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Charlie Croker

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 7, 2010
59
0
It was difficult to know where to place this query but I'll put it in Digital Video for now.

A few years back, I used to develop interactive multimedia productions on DVD-ROM for the PC using software called Opus Pro XE by Digital Workshop (http://www.digitalworkshop.com/products/ProXE.shtml).

As I mainly work in video production and graphic design I haven't been called on for a while to produce a multimedia application, but I would like to be ready if I was asked to do so. Since the Opus Pro days, I have switched entirely to a Mac Pro based work flow. I do have Parallels available to me, so Windows isn't entirely out of the frame for production, so really I am keen to see what anyone has been using to get results in this field.

I am curious to know if there is software for the Mac that would do the same job. I have struggled to find anything so far beyond Flash which I don't want to use. HTML5 is on the rise, but I don't want to work entirely within a programmable environment, although I am not adverse to some programming for more complex aspects.

Adobe have an eLearning suite which is more or less what I want but then you have Flash, which causes iPad problems. http://www.adobe.com/products/elearningsuite.html - Adobe Captivate which is part of this suite is more or less their version of Opus Pro. http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html. Adobe now offer a HTML5 converter for this but you don't always get consistent results in this way, any comments on using this? http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate/2011/09/html5-converter-for-adobe-captivate-5-5-is-here.html

Obviously I am aware of the development side of the iPad for such multimedia productions, but really this has to be universal, working on the PC as well. If that is not possible, I would still be interested to hear of Mac-only related products or even PC-only.

This following production has been previously produced to my satisfaction using Opus Pro so I will use it as an example of what I might like the multimedia application to do.

A menu-driven series of multiple choice questions featuring video, with each video having the ability to be touch-responsive (pointer, hand), for locating something within the material (this is medical-oriented). The touch-responsive area moves with the video, as the target moves within the video. The video material would be very flexible in terms of rewind/fast forward and pausing, with no slow-down. The trainee would have data relating to their usage, statistics, scores, comments, all stored in a database. As such, this may only be truly useful if deliverable online - the data from the questionnaire would need to be stored centrally somewhere by who ever uses it for the supervisor to read. As the version I created on Opus Pro was a prototype, it never reached web stage, but worked nicely in house.

What approach would you use to deliver something like this? Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Captivate.

You can embed the whole presentation, video an all, into a pdf that can be viewed with acrobat reader (preview won't work). We use it at my office all the time.
 
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