Authoring mutlimedia CDs on OSX

[Anonymous]

Im sure this has been discussed before, but could not find it doing a search.

Im interested in producing CD's (the shiny coasters we put in our PCs, not construction documents, ) which show various House Types with ArchiCAD 3D views, plans, spec and the like. maybe even a QTVR or movie or two

What application would be best to use to "author" these CD's
preferably a cost effective simple application that runs on OSX.

Thanks in advance

[Anonymous]

If you are looking to produce CDs for only OSX then check out SuperCard. If you want it to work on both OSX as well as windows, you will have to go the Director route, and find someone to compile the director movie on windows for you.

[Anonymous]

Am I right in thinking that SuperCard replaced HyperCard that came free with Macs many many years ago? Is this it?

[Anonymous]

Fraid the CD's would have to be compatible with Windows too, but thanks for the tip.

Director is that an Adobe or Macromedia product?

I think it might be a bit high end for me, im looking for something simple and low cost.

I believe abvent had an app called Katabounga but I think its now defunct. something like that would be ideal.

[Anonymous]

Hi Lennox,

people seem to forget the creative power of Adobe Acrobat, which not only produces documents readable on both platforms, but also offers a god array of tools to prepare great presentations.
Cheers
Francois

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply Francois, that would be the paid for version of acrobat would it? You wouldnt have a link to any presentation files done in acrobat on the web would you?
or anyone else?

[Anonymous]

There is also the less expensive Live Stage Studio Pro. ~500 dollars.

http://www.totallyhip.com/

95 percent of what you would use Director for is in Quicktime.. Quicktime is a multi-track movie player. You can have intereactive Flash tracks...etc. Toggle between one english sound track and a spanish one.

Live Stage Studio pro cost much less than Director when you consider you have to spend double for director if you want to create a dual platform interactive CD.

For more money there is iShell from Tribeworks.

http://www.tribeworks.com/products/ishell/index.asp.

I would go with Live Stage Studio pro. If your doing this for a a living where you have to create dyanmmic interactive cd that hook into databases, websites,...etc then Director is the way to go.

Jose

[Anonymous]

Why not just create your presentation in HTML. You can embed movie files and graphics and it will be viewable by anyone with a web browser. I personally like to create my web pages in Photoshop...export them through ImageReady (which comes with Photoshop) as HTML and then use Dreamweaver to do the links, rollovers, etc. The benefit of using photoshop and creating your page as one big JPEG is then when you slice it up, the formatting is locked in and will look the way you designed it.

Oh yeah, then when you have it done, just copy it all to your CD. I know there are even ways to get things to autorun when they are inserted, but that is beyond me.

Anyway, just a thought.

Joe

[Anonymous]

Thanks Joe

I have kind of been doing this in a very simplified way using the old Adobe Pagemill app in Mac OS9. I think I will pursue the html method. I know most apps now output html apps such as photshop, word etc. I will give these a try , and will also have a look at Dreamweaver.

Thanks for your comment.

Lennox

[Anonymous]

The problem with html is that there is no way to do system checks, to see if Quicktime is installed..etc. Having received an Html/flash based CD where the machine I had access to was a windows machine that had an older version of flash and a 56k connection. I realized why an html/flash version sucks.

End users want a brainless install. If quicktime is not installed then the app should auto load hte quicktime installer for them.

Today Macromedia announced Director MX 2004. This is the first version of director where you don't have to own both platforms to author cross platform CD's.

Just my two cents

Jose