111 Techniques for Creating Media to Support an ILS Brandon Andrews Vice President of Production, NexLearn, LLC. Dean Fouquet VP of Media Development, NexLearn, LLC WWW.eLearningGuild.com
General 1. EVERYTHING MUST SUPPORT THE LEARNING OBJECTIVE(S). 2. Avoid filler. 3. Save, save, save. Save all the original files of your work. 4. Know the bandwidth. Don t waste your time on media that won t play for the student. 5. Don t overload. Students can only focus on one auditory and one visual element at a time. 6. The interface should not distract from the simulation. 7. The interface should be consistent. 8. Use text, rather than media, for information students will need to reference. 9. Feedback goes on the same screen it is referencing. 10. Simulation environments should reflect the student s real life experience. 11. Graphics should be presented at their natural size and at 72dpi. 12. Don t cover primary information with media. Audio 13. Don t use unnecessary background music or environmental sounds 14. Record in a quiet place. The more background noise you have, the more distortion you ll have when the file is compressed. 15. Make sure your audio levels match. Video 16. Avoid talking head video. 17. Compression + simple backgrounds + good lighting = smaller file sizes 18. Avoid panning the camera or other soft transitions. Keep it simple. 19. Avoid trendy wardrobe selections for on-screen characters. 20. Storyboard in advance. You ll save time and money in the studio if you know what and how you are going to record before you get in there. Photos www.fotolia.com www.photos.com www.istockphoto.com www.shutterstock.com www.liquidlibrary.com www.photospin.com Free imagery www.imageafter.com www.flickr.com Clip media www.clipart.com Sounds
www.soundrangers.com Ideas Fonts www.creativecow.net www.commarts.com www.dafonts.com www.1001freefonts.com Textures www.textureking.com Identify the audience, goals, learning objectives, and scope before beginning media work You should always plan your project details before beginning media production. Start with mockups and then proceed to finished media. Mockups allow you to work out the details of your visual media. Spend less time refining mockups and more time trying out ideas. Try to break your content into units, topics, and pages to help you organize your media needs. Get feedback from your team It helps a lot to get help from your team regarding your thoughts, ideas, and mockups. This may seem obvious, but so many times developers don't get enough feedback early on in the process. Plan to share your ideas with your team and co-workers right from the beginning of the project. Use the web for ideas and media The internet is a great place to get ideas for creating media. Look at what others are doing for ideas on your project. If someone else has a good solution, you can model your ideas around that example as a starting point. Use clipart and stock photography websites. A digital camera allows for easy mockups and finished media Using a digital camera will allow you to easily create media that can be modified or used as the basis for finished graphics. Popular photo editing software such as Photoshop allows you to manipulate digital photos into backgrounds, examples, and collages for use in your presentation. When using digital photography for mockups or placeholder graphics, don't get too caught up in the details. It s better to spend less time and get a build of the program up and running for early feedback from others. Create and use templates Depending on the length of your presentation, you should consider creating templates that you can reuse throughout the project. More time spent up-front planning and building templates will save more time on the back-end if you don't use templates. Photograph co-workers as your talent Using co-workers for your talent or as stand-ins will allow you to rapidly develop your characters for an immersive learning simulation. To get your talent to appear to be speaking, try the following: Have the talent say "Fine" to appear happy when speaking.
Have the talent say "Hey" to appear neutral when speaking. Have the talent say "Why" to appear upset when speaking. Don't forget the sound effects but make sure they don t distract the student Too many projects are produced without any consideration for sound effects. Consider stock sound effect libraries. Sound effects make presentations more engaging and give students feedback for their actions. Record your audio later in the project Audio voiceovers can be costly so make sure reviews and feedback has been given on your content prior to acquiring audio and voiceovers. Try to plan your project to be flexible enough to grow and change without requiring a re-shoot of video. Shoot your video last The bottom line is that video is expensive and time-consuming to create. Always make sure content is final before shooting, editing, or outsourcing video. Schedule adequate reviews and solicit feedback before video production begins. Use placeholder graphics with text in your projects during the review and early testing phases. This will help to prevent media re-shoots. Try to plan your project to be flexible enough to grow and change without requiring a re-shoot of video. (credit: www.mediacollege.com) Aliasing: Distortion of an image file or sound recording due to insufficient sampling or poor filtering. Aliased images appear as jagged edges, aliased audio produces a buzz. Alpha Channel: A special channel in some digital images reserved for transparency information. Ambient: The environmental conditions, e.g. surrounding light and sound. Aspect Ratio: The ratio of width to height of an image. Can be expressed as a number, or a relationship between two numbers. For example, the standard television screen ratio is 4:3 (4 units wide by 3 units high) or 1.33 (the width is 1.33 times the height). The new "wide screen" television ratio is 16:9 (1.78), and many new video cameras have the option to record using this format. Theatrical film aspect ratios vary, but the most common is 18.5:10 (1.85). Audio: Sound. Specifically, the range of frequencies which are perceptible by the human ear. Audio Dub: The process of adding audio to a video recording without disturbing the pictures. The original audio may be replaced, or kept and combined with the new audio. AVI: "Audio Video Interleaved". A common digital video format, in which the audio is interleaved as "packets", into the video frames. Bandwidth: A range of frequencies. Capture Card: A type of computer card with video and/or audio inputs which allows the computer to import an analogue signal and convert it to a digital file. Chroma Key: The process of replacing a particular colour in an image with a different image. The most common types of chroma keys are bluescreen and greenscreen. Codec: Short for compressor/decompressor. A tool which is used to reduce the size of a digital file. Can be software, hardware or a combination of both.
Compression: A method of reducing the size of a digital file, whilst retaining acceptable quality. This may be desirable in order to save memory space or to speed up access time. In the case of digital video, large files must be processed very quickly, and compression is still essential for playback on consumer-level computers. Professional digital systems can work with uncompressed video. There are many compression techniques in common use, and digital video often uses various combinations of techniques. Compression can be divided into two types: "lossless" and "lossy". As the names imply, lossless techniques retain all of the original information in a more efficient form, whereas lossy techniques discard or approximate some information. With lossy compression, there is an art to finding a compromise between acceptable quality loss, and file size reduction. Crossfade: A video and/or audio transition in which one shot/clip gradually fades into the next. Cut: An instantaneous transition from one shot to the next. DAT: Digital Audio Tape. Data Rate: The amount of data which is transferred per second. In a video file, this means the amount of data the file must transfer to be viewed at normal speed. In relation to optical disks, this means the amount of data which can be read or written per second. Digital: A signal which consists of a series of discreet values, as opposed to an analogue signal, which is made up of a continuous information stream. Digital Video Editing: Editing using digital video formats and computer software. Also known as non linear editing. Dissolve: A video transition in which one shot dissolves (fades) into the next. AKA mix or crossfade. DV: Digital Video. Edit: The process of assembling video clips, audio tracks, graphics and other source material into a presentable package. Fade: A transition to or from "nothing". In audio, to or from silence. In video, to or from a colour such as black. FPS: Frames Per Second. The number of video or film frames which are displayed each second. Frame Rate: The number of video or film frames displayed each second (frames per second; fps). PAL frame rate is 25 fps, NTSC is 30 fps, film is 24 fps. Green Screen: A film and video technique in which action is shot against a green screen, which is subsequently removed from the image and replaced with a different background. Interface: The point of contact between a tool and it's operator. A human/computer interface could be a keyboard or a mouse. Internet: If you don't know what the Internet is, you're in trouble. Intranet: A "closed-circuit internet". A local network of computers linked in much the same way as the wider internet. JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group. A standard for still-image compression. Key Frame: In some forms of digital compression, uncompressed frames (key frames) are placed at regular intervals (eg. every 6th frame is uncompressed). Each subsequent frame exists as variations on the keyframe, until a new keyframe is introduced. The further apart the keyframes, the worse the overall picture quality. LAN : Local Area Network. A network of computers connected via cables or a wireless system. Letterbox Format: In video and television, the practice of placing black bars at the top and bottom of the frame, in order to simulate a wide-screen format (as if the viewer were looking through the slot in a letterbox). Motion-JPEG: A digital video compression format based on the still image JPEG compression standard. MPEG: Moving Picture Coding Experts Group. A digital video compression standard.
NTSC: National Television Standards Commission. Video/broadcast standard used in the USA, Canada, Japan, Mexico, and other countries. Delivers 525 horizontal lines of resolution at 30 fps (frames per second). On-Line Edit: The final version of an edit, prepared in a professional edit facility. PAL: Phase Alternate Line. Video/broadcast standard developed in Germany, and used primarily in Europe and Australasia. Delivers 625 lines at 25 fps (frames per second). Pan: Horizontal camera movement. Pixel: Picture Element. Production: The process of creating a media product, or in some cases, the product itself. Quicktime: A digital media format originally developed for the Apple Computer range, but is now also available for other platforms. Resolution: The amount of detail in an image or signal. On a computer screen, the resolution is the number of pixels. In an analogue video signal, the resolution is the number of horizontal lines. In digital audio, the resolution is the number of samples per second. "Colour resolution" refers to the colour depth of an image, ie. how many colours are present. RGB: Red, Green and Blue. The primary colours of video. Rule of Thirds: A technique in camera framing where the frame is divided into imaginary sections to create reference points. Scene: In film, television or stage, all the action/shots which take place at a certain time and location and comprise a segment of the program. Shot: A continuous piece of video or film footage. Everything you get between pressing "record" and "stop". Teleprompter: Device which scrolls text on a screen, to provide cues for a television/video presenter. Tilt: Vertical camera movement, i.e. adjusting the framing up and down. Video: There are many definitions of video, most of them rather loose. It essentially means any medium which displays moving images electronically (as opposed to mechanical film). Wideshot (WS): A framing term, meaning a camera shot which shows the whole of the subject. WMA: Windows Media Audio file, a file format used for delivering digital audio. WMV: Windows Media Video file, a file format used for delivering digital video and audio. WMVHD: Windows Media Video file which features high-definition resolution. Zoom: Framing movement, in which the focal length of the zoom lens is altered to make the subject appear closer to, or further away from the camera. Note that this effect is similar, but not the same as moving the camera itself closer to or further away from the subject.