religion, society, etc.) a box with the basic information would appear. This would make the unit interactive but quick.... |
| It works! I can use Fireworks to make the text seem to change color. Dreamweaver can use a Swap Image behavior AND also a layer. I tried the Pop-Up option, but it put the info at the top of the screen, and I want it next to the term. In other words, when a student mouses over "Economy", I want it to both change the color of the word (easy now that I know how) AND bring up a box with text. It took awhile to figure out I can do that by adding a Layer, then changing its background color so it seems to be on top of the main image.... |
That works so well I might even add a movie of me talking to the commands. But for now, I need a more professional looking image. I recall Jill Malone telling me that her Adobe Photoshop students need projects. I'm going to contact here and see if anyone would like to do a nifty international image..... Jill is getting me in contact with a potential designer from one of her classes. In the meantime, I wanted to put maps on each page showing the region. I found a map and saved it as a .gif file, but I wanted to change its color. Took forever to discover I can't figure out how to do this in Fireworks, so I tried Photoshop. Found a webpage where it shows how to change the color for an animation, and used its idea: use Adjustment Layer and adjust Hue/Saturation. Discovered I can change the color of the world map to anything I want (think I'll make it purple). Then I greyed out a smaller version that I can use on the individual pages. Figured out I can use the Lasso tool to draw a line around a region (India, Africa, etc.) and change only the color inside the lasso. I can now do that for all six regions!... |
Well, that didn't exactly work like I thought. It's better to make the whole map six times, just changing the one text area for each region. Actually, since I'm doing that anyway, I might as well highlight the geographic region both on each page and as hot links on the first page. Good idea..... Oh, I like it now! But I'm wondering how much text inputting I should do before I get the image from the Photoshop student. I suppose I can just resize the image to be close.... Uh oh, just got an idea. I could take all this stuff I'm learning and put IT on a webpage. I can use the Snapz screenshot program. Otherwise, I'm gonna forget how I did all this myself when I want to do it again, and if anyone ever asks me how I did something, I'd have a page about it already.... |
| Well, in creating the page to show how I was doing this, I figured out I was doing it wrong. Trying to highlight areas as hotspots AND make them layers doesn't work. What works is taking the whole image and copying it six times, then changing each one and having it Swap Image. So now I've succeeded in making a map for the first screen that works properly, and little maps for each page showing the geographic area. A little geography is always good! |
So I want the camera again to do talking head for each region, but Media Services doesn't want to give it to me for "importing" purposes only (re: Nolte's email). I explained I am using it as a camera, not just a converter, filming myself. Brad Hinson wrote back I can use it, but to get the footage into the computer to please come to Media Services and use the DV deck. Somehow I don't think my little 2-minute clips are gonna wear out their camera. Think I'll borrow elsewhere.... Borrowed a camera from another school. It's smaller and easier to use anyway. |
Downloading images, because the pages looked boring. Want to find things that represent each region as of 1500 (which I realized after trying a modern picture of Capetown for Africa and it looked all wrong!). The design is not professional looking enough, so I'm going to add a grey background. Think I'll superimpose the names of the civilizations on the image in the same script (Marker Felt) as the Javascript chart. I hope it goes with whatever Jill's student makes for me. Faded the opacity of the images, which took a bit of thinking. In Photoshop, it just opens as an image, but the opacity thing is greyed out. Figured out I have to open a new image on white, then copy and paste in the picture, then use the opacity slider on just that layer, then put the words on top. |
| Downloading and editting the music took a bit of time, but no great skill. Just acquired, imported into SoundStudio, saved as AIFF after fading it in and out and limiting size to about 13 seconds. Then opened in QuickTime and exported. A bit tricky finding that djembe music for Africa, though. |
Consulted with Greg to see what might be missing from this one, and he said I should make sure students can click for more information within the layers. I agree. But I'm having to figure out the Javascript to do that, since the layer disappears on MouseOut.... OK, sports fans, this may not thrill you but it thrills me. After despairing of learning JavaScript for real, I took a closer look at the code, thought a long while (like Pooh: "think, think, think"), then figured out that in the same onMouseOver code for each item, I can tell it to not only show the layer I want, but "hide" all the others. Oooh lah. Now when a student mouses over one item, say "philosophy", not only will the philosophy layer show up and stay there (so they can click on something in it), but all the other open layers will "hide". And I don't need to swap the image back, either. |
| Entered all the text into the project. Heard from Jill Malone's student, who is excited about the project. Went over parameters with him by email. Media Services doesn't want me to use the camera much, it seems. Afraid I'll wear it out imputing into the computer. Asked Jim Chardi if he'd be willing to film me in their studio for the talking head portion. He and Brad are amenable, but now Mike wants me to go back to using the camera myself. This is all very confusing. Seems like when I request something, I'm told there's not enough demand to be worth buying it, but when I use something, it's taken away because I might wear it out! |
| Am continuing to work with Jill's student, Jason, on creating an image. His first one just had pictures of India only, with the words of the other civilizations within it. We're emailing back and forth to get things right. On the talking head front, Media Services can't make up its mind. Jim Chardi offered to film me in the studio, and Brad said OK, but Mike Nolte doesn't want us to until it's discussed at a staff meeting. I'm so confused. Think I may go back to the idea of doing the footage at home. |
| Just remade my home page using the skills I've learned on this project, and learned something else while doing it. If I erase the height of a layer, it automatically is big or small enough. Now I have to go through the project again and do that. Plus, I had to remind myself to take out all the "on MouseOut"s or the layers don't stay up! |
| Filmed myself just to see if it would be OK. Had to find a cable and power cord to get it into the DV Bridge and then iMovie, then export full size from iMovie, then open in Quicktime, set at half size, open Fireworks to make the mask, apply it and up the volume in Quicktime, export, then open the small version and copy a frame into Fireworks, making sure I make it big enough to cover the tendency to show a controller, save as a poster movie, apply it to the code in Dreamweaver, then adjust the volume of the music so it's not too loud. Very very long day! |
| Turns out the movies of Lisa Headroom look squished, because I thought the proportion was 4:3, and iMovie's is actually 9:6. Had to redo all the masks, and volume again. Noticed my head fills the screen at the new mask, but I think that's OK; I'll redo it later if it bothers me by making the masks bigger (so long as they stay 9:6 it doesn't matter what size they are on the original 720x480 or 360x240 movie, since it all goes down to 180x120 anyway). Tried to add music with Javascript behavior, but then user couldn't turn it off. Fixed the music by keeping it embedded but not making it hidden and using a small 18x16 controller, so users can turn it off. Then moved the audio descriptor under that controls, centered the maps, added back links to the main map, cleaned stuff up. |
| Jason's pictures keep coming in. I am tweaking them in Photoshop. The text in them is cool, so I'm having to redo my own images at the top of each page, removing my text. I'm also having to do a lot of word to do the buttons, but I found out I *can* use his buttons. The trick is to take his full image, select a button, choose New Adjustment Layer, and adjust the hue to a different color. Then I can do the behaviors: Swap Image (do NOT Restore Image), Hide/Show Layers (hiding each layer except the one to Show). This may take awhile, but it's looking better. Also am changing the background to pick up the color from his new map. |
| Such a headache trying to figure out how to do the damn buttons. I want them on top of Jason's pictures, but to remain beautiful the file sizes of his images are so large. I want just the buttons to load when a student mouses over, not the whole image. Soooo....tried to learn slices in Fireworks and failed. Couldn't figure out why, in Dreamweaver, I couldn't get the layers to center. Had to go online and find out that you have to type in "100%" for the width. An empty width, unlike in other circumstances, will not cause a layer to take up the whole browser window on various-sized monitors. His map, unfortunately, is way too big; I'll have to use and adjust my own. So, the process has become opening the html document, put Jason's image on a layer, put the button bar on a layer with all its hotspot code, then open the Layers panel and use CMD-drag to put "child" layers under "parent" layers. Thus the image layer will control where the button bar layer goes, and the button bar layer has under it the layers with the information that come up with the mouseover. Sheesh. I never wanted to get into it this deeply....Plus, for ADA stuff, I'm having to use CSS styles to make all the italics the same color as the background so I can have an invisible text link that sighted students won't see. |
| The maps look wrong. The part that's being "highlighted" to show them the region is dimmer than the rest of the map once I "save for web" to reduce the colors. Tedious hours changing all the maps by using "fill" to make the areas red instead. |
| The pop-ups are off center. Tried different things to figure it out. A couple had paragraph markers, but finally I figured out that due to my screen size, the window was actually squished horizontally when I lined them up manually to the button bar. Spreading the window across the screen in Dreamweaver, and making sure the <center> tag was there when needed for the button bar image, made it so I could fix most of it manually. When Jason gets me the last picture, I'll be done. |
| I have the last picture, but when I tested the whole thing on Janeen's PC, the information layers are all too far to the right (on a Mac they tend to be too far to the left). Went through all of them again, roughly centering them and putting the topic title on each one in bold red. Then had to use tables to realign everything at the top, since the difference in screen resolution makes everything look sloppy on a PC monitor. Now it should work for everyone. Done. |
| Began search for two interactive tools that could become part of the units or be associated with them: blogs for discussion, javascript or hosted quiz programs for automatic quizzes Contacted my UCLA Multimedia professor, Steve Rossen, and began email exchange on tools and multimedia in general. |
| Redid my home page with the JavaScript rollovers and stuff I did in Photoshop. |