Multimedia Corner

Multimedia on a Budget

The preparation of a full multimedia product often requires the latest high-speed hardware and expensive software. The most commonly available hardware in small businesses, and at home, will not support the large multimedia preparation packages. Even more modern equipment must have fast processors or accelerators to make developments run above a snail's pace. A good multimedia package, however, should support bit-mapped, presentation, and screen image graphics, as well as sound and text.

If you need e-publications on a budget, NeoSoft's "NeoBook Professional Multimedia Pack" may be the answer. The $170 suggested retail price includes four separate applications you can use in DOS, Windows, OS/2, or Windows 95. "NeoShow" is a full featured presentation graphics package. DOS screen capture is provided with "NeoGrab". "NeoPaint" is a bit-mapped paint graphics. The key application, "NeoBook Professional" creates interactive publications that include text, graphics, and sound.

The electronic publishing packaging includes features for interactive educational materials, electronic magazines, illustrated interactive books, and user controlled kiosk-type displays. Music or sound can be played through a sound card or PC speaker. Many object oriented commands like drag and drop are available within the package to make screen design easy and painless. Outside DOS-BASED word processors, image or animation editors and paint programs may be called from within the program.

The process for the creation of a multimedia product or presentation takes several steps. Voice and sound clips must be prepared using an external sound editor, and the "NeoShow" presentation program's audio recording feature. The system can accept any VOC compatible files. The presentation element can also be used to prepare any special effects like fade, wipe, dissolve, slide, blinds, explode, crush, spiral, and weave. Timed loop shows can also be created.

The "NeoPaint" can create color bit-mapped images using 2, 16, 256 or 16-million color resolutions. The element supports PCX, BMX, GIF, and TIFF file formats as inputs or outputs. The element can create 3-D extruded shapes with flood, tile, gradient, and color replacement fills. Images can be scaled, stretched, rotated, distorted, and cropped. "NeoGrab" integrates screen graphics into the paint programs' still graphics.

The "NeoBook" program allows you to take outputs of the presentation and paint programs to form completed multimedia publications. The program will also integrate FLI or FLC formatted animation and SNG formatted scripted music files into the electronic books. The package contains a compiler that combines all the inputs into an executable file that can be distributed, without royalty to NeoSoft.

The complete "NeoBook Professional" includes templates for product literature, electronic magazines and newsletters, kiosk display materials, catalogs, and tutorials. Artwork is included for wallpaper and icons for the interactive presentations. Three special fonts are also supplied to use in graphics and interaction buttons.

The program requires a PC with MS-DOS 3.1 or higher (DR-DOS and Novell DOS), 640 KB of RAM (EMS, EMS and virtual memory supported), 2 MB of hard disk space, an EGA, VGA, SVGA, or XGA compatible monitor, a mouse, a Sound Blaster compatible sound card and a 286-33 or faster computer. The system can be operated as a DOS program in Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or OS/2. For systems with device drivers, the program offers a number of EMS and XMS program load/operation modes.

The strengths of the "NeoBook Professional Pack" can also be considered its weakest points. Since it is a DOS-BASED application, it will be increasingly difficult to use as Windows 95 takes over the marketplace, and lower memory locations become filled with new bells and whistles. While the interface and manuals are good, they are not like the Windows controls which many have been trained to use. therefore the learning curve on this application may be a bit harder for some computer users. Nevertheless, the package has a big bang for your software buck. It is the cheapest full featured system we have found. Contributed by C. W. Mann, who also writes the syndicated computer column, BuzzBytes.

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