tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74086097803625571122024-02-20T03:09:02.931-08:00Thinking About Tomorrowflowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-72479054195819811452015-04-23T10:40:00.000-07:002015-10-27T10:39:41.779-07:00Footnotes and Endnotes in iBooks Author<span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em><br /></em></span><br />
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<img alt="wordcloud for endnotes" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/wordcloud-for-endnotes.jpg" height="457" width="450" /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em><br /></em></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em>Introduction.<br /></em></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">In a riff on the most famous foot-noter of all (Edward Gibbon, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” | </span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><u><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire">Wikipedia</a></u></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"> | </span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><u><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/731">Gutenberg</a></u></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">), Stanford alum Bruce Anderson delightfully chronicles “</span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><u><a href="https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=43122">The Decline and Fall of Footnotes</a></u></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">” only to conclude:<br /></span><span style="font: 21px Times, Georgia, Courier, serif;">More than anything, Gibbon should make us rethink our attitude toward footnotes and the attendant deathwatch. The emphasis in our schools has been to replicate the form rather than the content or style of a good footnote. We should remember that reading Gibbon without the footnotes is like listening to Mozart without the 16th notes; the music of each lacks its distinctive, ineffable magic when the little notes are taken away.<br /><br />Ideally, footnotes are also a graceful acknowledgement that today's community of scholars is linked to and dependent on yesterday's community. As Sir Isaac Newton modestly noted in a letter to Robert Hooke, "If I have seen further [than you and Descartes] it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants.” If Newton can be so generous, it should be easy for the modern scholar to acknowledge his or her intellectual debts.<br /><br />The very word "scholar" has its root in the Latin "schola" or "school" and bespeaks a community or network of people striving together for understanding. "Footnotes are reminders that scholarship is an intrinsically communal enterprise--building on, revising or replacing the work of predecessors," noted Kenneth L. Woodward in Newsweek. Scholars are not "Lone Rangers, going it alone."</span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br />Still, footnotes and endnotes in paper documents are a source of pain and suffering to readers and authors alike. Perhaps the digital era will bring relief.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em>The problem with notation in paper documents?</em></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br />Except for their location in a document, footnotes and endnotes are both used to achieve one or more of the following four objectives:<br /></span></div>
<ul class="(null)">
<li><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">To acknowledge the words and work of other authors - without attribution, it’s plagiarism.</span></li>
<li><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">To provide authority for assertions of fact and law.</span></li>
<li><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">To provide support for arguments or points of discussion.</span></li>
<li><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">To provide additional information or references which may be of interest to the reader but which are not central to the main text.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br />These are important and necessary, especially in academic writing.<br /><br />Because footnotes and endnotes in paper documents are physically separated from the text that they refer to, readers require help in correctly connecting them. This is usually done using matching pairs of superscripted numbers, asterisks or other symbols. One appears at the end of the word, phrase or block quote to which the note refers. The other appears to the immediate left of the note at the end of the page (footnote) or to the left of each item in a list of notes at the end of the book or chapter (endnotes). Given the 500 year history or print, this is apparently the best that can be done with paper and probably why Noel Coward quipped that, “Coming across a footnote is like going downstairs to answer the doorbell while making love.” (It is peculiar that footnotes should so often bring amorous intimacies to mind. The historian Philip Guedalla once remarked that Edward Gibbon lived out most of his sex life in his footnotes. [from Bruce Anderson, cited above])<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em>The promise of notation in digital documents.</em></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br />Because the modern eReader must contend with different orientations (portrait vs landscape) and a wide range of variously sized viewports, it would be quite difficult to develop a skeuomorphic rendition of traditional footnotes in documents that will only be read on digital devices. This calls for a change in our nomenclature. Hereinafter, we use the term “author note” to refer to the things that help digital authors pursue any of the four objectives enumerated above. The “author” qualifier is needed in order to distinguish their notes from the reader notes supported in many eReaders such as the iBooks app..<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em>The advent of </em></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em><u><a href="http://idpf.org/epub/30">ePub 3</a></u></em></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em>.</em></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br />Under the </span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><u><a href="http://idpf.org/epub/30">EPUB 3 standard</a></u></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">, author notation is handled via a </span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><u><a href="http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2012/05/creating-pop-up-footnotes-in-epub-3-and.html">pop-up</a></u></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"> that is invoked by the reader tapping on hyperlinked text. Thus, the context and association of such notation is much clearer to the reader without being as much of a distraction as a paper-based footnote would be. A popup note in an ePub 3 document may look like this in the iBooks app: </span><br />
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><img alt="Pop-up Notes in EPUB 3" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/pop-up-notes-in-epub-3.jpg" height="347" width="480" /><br /><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">Although superscripted numbers are used in the image above (screenshot taken from Apple’s “”Flowing Example 3.1), there is no need to do so. Because any text string can be used as the hyperlink that will invoke a notational pop-up. Using something longer such as “NOTE” or “REFERENCE” would certainly make it easier for readers to accurately tap these links.<br /><br />On Tuesday, May 22, 2012, Apple sent out an email to its iTunes Connect mailing list that included the following paragraph: <br /></span><span style="font: 21px Times, Georgia, Courier, serif;">EPUB 3 Support<br />iBooks and the iBookstore now support EPUB 3 for flowing books. EPUB 3 includes new features to enrich your book including the pop-up footnote functionality.</span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br /><br />In this context, the term “footnote” is a bit of a misnomer. The ePub 3 popup note in the iBooks eReader has nothing to do with the foot of a page. These are author notes. Apple probably reasoned that this skeuomorphic example would be more easily grasped, at least initially.<br /><br />Pop-up author notes are a good thing for readers in that they are now so much more easily and conveniently accessed. No longer must we correlate small superscripted numbers in the text with notes that appear at the bottom of the page (footnotes) or, worse, at the end of the book or chapter (endnotes). This is such an elegant alternative that I think we can conclude that footnotes and endnotes have been rendered obsolete by these new author notes and, thus, have no legitimate place in digital documents.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em>So how does one include author notes in an iBooks Author project?</em></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br />The Books Author application currently has no explicit provision for any kind of notation, modern or otherwise. There is no clearly developed and labeled way for an author to pursue any of the four purposes of author notation enumerated above. <br /><br />Consequently, users of the iBooks Author application have resorted to various workarounds that attempt to achieve some semblance of the author notation functionality readily available in ePub 3. Some of these methods are better than others but none are as good as a purpose-built author notation function by Apple could be. Some of the more popular of these workarounds include:<br /></span></div>
<ul class="(null)">
<li><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">Using the Pop-Over widget to simulate ePub 3 style popup note.</span></li>
<li><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">Using the hyperlink function to create a round trip endnotes experience</span></li>
<li><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">Re-purposing the Glossary</span></li>
<li><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;">Re-purposing Bookmarks</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br />Taking these in reverse order, the two re-purposing tactics are bad ideas because doing so precludes their conventional use and conflicts with common reader expectations. As well, we have better options.<br /><br />While endnotes are familiar, they are generally disliked by readers because using them is such a distraction. A digital implementation of endnotes can ease some of that pain with carefully constructed hyperlinks but the reader must still click through a unique round-trip path in order to maintain their “place.” Many readers simply ignore the endnotes. Here, too, we have better options.<br /><br />The best available workarounds make use of the iBooks Author Pop-Over Widget. Here are two ways to use the Pop-Over widget to implement author notes in iBooks Author. As we’ll see, each has a unique set of pros and cons. The hope of this blog post is that one or the other or both will tide you over until Apple provides something better.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><em>The visible graphic method:</em></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<img alt="visible graphic.002" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.002.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"> </span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Create a small graphic image that is wider than it is tall. It could be an icon (thought bubbles are popular) or an image of text as shown. I use “NOTE” but it could just as well be CITATION, EXAMPLE, REFERENCE, etc. as long as your convention is consistently applied throughout your book. Using all caps and sharply contrasting colors will also help the reader notice and understand what their options are. The example pictured is 54 x 28 pixels.</span></div>
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<span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><img alt="visible graphic.003" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.003.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">In landscape mode, go to the page where you want to place the “hot spot” that will invoke the author note and select the pop-over widget from the widgets menu.<br /></span></div>
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<img alt="visible graphic.004" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.004.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Drag and drop the small text image onto the pop-over widget.<br /></span></div>
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<img alt="visible graphic.005" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.005.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Insert the text and images that constitute your citation, reference, note etc. Note that the pop-over widget supports text, images and hyperlinks. Webpage hyperlinks enable external references. Internal hyperlinks can transport readers to a chapter, section, page number or any figure in the book but reader “place keeping” can become a thorny issue.<br /></span></div>
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<img alt="visible graphic.006" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.006.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">With the pop-over image selected, open the Wrap pane in the Inspector, uncheck "Object causes wrap" and use "Inline (moves with text)" for Object Placement.<br /></span></div>
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<img alt="visible graphic.007" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.007.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Drag the pop-over image to where you want it to appear, adjust and resize it (smaller) so that surrounding text formatting is not disrupted. Presenting the reader with a more easily tapped target can only be done by making this image wider. Height will be very constrained. It may be necessary to add spaces to separate this graphic from surrounding text.<br /></span></div>
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<img alt="visible graphic.008" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.008.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Close-up. The image is now 29 px wide by 15 px high.<br /></span></div>
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<img alt="visible graphic.009" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.009.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Landscape orientation. This will work in all orientations and will be impervious to subsequent text editing because the image will follow the text. Due to its small size, it may be difficult for some readers to tap accurately the first time. </span></div>
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<span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><img alt="visible graphic.010" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/visible-graphic.010.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Portrait orientation.</span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Pro: this works in either portrait or landscape orientation<br />Pro: this is not affected by subsequent editing<br />Con: the “hot spot” thus created may be difficult for some readers to tap accurately.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>The invisible graphic method:</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<img alt="invisible graphic.002" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.002.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Create a small, square graphic image. Use any solid color. I am using a black square *.png file that is 64 x 64 pixels.<br /></span></div>
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<img alt="invisible graphic.003" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.003.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">In landscape mode, go to the page where you want to place the “hot spot” that will invoke the author note and select the pop-over widget from the widgets menu.<br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="invisible graphic.004" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.004.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Drag and drop the small, solid color image onto the pop-over widget.<br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="invisible graphic.005" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.005.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 21px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Insert the text and images that constitute your citation, reference, note etc. Note that the pop-over widget supports text, images and hyperlinks. Webpage hyperlinks enable external references. Internal hyperlinks can transport readers to a chapter, section, page number or any figure in the book but reader “place keeping” can become a thorny issue.<br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="invisible graphic.006" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.006.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Add text that will serve as the “trigger” to this effect. In this example, I use </span><span style="color: #cc66ff; font: 22px Verdana, serif;">[NOTE]</span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">. This could be anything: CITATION, EXAMPLE, REFERENCE, etc. as long as your convention is consistently applied throughout your book. Using all caps and a different text color will also help the reader notice and understand what their options are.</span></div>
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<span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><img alt="invisible graphic.007" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.007.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><br /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">With the pop-over image selected, open the Wrap pane in the Inspector, uncheck "Object causes wrap" and select “Floating (doesn’t move with text)” for Object Placement.<br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><img alt="invisible graphic.008" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.008.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Drag the pop-over image on top of the [NOTE] text just created so that it is completely obscured. This will be the “hot spot” that invokes the pop-over author note.<br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="invisible graphic.009" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.009.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">With the pop-over image selected, use the Graphic pane of the Inspector to set the opacity of the pop-over graphic to zero. This will create the illusion that tapping on the target text invokes the author note.</span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="invisible graphic.010" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.010.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><br /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Now, clicking on the text string “[NOTE]” appears to invoke the author note pop-over. This is easily done because the invisible hot spot is large enough so that even the most “fat fingered” readers can still succeed in making the author note appear. That is, in landscape mode.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><img alt="invisible graphic.011" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.011.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><br /><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">This does not work in portrait mode. I’ve reset the opacity of the hot spot to 100% so that the movement of this otherwise invisible element away from the text “trigger” is apparent. This breaks the illusion. It is not currently possible to have a pop-over graphic this large and set to Inline (moves with text) …</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="invisible graphic.012" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.012.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">… that does not disrupt formatting.<br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="invisible graphic.013" class="imageStyle" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/invisible-graphic.013.jpg" height="359" width="480" /><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font: 12px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br />Thus, one should disable portrait mode in the inspector document pane.<br /><br />Pro: the footprint of the “hot spot” thus created can be much larger than the “target” text making it easier for readers to invoke an author note.<br />Con: this only works in landscape mode (portrait mode needs to be disabled)<br />Con: subsequent editing can mis-align hot spot and target.<br /></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;">These are the best workarounds I’ve been able to come up with but they both suffer from the fact that the “trigger” is a graphic object that was not designed to work with text. Text, of course, is what author notes always refer to.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>Identifying the best solution:</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /><br />Authors should not have to choose between readability and thorough exposition. As well, the reader should not have to struggle to keep their place. The Noel Coward quip needn’t be uttered or even thought of in the digital era.<br /><br />First, we consider what the reader’s experience should be like and then we can turn our attention to ways and means to achieve it. One thing is already clear. Authorial notes should be hyperlinked text, not graphic elements.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>… what should the reader experience be:</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /><br />The reader should …<br />… never loose their “place” when opting to find out what an author note has to say to them.<br />… be able to easily invoke an author note with a single operation regardless of screen size or orientation<br />… easily recognize an author note and be able to differentiate it from other kinds of hyperlinks<br />… be able to easily see what kind of authorial note it is in advance (this also speaks to accessibility requirements).<br /> • citation or reference - reference to source (enables location and verification)<br /> • discussion - supporting facts and reasoning (in greater depth than main text)<br /> • supplement - information or references facilitating further, in-depth study<br /> • example - case study, anecdotal information, etc.<br /> • evidence - tables/charts corroborating assertions in main text<br /> • aside - interesting or amusing corollary information<br /> • etc.<br />… be able to select and copy all content in author notes to be used elsewhere (e.g. reader notes, further study, research, etc.).<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>… how can Apple help authors meet these needs?</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /><br />The pop-up used in ePub 3 and the pop-over used in iBooks Author provide the ideal solution for assuring reader place holding while consulting author notes. As text-based hyperlinks, the author may employ a number of textual conventions to make it more easily recognized and invoked. With a pop-up, place holding and utility are assured because it appears in context and is easily dismissed. As text, the hyperlink will flow and respond to changes in font face, size and style. Color may be controlled in the template as is the case other types of hyperlinks.<br /><br />There are already six different types of hyperlinks in iBooks Author as follows:<br /><br />Web Page (URL)<br />Email Message (To: address, Subject)<br />Bookmark (Name)<br />Figure (In: Entire Book/Chapter, Style [9])<br />Chapter or Section (auto listed)<br />Page (type page number)<br /><br />Proposed is a seventh type of hyperlink, the author note:<br /><br />Author Note (no parameters, pop-up fully editable)<br /><br />This pop-up should accept text, images and selected widgets (Gallery, Media, Keynote, 3D and HTML) and include full screen options where appropriate.<br /><br />The reader will be able to select and copy text in an author note for use in verifying citations, re-purposing data, etc. Readers could incorporate some or all of this information in their Reader Notes and, because those can generate flash cards, incorporate that into their study routine. Hyperlinks to web-based references can be copied as well as followed. Returning from Safari to iBooks maintains the reader’s “place.”<br /><br />For scholars of every stripe, from student to tenured full professor, this is a much more productive environment.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>The problem of differentiating hyperlinks.</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /><br />With seven different types of hyperlinks, how is the reader to know in advance what kind of hyperlink it is and, in the case of author notes, what the purpose of that author note might be. Presently, the reader has only the color of the hyperlink to go on and several hyperlinks use the same color in many templates. Clearly, the reader needs more than this.<br /><br />Of course the author could implement conventions in a multi-touch book that provide readers with this needed information. For example, all hyperlinks could use square brackets to enclose explicitly titled hyperlinks such as the following examples:<br /></span><span style="color: #8000ff; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><u>[author note: citation for this block quote]<br />[author note: hyperlink to original source]<br />[author note: 3D model of xyz molecule]<br />[author note: HTML widget: opinion poll]</u></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #ff0080; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><u>[web page: in-depth info on xyz molecule]</u></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><u><br /></u></span><span style="color: blue; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><u>[chapter 2, section 1: examples of recursive routines]</u></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /><br />Another, possibly better, approach would be to implement alternate text and title (tool-tip) text for hyperlinks in multi-touch books just as with images and hyperlinks in web pages. In this case, iBooks Author would present a user interface for author notes and other hyperlinks that would include fields for alternate and title text. Sighted readers would tap and hold the hyperlink to see tooltip-like title text whereas visually impaired readers would hear the alt text read to them and have the option of following the hyperlink or not.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>The problem of one-way hyperlinks.</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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Although this isn’t an issue with the proposed author notes hyperlink because that hyperlink uses an in situ pop-up or with web page hyperlinks because the Safari handoff always returns to the point or origin, other kinds of hyperlinks (figure, bookmark, chapter or section, pages) cause place holding and user interface consistency issues by failing to provide for round-trip passage. Once transported to another part of the book, the reader has no way to return the reader to where they were.</div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br />Authors can engineer a round-trip experience with these problematic hyperlinks if and only if there is but one link to that other place in the book. In that case, the author can create a hyperlink back to the originating page. However, if there is more than one hyperlink to that specific other place in the book, the author cannot know which link brought the reader there and, so, cannot devise a return path.<br /><br />A possible solution to this is to have yet another new kind of hyperlink, the Return hyperlink. Whenever a one-way hyperlink is used, the author is additionally prompted to create a Return link at the destination by entering the text of that Return hyperlink. <br /><br />In the iBooks app, tapping a Return hyperlink will consult the history file identifying the last hyperlink used and return the reader there.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>The problem of un-hidden resource pages.</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /><br />For some books, the author wishes to provide resources that can only be accessed from a certain place in the book. The information presented might be confusing or difficult to understand if it is encountered out of context. <br /><br />Hidden pages that can only be accessed via a hyperlink would help the author avoid this unwanted outcome. A Return link would be absolutely essential less the reader become stranded on a hidden page.<br /><br />Such a feature could be an effective alternative to pop-up author notes where the author has a great deal of additional content to share with the reader.<br /><br />Placing a suggested reading page on a hyperlinked hidden page might be useful as a way to postpone the readers interaction with it until after the content exposition has been largely or mostly completed. <br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>Summary of Feature Requests:</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b>Author Note.</b> This primary feature request calls for a new kind of hyperlink called Author Note. This text-based hyperlink will invoke a pop-up that is similar in appearance to the pop-over. The pop-up author note can contain text, images and selected widgets (Gallery, Media, Keynote, 3D and HTML) and include full screen options where appropriate. Readers will be able to select and copy all or any part of the contents of an author note for use elsewhere in the book (reader notes) or outside the book.</div>
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<span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Return Hyperlink.</span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"> The return hyperlink option is invoked whenever the author opts to use a hyperlink that will transport the reader to another part of the book. The author will have the option of using this feature or not and specifying the text of the hyperlink.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;">Hidden Pages.</span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"> Authors will have the ability to create hidden chapters, sections and pages that will only be accessible via hyperlink. The return hyperlink will be an essential companion feature to this.<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-weight: bold; font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><em>Taking action:</em></span><span style="font: 22px Verdana, serif;"><br /><br />If you agree that some or all of these enhancements requests would be good for you and other iBooks Author users, here’s what to do.<br /><br />In iBooks Author, go to the iBooks Author menu (upper left corner of screen, just to the right of the Apple menu) and select Provide iBooks Author Feedback. Fill out the form and feel free to select, copy and paste from here if you like.</span></div>
flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-2554938671626467222015-02-24T09:32:00.000-08:002015-03-02T16:31:22.041-08:00Optimizing iPad Video for iBooks Author and Pages<span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; ">Including video in an eBook, especially an eTextbook, has become essential and expected. If a still image is worth a thousand words, then the potential explanatory power of an image moving at 30 frames per second must be exponentially greater. Getting from potential to actual value, however, requires compelling content and clear, efficient video.<br /><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="LifeOnEarthIntroVideo" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/lifeonearthintrovideo.jpg" width="480" height="378" /><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br />The preeminent tools for creating eBooks and eTextbooks containing video are iBooks Author and Pages, both from Apple. The iBooks Author app comes bundled with MacOS X which is free and Pages comes bundled at no extra cost with all new Macs. There are no other apps on any platform that match both the affordability and ease of use of Pages and iBooks Author.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="iBA&#38;PagesIcons.001" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/iba0026pagesicons.001-2.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br />However, there have been issues with the way these apps have handled eBook video in the past. Some of those issues have been documented here. This post is a re-examination of those issues to assess the current state of video in eBooks produced by these two apps. Have things gotten better, remained unchanged or gotten worse? That is the question.<br /><br />The iBooks Author (iBA) application has had difficulty handling video efficiently. In version 1.0, authors had to meet very strict and vague encoding requirements in order to avoid rejection of a video file. In succeeding versions, Apple addressed the many issues arising from this situation by incorporating a video optimizing routine that would re-encode any video brought into an iBA project via the Media widget. Early versions of this new functionality solved the problems that authors were having with video encoding for their eBook projects but they did so by making those video files unnecessarily large. It was quite common for a video file to become three times larger than the original after being “optimized” in iBooks Author.<br /><br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/encoding-for-ibooks-author-webinar-download-free-proof-of-concept-ibook.html" rel="external">Jan Ozer</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "> developed a clever way to circumvent the iBA video optimizer using custom presets for the </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://handbrake.fr" rel="external">Handbrake video transcoder</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "> and he offered how-to workshops on that tactic. In June of 2014, however, Apple updated iBA and rendered this workaround ineffective.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Ozer iBA Workshop" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ozer-iba-workshop.jpg" width="480" height="183" /><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br />The current version of iBA (2.2) was released in October of 2014. The status of the video optimizer has never been referenced in any iBooks Author version history or Read Me file. Our knowledge of it has only come about by comparing input to output and then inferring what goes on within the innards this black box.<br /><br />Even less well known is the history of video handling in the Pages application. The current version of Pages (5.5.2) has an export to ePub function which silently and invisibly invokes a video optimizer that, like iBA, calls upon system-level routines such as AVConvert to optimize your media files.” Pages seems to have followed iBooks Author with respect to handling the inclusion of video in eBooks without requiring authors to become expert in the art of video compression.<br /><br />So with the increasing importance of video in eBooks and especially in eTextbooks, it is important to stay abreast of the ways in which Apple’s iBooks Author produces *.ibooks files containing video and how Apple’s Pages produces *.epub files containing video even if Apple isn’t very forthcoming on the topic.<br /><br />METHODOLOGY<br /><br />Both Pages and iBooks Author output eBooks (*.epub or *.ibooks files) that share the same architecture. Each eBook is actually a collection of various files and folders in an enclosing folder that has been archived using the Zip standard. The suffix of the resulting *.zip file is then changed to *.epub or *.ibooks which enables eReaders to know that they can be rendered as eBooks. The free </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://code.google.com/p/epub-applescripts/downloads/detail?name=ePub%20Zip%20Unzip%202.0.1.app.zip&can=2&q=" rel="external">ePub Zip/Unzip</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "> application handles this chore very nicely.<br /><br />It’s being able to “look inside” that enables us to see what these video optimizers have done to the video we provided, comparing input to output, before to after. An inexpensive ($0.99) app named </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mediainfo/id510620098?mt=12" rel="external">MediaInfo</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "> provides us with detailed information on each version of the video we wish to examine. Less information can be gotten for free by using QuickTime X Player’s Get Info function.<br /><br />So our methodology is to bring video files into our iBA and Pages projects, export as *.ibooks or *.epub, then deconstruct the resulting eBook by unzipping it, finding the video files, developing information about those files and, finally, comparing and analyzing the differences.<br /><br />DETAILED RESULTS<br /><br />Raw data, including test videos, with detailed analyses may be found in the following </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://podcasting.usg.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/GCSU/Episodes/24423/486781766.ibooks" rel="self">eTextbook</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "> created with iBooks Author. Download this *.ibooks file and read it with the iBooks app on an iPad 2 or newer or a MacOS X 10.9 or newer computer. This volume will illustrate by examples precisely how the current (2.2) version of iBooks Author handles ingested video. It will also document what Pages does to ingested video. <br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="eTextbook" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/etextbook.jpg" width="480" height="378" /><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; ">EXECUTIVE SUMMARY<br /><br />The iBooks Author (iBA) application has improved video handling to the point where corrective action after export is no longer warranted or recommended. The media optimizer in iBA 2.2 will increase file size only slightly over what was ingested. However, optimizing video with Handbrake prior to ingestion produced significantly smaller video files of equivalent quality and this is recommended as current best practice. The eTextbook cited above contains a link to the custom Handbrake preset used in these investigations with instructions on how to import it into the Handbrake app and use it.<br /><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Boy with Big Book" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/boy-with-big-book.png" width="480" height="320" /><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br />The Pages app, unfortunately, has not improved as much. Video files ingested by Pages 5.5.2 are typically inflated to three times their original size or more. The best practice response to this unfortunate situation is to use the deconstruction techniques used in this investigation to replace the inflated video file with a version encoded by Handbrake using the aforementioned preset. Stepwise instructions on how to do this are found in the eTextbook cited above.<br /><br /><br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-22525348430350362142014-12-24T13:51:00.000-08:002015-03-01T11:54:17.216-08:00Video Bloat in Pages ePub Exports and How to Fix It<span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Pages 5.5.1 for MacOS X has an excellent ePub export option. That export option includes elements of ePub 3 such as embedded audio and video so Pages, being free with MacOS X, is a very attractive application for teachers at all levels who want to create eTextbooks containing rich media. However, there is a problem with Pages ePub video that this blog post will identify, document and provide solutions for. First, the problem statement.<br />Starting with Apple’s ePub template, we create a test project. To follow along, download the “ePub best practices” document from Apple’s “</span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202066" rel="external">Creating ePub files with Pages</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">” support document, open it in Pages and do File > Save as template … which makes this template available to us now and in the future. <br />After we have the template saved, we add a 75 MB 1280 X 720 video with a duration of 5 minutes and 36 seconds (</span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/VideoBloatInPages/ChartingCulture.mp4.zip" rel="self">download</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">) to the still open Pages document. It now looks like this:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.001" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.001.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">The next step is to export this document as an ePub (File > Export To > ePub …). As we look at the output of this process in the Finder, we see that the ePub is about 280 MB despite the fact that the parent file, the Pages project, is only 80 MB in size. Here’s what that looks like:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.002" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.002.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">As far as I know, there is no application that can add useful data to source video. So, what is going on? Could this be an instance of unnecessary …<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.003" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.003.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">… video bloat? The following delves into how to investigate that possibility. The first step in that investigation is to </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="https://code.google.com/p/epub-applescripts/downloads/detail?name=ePub%20Zip%20Unzip%202.0.1.app.zip&can=2&q=" rel="self">download ePub Zip Unzip</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> so that we may peer inside the ePub file structure, find the video file and compare it with the original that was initially fed to Pages. This app has a very simple user interface that looks like this:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.004" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.004.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">The reality of an ePub file is that it is actually what is called a package file, a folder containing a variety of files that has been archived into a single file using the Zip compression algorithm. What ePub Zip Unzip does in this first step is simply to unzip the file into the folder it started out as. Once we have unzipped the ePub file, we can open this folder and examine its contents. Specifically, we’re interested in the video media because this is the only thing that we added to the Pages project beyond the template itself. Here is what we see:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.005" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.005.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Clearly, we are looking at an instance of file bloat. The video file has grown more than 200 MB beyond its original size. This is not likely to be an improvement. To determine why this is so, we turn to another free, open source app called </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download/Mac_OS" rel="external">MediaInfo</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">. Note that QuickTime X Player will also provide the most essential of this data but MediaInfo can provide additional data that is very useful to advanced users. Here’s what MediaInfo says about the original file:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.006" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.006.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">… and the video file exported by Pages:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.007" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.007.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Here’s a table summarizing this analysis:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.008" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.008.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">The change in suffix from .mp4 to .m4v is inconsequential but the change in bit rate is key. The bit rate is 3.5 times greater than the source file! This is precisely what has inflated the file size. The formula for file size is bit rate times duration. So, will our readers benefit from this larger, longer to download file? Let’s see.<br /><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/VideoBloatInPages/index.html" width=660 height=500 frameborder="0"><br /></iframe><span style="font:14px Verdana-Italic; color:#000000;"><em><br /></em></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:13px Verdana-Italic; color:#000000;"><em>Link to full size version of this video: </em></span><a href="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/VideoBloatInPages/index2.html" target="_blank">click here</a><span style="font:13px Verdana, serif; "> (opens in a new window)</span><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br />Quite frankly, I see no improvement. Certainly not an improvement justifying an additional 200 MB in file size.<br /><br />So that’s the problem. Now, how do we fix it? We already have some terrific clues. We have the ePub on the operating table and opened up so we can see and operate upon all of the internals. Why not try to replace the bloated video with the more efficient one that we started with. Here’s how:<br /><br />First, we move the better file into the same location as the bloated version. Note that they have different names. This complicates things just a little bit. So copy the good video into the same folder as the bad video, like this:<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.010" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.010.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br />This is a simple drag and drop operation in the Finder. Next, we copy the full name of the bad video like so:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><br /></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.011" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.011.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Move the bad (bloated) file to the trash like so:<br /></span><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.012" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.012.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Select and paste the name of the bad (bloated) file renaming the good file like so:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.013" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.013.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">Accept the change in the file suffix like so:</span><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.014" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.014.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Zip the folder back into an .ePub file like so:<br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.015" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.015.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">Enjoy the success of having reduced the file size of your ePub.<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="Video Quality Blog Post.016" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/video-quality-blog-post.016.jpg" width="480" height="359" /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">Test the results in the iBooks.app to confirm that success.<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font:27px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-64359909398082730972014-11-22T08:52:00.000-08:002014-11-24T17:17:46.044-08:00Using Keynote and Automator for Rapid Screencasting<span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Automator-based automation in MacOS X 10.10 has a number of important improvements. New</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://iworkautomation.com/keynote/automator/document-actions-01.html" rel="self">Keynote actions for Automator</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> are among them. There are Document Actions (9), Slide Actions (9), Image Actions (2), Chart Actions (1), and Workflow Recipes (6). You can </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://iworkautomation.com/keynote/automator/KeynoteActions.zip" rel="self">download</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> a Master Installer for these Keynote Actions. There are also a number of </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://iworkautomation.com/keynote/document-make.html" rel="self">Keynote AppleScript commands</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> that can be used. <br />Among the Document Actions is “Present Slideshow with Narration” which more easily provides the functionality that I described in an earlier post, “</span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="http://frank-lowney.blogspot.com/2014/06/recording-self-presenting-presentation.html" rel="external">Recording the Self-presenting Presentation</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">.” Thus, rapid screencasting of narrated Keynote presentations is now faster and easier than ever as long as you are OK with choosing only one voice for the entire narration. If not, you’ll need to use the method described in the earlier post if you want to change voices on a slide-by-slide basis. The reason that we’re so interested in screencasting here is that screencasts make excellent instructional videos to include in our eBooks and eTextbooks.<br />So, how fast is this? The following screencast answers this question better than any number of words.<br /><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="660" height="380" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/PresentSlideshowWithNarration/index.html" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe><span style="font:11px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br />Download the 1280 X 800 version of this video with a control/right-click </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://podcasting.usg.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/GCSU/Episodes/13864/3467187.mp4" rel="self">here</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">. Choose “Download linked file as …” naming it “PresentSlideshowWithNarration” or something else that is intuitive for you.<br /><br />And how easy is this? Here’s a stepwise description of what the set-up process looks like. <br />1) </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://iworkautomation.com/keynote/automator/installers/Narrated-Presentation-Workflow.zip" rel="self">Download</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> the example archive. It will have the name “Narrated-Presentation-Workflow.zip” which you should unpack with a double-click to reveal a folder named, “Narrated-Presentation-Workflow.” The contents of that folder should look like this in list view:<br /><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><img class="imageStyle" alt="Demo Files" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/demo-files.png" width="480" height="163" /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br />2) Run the installer named “Install Workflows.app.” It should let you know exactly what it is about to do and alert you to the fact that this operation will require the approval of an administrative user of that computer.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><img class="imageStyle" alt="Install Warning" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/install-warning.png" width="480" height="316" /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br />… followed by a completion message that looks like this:<br /><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><img class="imageStyle" alt="Install Complete" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/install-complete.png" width="480" height="439" /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Note that all the operations cited above are done only once. You will have the capacity of auto narrating any Keynote file containing presenter notes from now on simply by opening a Keynote file that has presenter notes and then selecting “Narrate Frontmost Presentation” from the script menu in MacOS X 10.10 just as depicted in the screencast above.<br /><br />3) Unpack “narratorpresentation-file.zip” to reveal a folder named “Demo Files” containing a Keynote file named, “Wind Energy in America.key.” We’ll use this to demonstrate how quick and easy this process is once it is installed.<br /><br />Before turning on your screen recording software (e.g. ScreenFlow), it’s usually a good idea to audition the narration and make any necessary changes to the presenter notes such as adding speech commands (e.g. [[slnc nnn]], and using phonetic misspelling and extra punctuation to achieve a more natural sounding narration.<br /><br />4) To see how easy this will be in future, simply audition the presentation by opening this demo Keynote slideshow and then selecting “Narrate Frontmost Presentation” from Keynote scripts in the Scripts Menu as follows:<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><img class="imageStyle" alt="Select Present From Script Menu" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/select--present-from-script-menu.jpg" width="480" height="219" /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">Note that Keynote Scripts are only available when Keynote is frontmost and there is at least one presentation open. Should you wish to change any of the default behaviors of this workflow, simply hold down the Option key while selecting this workflow. This will present the workflow in Automator allowing to to change any or all of the defaults. Here’s how that will appear:<br /><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><img class="imageStyle" alt="Automator Workflow" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/automator-workflow.png" width="480" height="424" /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br />Those are the essentials. From this point forward, simply start your screen recording software first and then, with Keynote in the forefront, select the Record Frontmost Presentation from the script menu, sit back, relax and listen to the narrator recite your script. When recording is done, just trim the beginning and end and you are done.<br /><br />To understand </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://iworkautomation.com/keynote/automator/document-actions-08.html" rel="self">how this workflow was developed</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">, read all about it on the iworksautomation site. Note the role of commands such as such as [[adv]]. In addition to that, you may also use the techniques described in </span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://frank-lowney.blogspot.com/2014/06/recording-self-presenting-presentation.html" rel="self">the earlier post</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> such as phonetic misspelling and the other text-to-speech commands that can make the narrator seem more human. The Apple document, “</span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/userexperience/Conceptual/SpeechSynthesisProgrammingGuide/FineTuning/FineTuning.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40004365-CH5-SW3" rel="external">Techniques for Customizing Synthesized Speech</a></span><span style="font:17px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">” (2006) is the most complete and recent reference on the subject of improving the realism of synthesized speech that I can find. It was written for API developers, not content developers so you’ll need to read selectively.<br /><br />In addition to doing screencasts for your own eBooks and eTextbooks, you might also consider student assignments that call for Keynote presentations with presenter notes. Once students have turned those presentations in and let you know which of the many MacOS X voices they prefer, a student authored eBook or eTextbook would be easily assembled from the resulting screencast videos.</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-78867891055086286822014-06-21T13:50:00.000-07:002014-06-21T15:39:12.402-07:00Recording the Self-presenting Presentation<span style="font-size:17px; ">If you watched the screencast video in my last post, "Free Voice Talent ..." you may have noticed that I used a TTS voice for parts of the presentation. What is not evident is the fact that this recorded presentation was entirely automatic, including the human and TTS narration. It was a self-presenting presentation. <br /><br />Here's how it is done using only ScreenFlow, Keynote, Applescript and Apple's built-in text to speech (TTS) capabilities.<br /><br />We start by creating a Keynote presentation and making the presenter's notes visible with View > Show Presenter Notes which looks like this:<br /><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="CreatePresentationWithNotes" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/createpresentationwithnotes.jpg" width="480" height="295" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">Next, we create a slide in the Keynote deck using the presenter notes to script the narration for that slide. Repeat until you have laid out all visual and narrative aspects of your message.<br /><br />At this point, we need to develop an Applescript application that will launch Keynote and cause the presenter notes to be read with a TTS voice. So, go to /Applications/Utilities, open Applescript Editor. Copy and paste in the following script:<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">property</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">defaultSlideDuraton</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> : 2<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">property</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">pauseBeforeSpeaking</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> : 1.5<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">property</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">stoppingStatement</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> : "[[slnc 1000]] Stopping presentation."<br /><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">tell</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>application</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> "Keynote"<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">activate</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">try</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">not</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> (</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">exists</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>document</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> 1) </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">error</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#0000FF;">number</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> -128<br /> <br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#6C05D3;">playing</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">is</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#6C05D3;"><em>true</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">stop</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">the</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">front</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>document</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> <br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">tell</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>document</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> 1<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">set</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">the</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">slideCount</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">to</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">the</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">count</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">of</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>slides</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">start from</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">first</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>slide</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">tell</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">repeat</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">with</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">i</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">from</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> 1 </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">to</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">the</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">slideCount</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#6C05D3;">playing</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">is</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#6C05D3;"><em>false</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">my</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">speakSlideNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">(</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">stoppingStatement</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">)<br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">error</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#0000FF;">number</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> -128<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">tell</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>document</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> 1<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">set</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">to</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#6C05D3;">presenter notes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">of</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>slide</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">i</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">tell</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">is</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> "" </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">delay</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">defaultSlideDuraton</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">else</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">pauseBeforeSpeaking</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">is</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">not</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> 0 </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">delay</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">pauseBeforeSpeaking</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">my</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">speakSlideNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">(</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">)<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">i</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">is</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">slideCount</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">exit</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">repeat</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">else</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#6C05D3;">playing</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">is</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#6C05D3;"><em>false</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">my</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">speakSlideNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">(</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">stoppingStatement</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">)<br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">error</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#0000FF;">number</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> -128<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">show next</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">repeat</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> <br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">tell</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>document</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> 1 </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">to</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0000FF;font-weight:bold; ">stop</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">on</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">error</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">errorMessage</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#0000FF;">number</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">errorNumber</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">errorNumber</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">is</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">not</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> -128 </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0016B0;font-weight:bold; ">display alert</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> (("ERROR " & </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">errorNumber</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">) </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">as</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>string</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">) </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#0016B0;">message</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">errorMessage</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">try</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">tell</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">on</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">speakSlideNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">(</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; ">)<br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">begins with</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> "[voice:" </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">then</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">set</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">x</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">to</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">the</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0016B0;font-weight:bold; ">offset</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#0016B0;">of</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> "]" </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#0016B0;">in</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">set</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">textToSay</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">to</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>text</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">from</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> (</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">x</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> + 1) </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">to</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> -1 </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">of</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">set</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisVoiceName</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">to</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana-Italic; color:#0000FF;"><em>text</em></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> 8 </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">thru</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> (</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">x</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> - 1) </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">of</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0016B0;font-weight:bold; ">say</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">textToSay</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#0016B0;">using</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisVoiceName</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">else</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#0016B0;font-weight:bold; ">say</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">thisSlidesPresenterNotes</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#4C4E4E;">-- with waiting until completion</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">end</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "> </span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; color:#408000;">speakSlideNotes<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">Save it as a script so that you can use it at any time in the future.<br /><br />At this point, you could set ScreenFlow to record and then Run the script with your Keynote presentation open and in the forefront. The default system voice will read each slide as it is presented. The presentation will automatically exit after the last slide has been narrated so you can stop the ScreenFlow recording, trim the ends in ScreenFlow and be done.<br /><br />However and as we discussed in the last post, you may not be satisfied with such a plain vanilla rendition. Thus, we get into a few of the more sophisticated techniques that apply to this kind of work. You should already know about auditioning, using phonetic mis-spelling, punctuation and embedded speech commands to create a more human-sounding rendition of text. If not, review the "Free Voice Talent ..." post for the details. <br /><br />To these we will add two new techniques: 1) Adjusting for video and animation. 2) Selecting voices on a per slide basis.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">Adjusting for video and animation.</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> If your presentation includes a video clip as the screencast referenced here does, you'll need to build in a delay that is equal to the duration of the video. This can be done with the embedded speech command [[slnc nnn]] where nnn is the duration of the embedded video in milliseconds. The following screenshot is of a slide containing a video with a duration of 9 minutes 16.033 seconds. That converts to 556,000 milliseconds. YMMV (Your math may vary).<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="DelayEqualToVideoDuration" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/delayequaltovideoduration.jpg" width="480" height="293" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">This also applies to any transitions or animations that you may have included. Simply run the script without recording to audition the slide making adjustments to the placement and duration of the silence command. This command, as you learned from the last post, is also very useful in creating appropriate pauses between paragraphs.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">Selecting voices on a per slide basis.</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> Since there is no embedded speech command that enables selecting which voice is operative, we do this via the speakSlideNotes function in the script. This special command must be the first text encountered in the presenter notes (no leading spaces, please). Inserting [voice:Daniel] as the first element in the presenter notes for a slide will cause that voice to be used - no need to change the system default. Note the single (not double) square brackets. This is especially valuable as you may use an alternating male and a female voice to add narrative interest to your screencast. The following screenshot illustrates the use of this special command.<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="SelectingVoices" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/selectingvoices.jpg" width="480" height="293" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">So that's all there is to it. Create a slide deck in Keynote, add presenters notes, audition and adjust the text of the presenter notes with the provided Applescript until the desired presentation with narration is achieved. Then, launch ScreenFlow to record the self-presenting presentation, execute the script, stop recording, trim and export. <br /><br />Because voice quality and variety is so easily assured with a single take, this could be called Rapid Screencast Development (RSD).<br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-48961054035396442762014-06-04T05:20:00.000-07:002014-06-20T18:14:07.102-07:00Free Voice Talent for Your Next ScreenFlow Screencast<span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">Screencasting often entails narration and many screencasters take a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to this critical part of the screencasting process. The price (free) is usually right and ScreenFlow does a fine job of recoding from an external or built-in microphone. However, there are a few downsides to consider.<br /><br /></span><ul class="(null)"><li><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">The quality of the microphone and the recording environment may not be as good as they ought to be.</span></li><li><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">Not everyone has a great “radio voice” and not everyone has a smooth manner of speaking. If that weren’t true, professional voice talent wouldn’t be so expensive.</span></li><li><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">Items A and B often result in having to do many “takes” and that requires time that may not be available or justifiable.</span></li><li><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">Even where the screencaster/narrator has a fine voice, a good recording environment and a great speaking style, there is often a need for a different voice if only to provide variety or counterpoint – important to audience engagement. </span></li></ul><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">These are some of the reasons why screencasters may want to employ additional voice talent instead of or to supplement their own. The show stopper for many is the cost of professional voice talent. The </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><u><a href="https://www.voices.com/resources/rates" rel="external">voices.com</a></u></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://www.voices.com/resources/rates" rel="external"> website</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> provides a good overview of the field and the costs involved. <br /><br />But wait! There is a free option that only requires that you have and be able to use ScreenFlow on a MacOS X computer. Interested? <br /><br />As you may already know, MacOS X has a very good text-to-speech engine built-in and ready to use with voices ranging from very human sounding (Alex) to the bizarre (Zarvox). Additional voices organized by language/accent groups can be downloaded from Apple. What’s more, you can purchase and download even more high quality voices from companies such as </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://www.cepstral.com" rel="external">Cepstral</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> and </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://www.assistiveware.com/product/infovox-ivox/voices" rel="external">AssistiveWare</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">. In most MacOS X apps, one can select a body of text and then choose Edit > Speech >Start Speaking to hear those words spoken with the selected system voice. Selecting a different system voice is a simple matter of using the drop-down menu in the Text to Speech tab of the Dictation & Speech preference pane.<br /><br />Less well known is the fact that this process can be extended to include creating a recording of such a reading and that this can be automated as a service that is easily accessed in any application that handles text. With narration scripted, it becomes a simple matter to add audio narration to a ScreenFlow screencast in one or more interesting voices.<br /><br />Before we get into the details of how to do that, let’s take a look at an example that was created using the procedures about to be described. We start with some publicly accessible content so that the reader can follow along. I used Hubblecast 68: </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/hubblecast68a/" rel="external">The Hubble Time Machine</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> because it was short (07m 27s), in the public domain, included a script (English) and several subtitle tracks in English and various other languages. I also discovered a great source of free soundtracks in the </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://www.zero-project.gr" rel="external">Zero Project</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> used in this and other Hubblecast epodes.<br /><br />Of course the video already had world class narration in English so, to make things interesting, I set out to create a Russian narrated version of this video. I used the subtitle track for Russian, a simple text file, to generate a number of audio clips identifiable by the start time of each clip. The original video alternated between a male and female narrators so I chose to mirror that in the Russian version by using two Russian voices, Yuri (male) and Katia (female). These had to be downloaded from Apple as they are not included in the basic set of voices.<br /><br />So here is our demo, the Russian narrated version of Hubblecast 68: The Hubble Time Machine.<br /><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="660" height="380" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/FreeScreencastingVoiceTalent/" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />There are a number of flaws in this demo that we’ll address in the how-to section. As a proof of concept, though, it does clearly demonstrate the feasibility of easily adding other voices and other languages to a video.<br /><br />I added both the English and the Russian subtitles so that you could follow the audio with one or the other. These may be accessible to you if you are looking at the video using the very latest versions of Safari on iOS or MacOS X. The Safari subtitle selector will look like this:<br /><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="12.subtitle-widget" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/12.subtitle-widget.jpg" width="480" height="160" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />No other web browsers yet support internal subtitles so if you don't have or use Safari for some reason, download </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/FreeScreencastingVoiceTalent/HubbleCast68BLOG.m4v" rel="external">this version</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> of the video and play it in iTunes, QuickTime X Player, VLC or some other capable video viewer that supports subtitles. Note also that I am using the HTML video tag with MPEG-4 video and no WebM fallback so some versions of Firefox may refuse to play the video because there is no *.webm or *.ogg fallback version. The solution is to switch to any other major web browser. <br /><br />So, how is this magic achieved? It’s actually pretty easy. Let’s go through the following three easy steps.<br /><br /></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">Step 1:</span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> A more thorough tutorial would have us build the four requisite Automator workflows by hand (you can get that </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://macosxautomation.com/workshops/podcast/01.html" rel="external">here</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> and </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://macosxautomation.com/workshops/podcast/02.html" rel="external">here</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">) but automation is not one of our main learning objectives so we’ll take a shortcut and download the four Automator workflows needed for this tutorial </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/FreeScreencastingVoiceTalent/Services.zip" rel="self">here</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">. Once you unpack this archive, you will find four Automator workflows as follows:<br /><br />1) Read the Selection Aloud (female).workflow<br />2) Read the Selection Aloud (male).workflow<br />3) Render Selection as Audio (female).workflow<br />4) Render Selection as Audio (male).workflow<br /><br />These are easily installed by double-clicking each of them and then clicking the Install button in the resulting dialog. Note that MacOS X 10.7 and newer </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/1165641/how_increased_mac_security_measures_will_impact_applescript.html" rel="external">may object</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> saying that the workflow is from an unidentified developer. To circumvent this, Control-click on the workflow file and click Open from the resulting contextual menu. This is a one-time operation so the second and all subsequent uses will require only double-clicking the file. Opening the *.workflow file will yield the following dialog:<br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="01.workflow-install-dialog" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/01.workflow-install-dialog.jpg" width="468" height="179" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">Here is a </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://macosxautomation.com/automator/serviceinstall/index.html" rel="external">more detailed version</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> of these instructions.<br /><br />Please note that this security obstacle is very important to protecting your computer and the data handled by it. You should never download and install apps, scripts or Automator workflows from untrusted sources. While apps can be signed by the developer, scripts and Automator workflows cannot. These workflows are from http://www.macosxautomation.com and, so, I considered them trustworthy. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">After installing, you'll see a completion dialogue with an Open with Automator button. Click on that to see how each workflow was assembled. The two named “Read the Selection Aloud …” are very simple whereas the two named “Render Selection as Audio …” are more complex as follows:<br /></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="02.workflow-render-selection" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/02.workflow-render-selection.jpg" width="450" height="464" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />All four workflows come preconfigured with the following voices: Daniel (Male) and Serena (Female). Note the Play button to the right of the selected voice where you may audition it. The language is English (United Kingdom). Feel free to change these as you like or need. For more choices, download additional voices.<br /><br />Here's how to download new voices from Apple: <br />• Open System Preferences choosing the Dictation & Speech preference pane and then selecting the Text to Speech tab.<br />• Click on the System Voice drop down menu selecting Customize ...<br />• In the resulting dialog, select new voices using the checkboxes to the left of the name of each voice. Note that voices are organized and labeled by language, location (accent) and gender.<br />• Click on the OK button and, wait patiently for the voice to download. This can take a while.<br />Once the download is complete, you will be able to select new voices in the Automator workflow as described above.<br /><br />For the Russian demo, I duplicated, reconfigured and renamed the workflows so that I would have separate services for rendering English and Russian text to speech. It is not at all necessary for you to follow this more complicated procedure. Simply opening the Automator workflows and changing the voice from Daniel to Yuri and from Serena to Katia would have been sufficient. Nonetheless, here's how to do it:<br /><br />• The Russian voices are not installed by default so have to be downloaded as described above.<br />• Go to ~/Library/Services where all of your Services are kept. Note that the tilde (~) indicates your Home folder which carries the short username that you chose when your computer was first set up.<br />• Select the file, "Render Selection as Audio (female).workflow" and duplicate it (Cmd-D or File > Duplicate).<br />• Rename the duplicated file to reflect its new, specialized function. I used, "Render Selection as Audio (female-Russian).workflow." <br />• Double-click this file to open it in Automator.<br />• Change the voice to Katia using the drop down menu in the Text to Audio segment of the workflow and close the file.<br />• Repeat the process to create "Render Selection as Audio (male-Russian).workflow" using the voice, Yuri.<br />You will now have both the originally downloaded workflows and these specialized additional workflows available to you in any text handling application that supports Services. To illustrate, here's a screenshot from Pages.<br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="03.render-text-as-audio-service" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/03.render-text-as-audio-service.jpg" width="405" height="468" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">Step 2:</span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> Using the provided script, the subtitle track or other means, create a time stamped working script then use that script to create a set of audio files as follows.<br /><br />Here is a snippet of the PDF script that I found on the Hubblecast resource page:<br /><br /> 01:23<br />[Narrator]<br /> 4. As we can’t travel to other galaxies or star systems and view them for<br />ourselves, we rely on telescopes like Hubble.<br />One of the main scientific justifications for building Hubble was to<br />measure the size and age of the Universe. This task has produced<br />some of the telescope’s most iconic images, taken as Hubble peered<br />into the faraway Universe to see what galaxies looked like in the past.<br />01:56<br />[Dr. J - STUDIO 2]<br /> 5. So how is it possible that Hubble can look into the past?<br />Well, that’s because, just like a spacecraft, light also travels at a finite<br />speed. At 300,000 kilometres per second, this speed is very high, but it<br />is still finite. That means that, in principle, everything we see is a thing of<br />the past.<br />Now normally, in our everyday lives, it doesn’t matter, because the<br />distances are just too small. But when we look at the Moon, we see it as<br />it was about 1 second ago. The Sun we see as it was about 8 minutes<br />ago. For the nearest star, it’s about 4 years, and the edge of our galaxy<br />we see as it was about 100,000 years ago.<br /><br />The equivalent female (narrator) parts of the subtitle track look like this.<br /><br />English:<br /><br />12<br />00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:30,000<br />As we can't travel to other galaxies or star systems and view them for ourselves<br /><br />13<br />00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:33,000<br />we rely on telescopes like Hubble.<br /><br />14<br />00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:38,000<br />One of the main scientific justifications for building Hubble<br /><br />15<br />00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:43,000<br />was to measure the size and age of the Universe.<br /><br />16<br />00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:48,000<br />This task has produced some of the telescope's most iconic images,<br /><br />17<br />00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:55,000<br />taken as Hubble peered into the faraway Universe to see what galaxies looked like in the past.<br /><br /><br />Russian:<br /><br />12<br />00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:30,000 NF<br />И поскольку мы не можем слетать к другим галактикам или звездным системам и посмотреть на них своими глазами<br /><br />13<br />00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:33,000<br />мы полагаемся на телескопы вроде Хаббла.<br /><br />14<br />00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:38,000<br />Одним из главных научных обоснований строительства Хаббла<br /><br />15<br />00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:43,000<br />была необходимости измерить размер и возраст Вселенной.<br /><br />16<br />00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:48,000<br />Эта задача привела к тому, что были созданы самые лучшие изображения,<br /><br />17<br />00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:55,000<br />когда Хаббл вглядывался вглубь Вселенной, чтобы увидеть, как же выглядели галактики в прошлом.<br /><br /><br />So, that part of our working script for this particular female (narrator) excerpt winds up looking like this:<br /><br />01:23F<br />И поскольку мы не можем слетать к другим галактикам или звездным системам и посмотреть на них своими глазами<br />мы полагаемся на телескопы вроде Хаббла.<br />Одним из главных научных обоснований строительства Хаббла<br />была необходимости измерить размер и возраст Вселенной.<br />Эта задача привела к тому, что были созданы самые лучшие изображения,<br />когда Хаббл вглядывался вглубь Вселенной, чтобы увидеть, как же выглядели галактики в прошлом.<br /><br />Next, we select this text in our text editor (almost any text handling app will do) and go to the Services menu (usually in the app menu) selecting one of the following Automator workflows:<br />• Render Selection as Audio (female) if you have changed the voice of that Automator workflow to Katia.<br />• Render Selection as Audio (Russian-Female) if you have created a dedicated Automator workflow as I did.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="06.services-menu-In-pages" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/06.services-menu-in-pages.jpg" width="480" height="290" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />This creates an audio file in QuickTime X Player like this with a title using the first few characters of the selected text. <br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="04.selected-text-rendered-audio" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/04.selected-text-rendered-audio.jpg" width="468" height="221" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">It's auto-saved to disk (~Desktop/Audio Rendering Service/) but we will re-save it to a different location changing the name to 01-23F.m4a to indicate a start time of 1 minute, 23 seconds and the gender of the speaker (as a cross-check because we know they alternate). This filename will be very helpful in placing the audio clip when we get to ScreenFlow.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="05.save-as-time-stamp-gender" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/05.save-as-time-stamp-gender.jpg" width="468" height="284" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />However, before you start cranking out audio files like sausages, you may want to audition your script with the voices that you are using. This is what the male and female "Read the Selection Aloud ..." workflows are for. It is quite possible that you will not be fully satisfied with the way that that the Text To Speech (TTS) engine treats the selected text. You may want to tweak it a bit. Fortunately, there are ways to influence these readings and, consequently, the recordings too. <br /><br />The simplest tactics involve mis-spelling words in a more phonetic fashion, using punctuation and issuing commands that the TTS engine will obey such as the silence command. Here is an example where we insert 400 millisecond periods of silence into a sentence:<br /><br />Don't forget to bring your hat, [[slnc 400]] sunglasses, [[slnc 400]] sandals, [[slnc 400]] and towel.<br /><br />... compare that to:<br /><br />Don't forget to bring your hat, sunglasses, sandals, and towel.<br /><br />... or:<br /><br />Don't forget to bring your hat; sunglasses; sandals; and towel.<br /><br />This </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/SpeechSynthesisProgrammingGuide/FineTuning/FineTuning.html" rel="external">Mac Developer Library PDF</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> document is extremely detailed and technical but you can extract from it such usable gems as those in the examples above. Just skip over the stuff that seems too complicated. Table 3-1 is where you want to focus your attention.<br /><br />Once you have a complete script that reads well, decide how to organize it in segments or chunks that correspond with the gender of the speaker and the pauses that occur naturally as the video plays. An *.srt subtitle file will provide you will all the timing information you need to make sure that the audio corresponds with the video. Finally, go ahead and produce a set of audio files as described above.<br /><br /></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">Step 3:</span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> Using ScreenFlow to assemble the audio narration track and synchronize it to the video.<br /><br />At this point, you should have a video file and a bunch of audio files whose names tell you where on the timeline they should start. Determine the resolution (width and height in pixels) of your video using QuickTime X Player by opening the video and doing Window > Show Movie Inspector or Cmd-I. Make sure that the video is being displayed at its actual size (View > Actual Size or Cmd-1). The first figure is the width while the second is the height. My example movie (Hubblecast 68) was 1920x1080 which is the resolution of 1080p video.<br /><br />Open ScreenFlow 4.5, dismiss the configure/start recording dialog that usually opens by default on launch and do File > New Empty Document or Shift-Cmd-N to get the following dialog.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="07.screenflow-new-empty-doc" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/07.screenflow-new-empty-doc.jpg" width="414" height="240" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />Choose one of the presets or enter custom dimensions to equal the resolution of your video so that it will use all of ScreenFlow's canvas. Next, bring the video file and all of the audio files into ScreenFlow's Media Library using either drag and drop from the Finder or using the Add Media function in the Media Library. Either way, the Media Library should look something like the image below. Note how the names of the audio files cause them to be arranged sequentially. This will help assembly go more smoothly.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="08.add-to-media-library" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/08.add-to-media-library.jpg" width="343" height="1193" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />Next, drag the video file onto the canvas and center it. The video should use all of the canvas. Use the scrubber to move the playhead randomly to confirm that fact.<br /><br />Since we're going to replace the English narration with Russian, we'll need to select the video track in the ScreenFlow timeline and then go to Audio Properties where we can Mute Audio. Play the movie for a few seconds to confirm that it is, indeed, silent. The next and most important task, then, is to begin adding audio files to the timeline such that the narration jibes with the visuals in the video. <br /><br />Here is where our audio file naming scheme pays off. Because our first audio file is named 00-00F (female narrator starts at 0 minutes, 0 seconds), we know that it should begin to play as soon as the video starts. That's easy so we drag that file to the timeline placing it below the video and as far to the left as possible. If we drag the scrubber/playhead to the beginning of that file, the timecode readout should be zero.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="09.scrubber-playhead-time-readout" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/09.scrubber-playhead-time-readout.jpg" width="480" height="62" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />Here's a closeup of the timecode readout when the scrubber/playhead is in the leftmost position.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="10.close-up-time-line-readout" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/10.close-up-time-line-readout.jpg" width="480" height="163" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />This timecode readout will help us place each audio file in the proper location so that the narration matches the visuals in our screencast. For example, if our next audio file is named 00-53M, we know that it should start at the 53 second mark. Simply move the scrubber until the timecode readout looks like this:<br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="11.time-code-close-up-00-53" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/11.time-code-close-up-00-53.jpg" width="480" height="163" /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; ">Then drag the file named 00-53-M.m4a to a position to the right of the scrubber/playhead, double-click the gap between them and then press the Delete key. That will place this audio sample precisely on the timeline where it ought to be. Repeat this process for the remaining audio files and optionally place a music track beneath all this with ducking turned on for the narration track.<br /><br />Then, export your screencast as you normally would.<br /><br />Finally, let's recapitulate these three steps in a screencast as follows:<br /></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="660" height="380" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/FreeScreencastingVoiceTalent/recap.html" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><br />Download the 720p version of this video </span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/FreeScreencastingVoiceTalent/FreeVoiceTalentRecap.mp4" rel="external">here</a></span><span style="font:16px Verdana, serif; "> with Control-click.<br /><br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-45405438488151358342013-11-27T13:42:00.000-08:002014-10-29T13:55:45.836-07:00Enhanced Dictation in MacOS X 10.9 as an STT Engine for Extant Audio Files<span style="font-size:17px; ">The </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.fcc.gov/guides/21st-century-communications-and-video-accessibility-act-2010" rel="external">pressure is on</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> to take affirmative action to make screencasts and other online video more accessible. Of course, this includes eTextbooks that contain video. One important aspect of that challenge is to make video more accessible to persons who are deaf or have difficulty hearing. For video content creators, this means providing a transcript or, better, providing subtitles to that video so that dialogue may be viewed in the same context as the video. This is fast becoming de rigueur.<br />The problem is that many videos are created without a script that is followed closely by the speakers in that video. Indeed, many important videos are created in ad hoc fashion (interviews, panel discussions, conference presentations and the like) where scripts would be totally inappropriate. <br />Creating text from speech has become essential to meeting these expectations, especially where all one has to work with is the speech in the audio track of a video. Speech to text (STT) is a bit more difficult than text to speech (TTS) which has been in use much longer.<br />MacOS X recently introduced Dictation (speech-to-text) as a feature usable in any application that takes text as input. This is quite an advance over having to purchase a two hundred dollar application to accomplish the same end. However, the first iteration of this system required an internet connection so that speech could be uploaded to Apple's servers where it would be turned into text. This created delays and was difficult to use for substantial bodies of text. However, Dictation was given a significant boost in MacOS X 10.9 (Mavericks) with the introduction of </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/os-x-mavericks-using-enhanced-dictation" rel="external">Enhanced Dictation</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> which enables offline use and continuous dictation with live feedback. Enhanced Dictation is NOT enabled by default (see link above for details on how to enable it).<br />Still, this is a system that assumes a live speaker. There is no obviously easy way to route speech from a recorded file through Apple's Dictation system to produce usable text. That's what this post is all about. You can, in fact, route the speech in an audio file through Apple's speech-to-text subsystem and render very usable text output. It isn't intuitive or Apple-easy but it is something that anyone can accomplish with a bit of determination. Here's how.<br />The application at the center of this process is </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/" rel="external">Audio HiJack Pro</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> by Rogue Amoeba ($32 USD). There are two things to set up with this app. The first is to identify the source of the audio. It could be any app that emits audio but I used QuickTime Player X. Thus, I set that app as the audio source as follows:<br /><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="ss.01" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ss.01.jpg" width="480" height="303" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />This will capture the audio from anything that this app plays. My </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1512410" rel="external">sample audio</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> is from NPR and contains a dramatic reading from noted actor, Sam Waterston and looks like this in QuickTime Player X:<br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="ss.02" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ss.02.png" width="288" height="103" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">This configuration will grab all the audio from QuickTime Player X as it plays the "NPR Gettsyberg Address" audio file. Next, we use Audio HiJack Pro to send that audio to </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://cycling74.com/soundflower-landing-page/" rel="external">Soundflower</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> (free). To do that we go to the Effects tab and choose Auxiliary Device Output from the 4FX menu. <br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:17px; "> </span><img class="imageStyle" alt="ss.03" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ss.03.png" width="480" height="379" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />The Auxiliary Device Output plug-in enables us to choose the previously installed Soundflower as the recipient of the HiJacked audio as follows:<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="ss.04" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ss.04.png" width="480" height="300" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">Once installed, Soundflower becomes an input/output option in your Sound preference pane and everywhere else audio sources and destinations can be specified. In other words, it becomes an integral part of your sound system in MacOS X.<br /><br />Finally, we set the Dictation input to be Soundflower as follows:<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="ss.05" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ss.05.png" width="480" height="275" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">At this point, any audio played by QuickTime Player X will be routed to Soundflower and will thus become available to any application that accepts text input and has a Start Dictation menu item. In Pages, that looks like:<br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="ss.06" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ss.06.png" width="480" height="404" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">The following screencast illustrates this process from start to finish:<br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="660" height="380" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/SpeechToTextFromFile/" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />A very special "Thank You" to Chris Barajas at Rogue Amoeba who patiently worked me through the intricacies of the in Auxiliary Devices Output plug-in for Audio HiJack Pro.<br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-13780218481988311782013-09-03T10:47:00.000-07:002015-04-29T07:23:45.322-07:00Using SVG images in iBooks Author<span style="font-size:17px; ">The primary advantage of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files is that a very small file can be scaled up to yield large images without the aliasing (jaggies) that appears when a bitmapped graphic is scaled up. SVG files are resolution independent, usually non-photographic and commonly carry the suffix *.svg. There are lots of </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.google.com/#q=free+svg+images" rel="external">free SVG files available on the Internet </a></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">and there are many applications for creating SVG files such as the free, open source </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://inkscape.org" rel="external">Inkscape</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">. SVG files can now be viewed via drag & drop onto web browsers such as Firefox, Chrome or Safari or via the free MacOS X app, </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gapplin/id768053424?mt=12" rel="external">Gappin</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">. For an excellent primer on vector graphics, see </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics" rel="external">this Wikipedia article</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">.<br /><br />So the advantage of vector graphics to iBooks Author is that these images can be scaled up without making those images fuzzy with jagged edges. A single U.S. state map vector image, for example, could be used to show full screen versions of each state without any visual loss. Complex diagrams such as those produced by OmniGraffle can be included at any level of detail.<br /><br />However, it is not possible to use SVG images directly in iBooks Author. If you attempt to drag and drop an SVG file onto an iBooks Author project, nothing will happen. You'll get no error messages or feedback of any kind. Similarly, apps in the </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.apple.com/iwork/" rel="external">iWork suite</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> (Pages, Keynote and Numbers) will also refuse to accept SVG files. This post is about how to work around that limitation.<br /><br />The iBooks Author application has its own Text, Shapes and Graphs menus with which a number of vector graphics can be created. Another option is to use the vector graphics created by Keynote, Numbers and Pages. These can be copied and pasted directly into an iBooks Author project. Graphics created in iBooks Author or any of the iWorks suite applications are vector graphics in PDF file containers, not SVG file containers. PDF files can contain text, bit-mapped graphics and vector graphics. We are most interested in the latter type, vector PDFs. The </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/" rel="external">OmniGraffle</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> application is a considerably </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/features/" rel="external">more sophisticated</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> graphics toolset and is capable of exporting both SVG vector drawings and PDF vector images. The latter are compatible with iWork suite and iBooks Author.<br /><br />That's useful but there is an Internet full of already drawn </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://www.google.com/#q=free+svg+images" rel="external">SVG images</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> that are in the public domain or CC licensed. It would be a shame not to have access to that vast library of free vector images. The work around to this problem is to use </span><span style="font-size:17px; color:#386EFF;"><u><a href="http://www.fileformat.info/convert/image/svg2pdf.htm">this on-line conversion service</a></u></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> to convert SVG to PDF and then drag and drop that PDF directly into an iBooks Author project or into one of the iWork apps or OmniGraffle for further manipulation.<br /><br />Download an *.ibooks file </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/GCSU/Episodes/21769/567734582.ibooks" rel="self">here</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> that shows how vector graphics created in iBooks Author compare with vector graphics converted from SVG files. The following screencast uses that same multi-touch eBook.<br /><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="800" height="550" src="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4dcgi/podcasting/episode.html?episode_str=546542469" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-77635390363202613182013-07-28T17:37:00.000-07:002014-09-17T11:19:47.472-07:00Using iAd Producer with iBooks Author (example: creating an external video player widget) <span style="font-size:17px; ">The iAd Producer application from Apple has grown considerably since its inception. Originally, it was a highly specialized application that created advertisements for mobile devices from Apple. Those iAds were composed of sophisticated HTML, CSS and Javascript.<br /><br />Since that inception, it has been expanded to create iTunes LPs for music albums sold in the iTunes Store and iTunes Extras for video sold in the iTunes Store. These, too, rely upon HTML, CSS and Javascript web technologies. Most recently, iAd producer has added iBooks Author HTML widgets to its repertoire. Thus, the following screencast tutorial showing how easy it is to use iAd Producer to create a high quality HTML widget for iBooks Author without writing a single line of code.<br /><br />This example focuses on creating an HTML widget that plays a video hosted on an external server. This keeps the size of your *.ibooks file down making for quicker downloads and avoiding becoming a burden to iPads already nearly filled to capacity with other books and media.<br /><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="600" height="380" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/IBA/" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />Try viewing this video in full screen to catch all of the details. Note that Firefox doesn't like MPEG-4 and will refuse to play this. Try any other modern web browser (Safari, Chrome, etc.).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/GCSU/Episodes/19702/62466725.ibooks" rel="self">Download</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> the example book to an iPad to get an even better view of how this looks and feels in the hands of your audience.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="https://developer.apple.com/iad/iadproducer/" rel="external">Download</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> iAd Producer (free developer registration required)</span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-41846885323711260992013-06-18T12:25:00.000-07:002014-09-17T11:19:46.816-07:00Danger: Do Not Duplicate an *.iba File - Use Templates Instead<span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">The setting.</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> I wrote four eTextbooks (of six planned) for a private iTunes U course that I am teaching. I used names such as Unit.01 Getting Started, Unit.03 Capture and so on. These were uploaded to iTunes U via the iTunes U Course Manager. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">The bad move.</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> Once I got the design of Unit.01 decide upon, I duplicated the *.iba file for Unit.01 and edited it to make the shell for Unit.02 and so on. What I should have done was to create a template and work from that. Bad move.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">The reason</span><span style="font-size:17px; ">. After a bit of back and forth with some very diligent folks at Apple involving both the iTunes U and iBooks Author teams, we discovered that my bad move caused the *.iba files to have the same internal ID and that caused all of the resulting *.ibooks files exported from them to inherit that identical internal ID. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">The cure.</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> So I opened each *.iba file and made a template from it, closing it and adding the prefix "old_" to its file name in the Finder, just to have a fallback in case something went wrong. After that, I created a new IBA project file from the just created template and saved that under the old name (no prefix) and exporter a new *.ibooks file replacing the old , defective, identity-challenged *.ibooks file. Rinse, repeat with each of the other eTextbooks.<br /><br />Testing has shown that all of these eTextbooks have regained their individual identities. Opening Unit.04 always results in opening Unit.04. Success.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">The moral. </span><span style="font-size:17px; ">Make templates, don't dupe an *.iba file.</span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-44742109775001272342013-02-08T07:57:00.000-08:002014-09-17T11:19:46.140-07:00HTML Widgets Made Easy: External Video Player Example<span style="font-size:15px; ">The iBookstore limits the size of of *.ibooks files created with iBook Author (henceforth, IBA) to 2 GB and recommends that you keep the size of your iBook file under one gigabyte if possible in order to avoid taking too much space on your readers' iPads as well as to avoid your readers having to endure long download times. Although including video that is internal to your IBA project is a simple drag and drop application using the Media Widget in IBA, that kind of video will very quickly increase the size of your iBook and may place an unwelcome burden on some of your readers.<br /><br />The alternative is to include external video in your IBA project using a custom made HTML Widget. The big advantage is that a one megabyte HTML Widget can play a 70 megabyte video in your iBook. The downside, of course, is that the reader must have an active internet connection and the availability of the video must be maintained. If a video used in your iBook should become unavailable, you can provide your readers with a free upgrade correcting that issue via the iBookstore's versioning feature.<br /><br />Unfortunately, many people are persuaded not to use this approach because it involves writing HTML code but this post will offer you a way around that obstacle. If you can use a text editor, you can modify an HTML widget template that plays an external video that you select for your iBook. Here's how:<br /><br />As you'll learn from </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5068?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US" rel="external">this Apple support document,</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> an HTML widget is nothing more than a collection of text files enclosed in a folder with the suffix ".wdgt" added to it. On the Mac, adding that suffix to the folder name changes the appearance of the folder into a widget icon. The minimum HTML widget contains three files: a Default.png file, an index.html file and an info.plist file. I have prepared an HTML widget that you can use as both an example and a template. It is a ZIP archive containing a complete working widget that you can add to a test IBA project. Once you have it in an IBA project you may use the Preview function to see how it works in the iBooks.app on an iPad. Download that HTML widget </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~flowney/widget/OpenAccessExplained.zip" rel="self">here</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> and then double-click on it to extract it.<br /><br />This example widget plays a video called "Open Access Explained" that is hosted on a server that I have access to. In this tutorial, I will show you how to open the widget and modify it so that it will play another video, one that is on a server that I do not have access to, a video that you choose. All I'll have to do to accomplish this feat is to open the widget, change the Default.png file and edit the text of the index.html and info.plist files so that they reference a different video. It's just that easy. <br /><br />Of course that video must be playable on an iPad so no Flash. These </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/" rel="external">tech specs</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> provide all the necessary details. The great thing about video on the iPad is that the HTML 5 video tag works without having to create multiple fallback versions of your video (*.mp4, *.ogg and *webm) as one would have to do on a web site. As long as it's using the MPEG-4 H.264 video and AAC audio CODECs, it can be in either a MOV, MP4 or M4V container. More simply, if the video plays on your iPad, it will play in this widget.<br /><br />The video that I'll be modifying the widget to use in this tutorial is: </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/ibooks-author/2012/tours/apple-ibooks-tour-ipad_ibooks_author-cc-us-20120314_r848-9cie.mov" rel="external">http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/ibooks-author/2012/tours/apple-ibooks-tour-ipad_ibooks_author-cc-us-20120314_r848-9cie.mov</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> Because I'll be changing the widget to play another movie with different dimensions, I'll need to create a new Default.png file and change all of the references from the old video to the new video. I'll be using the BBEdit text editor but any plain text editor such as TextEdit will do just as well. Here's a screencast showing how this is done. Click </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4dcgi/podcasting/episode.html?episode_str=177893745" rel="external">HERE</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> or click the image below.<br /><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4dcgi/podcasting/episode.html?episode_str=177893745" rel="external"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/poster.png" width="480" height="300" /></a><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:15px; font-weight:bold; ">Caveats</span><span style="font-size:15px; ">: Some video services such as Vimeo and YouTube go to great lengths to tie their hosted video to their own web sites so that they can generate data about you and get paid for exposing advertising to you. Thus, it is just a little more difficult to use these videos in an iBook but it can be done. I may take that topic up in the next post.<br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; font-weight:bold; ">NOTES:</span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; font-weight:bold; ">• About the "auto play" attribute.</span><span style="font-size:15px; "> You'll notice that I use the optional "auto play" attribute in the HTML 5 "video" tag. All HTML widgets take over the entire screen when invoked. Under iOS 6.x (tested), tapping this external video player widget will bring the poster (Default.png) image to full size atop a white background that also displays the widget's title and caption as well as a close button. A standard iOS "play" icon will be superimposed on the center. The video will begin to play automatically without the reader having to tap this play button. The time that auto play takes depends upon the size of the video and the speed of the network. The operating system tries to estimate when it can play the external video without interruption. The reader can always tap the play button prior to auto play. Simply delete the "auto play" attribute if you rather not have this feature operative.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; font-weight:bold; ">• About the "controls" attribute.</span><span style="font-size:15px; "> I also use the optional "controls" attribute. This provides the reader with a standard video controller with which they can control playback of the video such as audio volume and two "full screen" options as well as a scrubber for moving the play head to arbitrary points along the time line. Simply delete the "controls" attribute if you'd rather not have this feature be available to your readers. The following image shows these various controls and their effects.<br /><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/videocontrolelements.png" width="480" height="359" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:15px; font-weight:bold; ">Resources</span><span style="font-size:15px; ">: <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/Using_HTML5_Audio_Video/Introduction/Introduction.html" rel="external">Safari HTML 5 Audio and Video Guide</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5068?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US" rel="external">iBooks Author: About HTML widget creation</a></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-72832921967074337182012-12-08T07:45:00.000-08:002014-09-17T11:19:45.352-07:00Providing iBooks Author Feedback to Apple<span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">One of the most useful widgets for iBooks Author is the Keynote widget. It enables you to add a presentation to an interactive iBook using the features of the Keynote.app for MacOS X and iOS, including many of the transitions and builds. You can even convert a PowerPoint presentation to Keynote and bring that content into your iBook as well. The full details are in this </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5067?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US" rel="external">technical note</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">. <br />The one disappointment I had was that this widget does not support voiceover narration. This can seriously diminish the value of a slide presentation. The reader can flip through the slides forward and backward but they have to guess what the presenter might have said. Peter Norvig did a wonderful six slide Powerpoint presentation illustrating this very point. See the slides for President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/" rel="external">here</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">. View the slides on-line or download the presentation as a *.ppt file.</span><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/gettsyburg-ppt.jpg" width="480" height="372" /><span style="font:12px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">As you'll see, there is something missing, something very important. <br /><br />Of course there is a way around this. In Keynote, you can add a voiceover and export the presentation as a video to include in your iBooks Author project using the media widget. You can also use screen casting software such as ScreenFlow to capture slides, narration and even a secondary video source such as a PIP (picture-in-picture) of the speaker. The problem with these audio-annotated slideshows done as video is that their file sizes are unnecessarily large. This is a problem for iBooks both because of the 2 GB limit and the time it takes for readers to download very large iBooks. This might well reduce ones audience.<br />My use of the word "unnecessarily" should signal that there might be an even better workaround and there is – sort of. What I'm about to describe would be a great workaround </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; font-weight:bold; ">if</span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "> it were supported by iBooks Author. It is not currently supported in iBooks Author but users of that application can change that. Request an enhancement right from within iBooks Author like this:<br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibooks-authorscreensnapz003.png" width="480" height="359" /><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">The workaround that's better than a video is called an "enhanced audio" file. It is created in GarageBand and carries the *.m4a file name suffix.. You may also see it referred to as an "enhanced podcast" file. What makes the enhanced audio file such a great alternative to video is that it uses one static image of a slide over its entire time on screen instead of 30 frames per second as in a video. If a 50k slide is on-screen for 100 seconds in an enhanced audio file, that image contributes only 50k to the total file size. If a 50k slide is on screen for 100 seconds in a video file, that image contributes 150,000k ([50*30]*100) to the total file size. That's 50k vs 150 Mb, a 3000:1 ratio in this example! In real life, the difference is somewhat less than this because good video encoding uses a number of neuroscience-based tricks to present incomplete data in between the key frames that are full representations of what the camera captured. That fools the eye and takes less space. Still, the difference is quite significant. We'll look at a real world comparison below.<br /><br />Since this is not a how-to post, I'll leave that task to others. There are many fine tutorials teaching you how to use GarageBand to create enhanced audio files on the web. Here's a good </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://www.calpoly.edu/~lfose/tutorials/GarageBand_09_Enhanced_Podcasting.pdf" rel="external">one</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "> in the form of a PDF.<br /><br />I created an example using some ancient media describing the beginnings of the Space Shuttle program. Intended for school use, the package contained a cassette audio tape and a set of photo slides. The audio tape has sharp "beeps" to tell the projector operator when to advance to the next slide image. I've left those beeps in for their nostalgia value. Here's the enhanced audio file slide show:<br /></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><center><iframe type="text/html" width="500" height="550" scrolling="no" src="http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~flowney/blog/spaceshuttle/" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe></center><br /><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br />You may download a copy of this file </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/GCSU/Episodes/13035/53971581.m4a" rel="self">here</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "> and it will play (larger) in QuickTime X Player, in the iTunes.app and may other venues that support QuickTime but just not iBooks Author and the iBooks it creates. This 18 minute presentation is only 21.4 MB in size! Space-efficiency isn't the only advantage of enhanced audio files. The assembly of the static images creates a chapter track that enables the viewer to quickly and easily move to any part of the presentation. This is great for studying a topic where revisiting a difficult section is helpful. Here's a screenshot to illustrate what a chapter track looks like:<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/quicktime-playerscreensnapz002.png" width="480" height="993" /><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">Here's a view of the GarageBand project that created this enhanced audio file:<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/garagebandscreensnapz001.png" width="480" height="372" /><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">So, what would this presentation cost us in terms of file size if it were a video? I created an *.mp4 version with ScreenFlow using the same assets. That version weighed in at 198.2 MB. You may download a copy of that file </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/GCSU/Episodes/18633/213982886.mp4" rel="self">here</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">. The *.m4a file tipped the scales at 21.4 MB. The video version is approximately 9.3 times larger than the enhanced audio file yet playing them side by side reveals no important differences. Here's a screencast of that analysis:<br /><br /></span><center><iframe type="text/html" width="580" height="420" scrolling="no" src="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4dcgi/podcasting/episode.html?episode_str=777886531" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe></center><br /><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br />If you'd like to download and view a larger version of this video, you may do that </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><a href="http://podcasting.usg.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/GCSU/Episodes/24738/47777455.m4v" rel="self">here</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">.<br /><br />The one on the left is the c. 200 Mb video and the one on the right is the c. 20 Mb enhanced audio file. So, if you are at all impressed by the potential advantages of being able to use an enhanced audio file in an iBooks Author project, send in that enhancement request to Apple as described above and do that ASAP.<br /><br />By the way, you can add an enhanced audio file to an iBooks Author project and it will play the audio part. No slides though and that's where the biggest advantage is. Here's what that looks like in iBooks Author.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibooks-authorscreensnapz004.png" width="480" height="379" /><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; ">Note that there is an option for "Show Audio As:" that includes an "Image" option. That doesn't make the slides appear though. That's for drag/dropping a single image onto it that will appear throughout the duration of the audio. Yes, I got real excited when I first saw that.<br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibooks-authorscreensnapz005.png" width="480" height="288" /><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-68347840933713992582012-11-21T06:19:00.000-08:002014-11-22T08:12:39.684-08:00The Coming ePublishing Revolution in Higher Education<span style="font-size:17px; ">It's been quiet here since last January when I talked about the new iBooks Author and its implications for eTextbooks in higher education. That's because writing that piece in January raised questions in my mind that couldn't be set aside. Even while vacationing in Europe its grip never lessened. All of this led to my publishing my first multi-touch book entitles, "The Coming ePublishing Revolution in Higher Education." Here are the basic facts:<br />First things first, here's where you can buy this book for the munificent sum of $0.99:<br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/coming-epublishing-revolution/id579466573?mt=11" rel="external"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibookstore_badge_us_uk_126x40_0311.gif" width="126" height="40" /></a><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:11px; ">(click on the badge above)</span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">Why $0.99?</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> At first, I wanted to make it free since the book is, in part, about making eTextbooks free to students. However, I wanted to know how many copies were actually read as opposed to how many copies were downloaded. My thought is that people are more likely to read what they have paid for, even if it is just a token sum. I suppose we'll see about that. By the way, the copyright is CC-BY-NC-SA so one is free to use or re-use any part of the book as long as they attribute the work to me and share any improvements they might make with me.<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">So what's the book about?</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> Thinking about the potential implications of new digital authoring software such as iBooks Author, Pages, Sigil et. al., I realized that higher education might be a spacial case with regard to the potential for the dis-intermediation of the academic publishing industry. After all, most of the people who write academic papers, books and textbooks are also employed in the higher education sector. This brought forth the entangled relationships between academics seeking promotion and tenure, the institutions that employ them and commercial publishing houses. I wanted to see if the technical potential to dis-intermediate could actually be translated into action in this byzantine culture. I think that I've gotten a handle on it and laying that understanding out is what the book is about.<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">Why an iBook that is only readable on the iPad?</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> It's one thing to assert that a single subject matter expert (professor) can develop and deliver an eTextbook without assistance from a publisher and make it available to students at little or no cost. I wanted to test that assertion and use the results of that testing as evidence in support of the idea that dis-intermediation of the academic publishing is technically and economically feasible. UPDATE: The iBooks app for MacOS X 10.9 expands the potential audience to include MacOS X as well as iOS.<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; ">If dis-intermediation is technically possible, what's to stop it?</span><span style="font-size:17px; "> As it turns out, the most formidable obstacle has little to do with technology. The primary barrier to dis-intermediation is not a technology problem. It's a people problem. It's the culture of academe exacerbated by recent economic issues that make the outcome of this story so difficult to foresee. What I think is achieved in this book is that we now have a better idea as to where we should cast our gaze and what to be looking for. Those who know what to look for will be among the first to understand how this will all turn out.<br /><br /><br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-6006747910989498772012-01-22T10:33:00.000-08:002014-11-22T08:12:38.557-08:00iBooks Author Released<span style="font-size:17px; ">On January 19, 2012, Apple announced the availability of iBooks 2, an iOS app, and iBooks Author, a MacOS X application. These two free applications compliment one another. One creates interactive, rich media eTextbooks (iBooks Author) and the other enables those eTextbooks to be read on an iPad (iBooks 2). Actually, their repertoire goes well beyond eTextbooks to include picture books, art catalogs, cookbooks, travelogues and so on.<br /><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibooks-author128x128.png" width="128" height="128" /><span style="font-size:17px; "> </span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibooks_icon128x128.png" width="128" height="128" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">At first, there was a great hue and cry about constraints on the use of .ibooks files created with iBooks Author and the lack of constraint by the EPUB 3 eBook standard released last October. Now that the "barking dog syndrome" that fuels today's echo-blogging has spent itself and the bit stream is calmer, more thoughtful analyses are beginning to emerge. For example, </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://daringfireball.net/2012/01/ibooks_author_file_format" rel="external">this</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">, from John Gruber regarding conformance to the EPUB 3 eBook standard.<br /><br />The other big gripe had to do with the End User License Agreement (EULA) for iBooks Author. The part that irked most said that if you use iBooks Author to create an .ibooks file AND you set out to sell that .ibooks file, you can only do so through Apple's iBookstore. There are no restrictions if your eTextbook is free. Since I think that eTextbooks should be free to students and that textbook authors should be rewarded in new and better ways than the grossly inefficient and unfair systems inherited from the print era, Apple's EULA doesn't bother me a bit. But for those who do care, the salient fact is that the .ibooks format is unencumbered and quite transparent. Thus, it is entirely possible to understand this format and either hand code *.ibooks files or build tools that do exactly the same thing as the iBooks Author app does. As well, there is nothing to stop those who make other hardware and software eReaders from endeavoring to develop the ability to display .ibooks files just as well as iBooks 2 does.<br /><br />We really have bigger and more important fish to fry here. There is a revolution coming and these apps and others that will follow are its harbingers. <br /><br />For the first time in history, colleges and universities fully control the means of eTextbook production, start to finish, inception to delivery. They need no help in producing world class eTextbooks. The seeds of revolution are in hand.<br /><br />The only imponderable is whether colleges and universities will sow those seeds and tend their gardens effectively. There are forces aligned against this so the outcome is not certain. Obviously, commercial textbook publishers will work very hard to avoid being dis-intermediated. Subject matter experts essential to the textbook creation process, such as faculty, will weigh their options carefully. The odds are, so far, with the status quo but that could change. Here's how that could happen. Here's how that revolution might occur.<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibooks-author-plus-ipad.png" width="480" height="351" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><em><br />iBooks Author (left) with iBooks on iPad (right)</em></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /><br /></span></p><p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-size:17px; ">Caveat: My focus here is on higher education. The K-12 eTextbook situation is so different that it will have to be dealt with separately and at a later time. However, it is worth noting there are some interesting interrelationships between K-12 and higher education such as the fact that many K-12 textbooks are written by college and university academics. How higher education responds to these new opportunities will also have a profound effect on K-12. My coming from a teacher education background means that I am vitally interested in both. So, on to the revolution in higher education. It's actually been a long time coming.<br /><br />Not that long ago, publishing paper textbooks (pTextbooks) meant having to make large capital investments in paper, printing, binding, transportation, and storage. Additionally, one had to command a substantial corps of human talent in the form of editors, sales and marketing people. Textbooks were much more challenging than fiction due to the need for fact checking, illustrations, supplementary materials, exercises and so on. Fiction is composed primarily of linear text, all handled by a single author.<br /><br />The desktop publishing revolution of the early 90s was significant in that it empowered anyone with a computer and laser printer to create documents with graphics and complex layouts that rivaled commercial pTextbook offerings. Any subject matter expert could create a small number of pTextbooks equal in quality and aesthetics to a commercial pTextbook. Of course the economics of paper still favored the commercial publisher and so, the commercial pTextbook publishers held on to their dominant position but the idea of independent textbook publishing was born.<br /><br />Very little changed until the Internet of the late 90s made it possible to distribute digital documents far and wide, usually in the form of Adobe PDF files or as web sites that perform the same function as a pTextbook. The rise of web-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) brought all of these components together under a single roof adding things such as automated testing. However, the commercial pTextbook persisted throughout all of this and continues to do so up to and including the present day. Why?<br /><br />Publishers saw this threat and took action. The pTextbook grew digital supplements such as CDs and even DVDs with both interactive and rich media content. A pTextbook adoption might also include access to a publisher-hosted LMS or a 'course pack' that populated an institution-hosted LMS. Instructors were happy to adopt these 'turn-key' courses-in-a-box because creating their own video and interactive supplements, test item banks and building their own LMS courses was both onerous and unrewarding or just downright impossible.<br /><br />So here we are in the first part of the 21</span><sup>st</sup><span style="font-size:17px; "> century. Made possible by the emergence of powerful mobile devices such as the Kindle, iPhone and iPad, the eBook is for the first time eclipsing pBook sales. Once again, commercial publishing is challenged as authors of fiction begin to succeed at self-publishing. The tools for doing this are all in hand: web sites with payment processing, the EPUB standard and applications that make EPUB-based eBook creation trivially easy. New intermediaries (e.g. Smashwords) and new outlets (Amazon Books, Google Books and Apple's iBookstore) with more favorable terms (viz. author gets up to 70% of sales instead of 25% royalties) have arisen to meet this new demand. <br /><br />Textbooks, on the other hand, are a bit more involved than creating a linear stream of text as is the case with a typical work of fiction or non-fiction. Even more so the eTextbook because it can contain interactive elements and rich media such as audio and video. Layout and exercises to facilitate learning are also key elements. Given these requirements, one might think that eTextbooks are best left to the professionals who work in the commercial publishing industry. Perhaps but this is by no means foreordained, especially now that software such as iBooks Author and iBooks 2 for the iPad are freely available.<br /><br />It is now possible for subject matter experts (SMEs) such as college and university professors to create and distribute world class eTextbooks for the iPad with iBooks Author. No doubt, these will be accompanied by competing applications and hardware platforms. Apple has set both a good example and a good pace. The Internet and all of its social networking and collaboration tools has also made it unnecessary for the all the work that an eTextbook requires be done by a single individual. The means with which to create eTextbooks that are pedagogically superior and significantly less expensive are in hand.<br /><br />Having in hand the means of production is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for this revolution to actually occur. SMEs are essential to this process and have had opportunities to dis-intermediate the publishing industry before but didn't do it. Why didn't that happen and why might that not happen in the near future? The answer and therefore the enemy of this revolution, is institutional tradition. Let's take a look at that.<br /><br />Academic institutions employ SMEs to teach classes, do research and perform community service. Above and beyond the contracted salary and benefits, they reward these activities with promotion (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor) and tenure. Promotion usually means a higher salary and tenure generally means greater job security where on e can only be denied a contract for cause which implies due process. Typically, committees are formed to examine records and determine whether an eligible academic is worthy of promotion and/or tenure. One of the things that these committees value highly and therefore look closely at are the candidates' record of publication which may include one or more textbooks. Traditionally, it is the esteem in which the journal or publisher is held that determines the value assigned to the work. A textbook published by one publisher may be rated lower than a textbook published by another recognized commercial publisher. A self-published textbook might well be deemed as worthless as something published by a known "vanity" publisher who will print (for a fee) anything sent to them. In other words, most institutions of higher education outsource the evaluation of faculty textbook production to commercial publishers. <br /><br />Being such a key part of the academic food chain, commercial publishers have been virtually guaranteed to have the right of first refusal on any textbook that might be written by a university professor. Although they are no longer the only game in town, they are still quite important to SMEs desiring promotion, tenure and royalties to supplement their income. The new alternative of publishing an an eTextbook via Apple's iBookstore appears to have only one of these incentives, 70% of the income derived from sales which may well be confined to one's home institution.<br /><br />I suspect that this is not sufficient to entice large numbers of academics to try their hand at self-publishing an eTextbook. The consequence of this would likely be a continuation of high prices for nationally distributed, one-size-fits-all eTextbooks. Obviously, this is bad for students but it's also bad for society in that fewer citizens will be able to afford completing a college degree and bad for institutions seeking to maintain enrollments. What can be done?<br /><br />Given that institutions can tolerate more risk than individual employees, I propose that we add textbook creation to the list of responsibilities for college and university faculty. Include that activity in the definition of teaching and point out that this responsibility can be met in collaboration with others in your academic field. Institutional support for that objective should include items such as the following:<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><ul class="disc"><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">Add "teaching and learning materials creation" to the criteria for promotion and tenure decisions. Creating all or part of an eTextbook would be subsumed under this heading.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">Invest in the development of assessment techniques to evaluate "teaching and learning materials creation" that does not involve commercial entities. A multi-institutional consortium might be a good way to approach this objectively.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">Provide ways and means for faculty to be eligible to receive either released time (e.g. one less class to teach) or extra compensation for eTextbook creation work such that the resulting eTextbook is a "work for hire" giving the institution copyright. Note that faculty are still free to create and market eTextbooks on their own time.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">Provide support for faculty collaborating with colleagues elsewhere on developing eTextbooks in their field. This is likely a simple matter of arranging access to collaboration software (Internet access assumed).</span></li><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">Where the copyright to an eTextbook is held by the institution, provide copies of that textbook to students needing it for the lowest possible price, including free.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">Where the copyright to an eTextbook is held by the institution, provide copies of that textbook to other non-profit institutions at the least cost possible consistent with cost recovery principles.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">Enter into collaborative agreements with other institutions to develop eTextbooks that are especially challenging such that the copyright to the resulting eTextbook is jointly held.</span></li></ul><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />With institutional support such as suggested in the list above, participating institutions would be able to take fuller responsibility for and exercise more effective control of the educational experiences enjoyed by their students. This would lower costs for students and help colleges and universities better recruit and retain students. Faculty participating in the effort would receive important scholarly recognition and credit toward promotion and tenure as well as released time or extra compensation. Their teaching would involve less compromise because they'd have had a hand in the making of the textbooks assigned. This is a revolution that ought to happen and could come with a strong commitment to forge new traditions in higher education, a bit of good fortune and a great deal of hard work.<br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />Lastly, let's deal with that bugaboo called copyright. With so many textbooks already in existence won't it be hard or impossible not to violate someone's copyright? What institution can afford to discover what permissions are needed and then secure them? First of all, state institutions and their employees are shielded by the 11</span><sup>th</sup><span style="font-size:17px; "> amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishing sovereign immunity for state governments. That doesn't cover all cases and isn't nearly as potent as the next point. Second and most importantly, there is very little in textbooks that is copyrightable. Specifically:<br /><br /></span><ul class="disc"><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">You cannot copyright a fact, concept or idea. You can only copyright the unique expression of an idea. Textbooks are primarily composed of facts, concepts and ideas.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:17px; ">The content of most academic subjects has been covered so many times in so many ways, it would be difficult to meet the uniqueness criterion. For example, how many World History textbooks have described Hannibal's crossing the Alps? Which of those descriptions is unique?</span></li></ul><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />I really don't know whether todays higher education leadership is both willing and able to attempt this revolution or not. One could argue that tough economic times make leaders more timid. They don't want to loose what little they've got. On the other hand, one could argue that tough economic times mean that there is less to loose and more to gain. I am convinced that if there is a will, there is now a way.<br /></span></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-73931651047469905932011-04-03T07:45:00.000-07:002014-11-22T08:12:37.617-08:00Standard Definition Video in Books Using the .epub or .ibooks Format<span style="font-size:17px; ">So far, we've been focused on the use of HD video in ePub documents but what about SD? Standard definition video is still quite common, especially for older works produced for television. Whereas HD has an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 or 16:9, SD has an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 or 4:3.<br /><br />As we have seen, iOS devices (iPad, iPhone and iPod touch), introduce black bars (letterbox, pillarbox and windowbox) and cropping/scaling in order to maintain the aspect ratio of the source video. Without these, the video we see on these devices would be stretched or squished which is not what the author intended. This is due to the fact that iOS devices do not have 16:9 screens. The iPad is 1024x768 which is 1:33:1 or 4:3. The iPhone and iPod touch are 480x320 (older) or 960x640 (newer, retina displays) which is 1.5:1 or 3:2. In other words, iOS devices have screens with aspect ratios that are the same as or very close to standard definition TV dimensions.<br /><br />I've created the following screencast to illustrate the many ways that the iBooks application on these iOS devices will present Standard Definition (SD) video. There's a lot to account for with different orientations (portrait vs landscape) and whether the reader chooses to view video embedded in an EPUB-based eBook in situ, proportional full screen or non-proportional full screen. It's best to see all of this in action.<br /><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="720" height="635" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/SD_Video_in_iBooks/" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />If your source is SD, QuickTime X Player will maintain that aspect ratio in all of its export options. This is ideal for video embedded in EPUB-based eBooks. Playback at 640x480 minimizes the use of black bars, cropping and scaling, the iPod bit rate keeps a good balance between file size and fidelity in most cases and the MPEG-4 Baseline Profile assures that the video will play wherever the iBooks.app is found.</span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-82454886793597732582011-04-03T06:33:00.000-07:002014-11-22T08:12:36.896-08:00New Developments in Video Encoded for iBooks.app<span style="font-size:17px; ">Last September, I looked at the need to make sure that video embedded in an ePub document would play and play well on all of the devices where the iBooks.app is found (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad). Since then, new developments not only make this topic more important but also warrant a review of the principles involved.<br /><br />New developments include the fact that the ePub standard is now at version three and formally specifies the embedding of audio and video files in ePub documents using the same HTML 5 video and audio tags that the iBooks.app has long supported. Thus, there will likely be more eReaders supporting rich media beside iBooks. When those new eReaders do arrive, we'll need to look at them closely. For now, the iBooks.app is still the only game in town for rich media in ePub documents. As well, we have new hardware and operating systems to consider and that brings up "backward compatibility" as an increasingly important factor.<br /><br />So, let's take another look at this topic and bring our earlier conclusions up to date.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; "><em>Hardware Targeting</em></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> The </span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibooks/id364709193?mt=8" rel="external">iBooks.app</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">, now at version 1.2.1, requires iOS 4 or later so that reduces the range of hardware that it will run on to iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad plus the 2</span><sup>nd</sup><span style="font-size:17px; "> or later generation iPod touch. The most recent of these (iPhone 4, iPad and 4G iPod touch) sport the significantly more powerful A4 processor and, thus, are capable of decoding more advanced versions of the MPEG-4 H.264 standard. Specifically, these newer models can handle H.264 Main Profile whereas the older models can only handle the Baseline Profile. Simply put, baseline will play everywhere iBooks runs whereas video encoded using the Main Profile will only play on newer iOS devices. Thus, aiming for the greatest reach means that we need to stick with Baseline Profile for maximum backward compatibility.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; "><em>Viewport Targeting</em></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> Thanks to an article by video wizard Jan Ozer entitled "</span><span style="font-size:17px; "><a href="http://digitalcontentproducer.com/videoencodvd/revfeat/encoding_apple_ipad_0420/" rel="external">Encoding for the iPad</a></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">", I've learned that, thanks to the video scaling function on the iPad, encoding HD (16:9) video at 640x360 pixels looks great for most content regardless of viewport size. The exception to this is video with fine detail such as smallish text. That gets very blurry but since we're talking about ePub here, that shouldn't be a problem. Save the text for the body of your eBook and use static images for fine visual detail. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; "><em>Bit-rate & File Size Targeting</em></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> An ePub document is self-contained. Generally speaking, there are no external dependencies for video or audio. Thus, video, audio, image and text files are all found inside the ePub file. Actually, an ePub document is a special kind of Zip archive that eReader apps know how to handle. Because of this self-sufficiency, bit-rate is not as critical as it would be if ePub video required an Internet download as a web page does. On the other hand, video file size is a function of bit-rate and, so, has a lot to do with the file size of your ePub document, how long it takes to download and how long your audience will have to wait before they can start reading. A frame size of 640x360 and a bit-rate of 1.4 Mbps (mega-bits per second) using the MPEG-4 Baseline Profile should produce pristine video for most HD (16:9) sourced content.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; "><em>The Golden Mean</em></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> Of course there are good use cases that diverge from this golden mean. The iPad's 1024x768 screen, for example, will accommodate 720p (1280x720) by scaling it down to 1024x576. The iPad will also support MPEG-4 Main Profile and very high bit rates for optimal quality playback. However, unlike other media synched to iOS devices via the iTunes.app, the video content of self-contained ePub documents is not evaluated, Thus, it is quite possible to create an eBook containing video or audio that will not play properly or at all. It is critical that ePub documents be tested on the smallest, least capable iOS devices as well as the iPad and iPhone 4 if your goal is to have the video in your ePub documents accessible wherever iBooks is found. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; "><em>Reviewing Our Recommended Methods</em></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> Previously, I had recommended using the iPhone presets that are found in the output options of many applications such as QuickTime Player, Screenflow, Miro and Handbrake. This is still a viable strategy though it is not optimal. The iPhone preset in QuickTime Player, for example, currently encodes a 480x300 video at 880 Kbps using the Baseline Profile. It will scale and play everywhere that iBooks runs but its not the best that we can do. Actually, the iPod preset comes closer at: 1.463 Mbps, 640x360, Baseline@3.0 when the source is 1280x720. This is much better for 16:9 source.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; font-weight:bold; "><em>Scalability Testing</em></span><span style="font-size:17px; "> As mentioned above, testing is critical. Not only do we have to test on multiple devices but we also need to test using all of the orientation and scaling options. Here is an illustrated list to guide your testing:<br /><br />The iPod touch and the iPhone all share the same screen size (viewport). Here is the portrait view:<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/composite-ipod-portrait.jpg" width="1012" height="506" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />Here, we see a proportional scaling of the video constrained by the width of the screen in this orientation. Note the "expander" button in the upper right corner of the center image. Tapping that button fills the screen without regard for aspect ratio (proportion) like this:<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/composite-ipod-portrait-max.jpg" width="1012" height="506" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />Notice that the expander button has now become a collapse button.<br /><br />Next, we look at the landscape orientation where the same controls are operative but the visual effect is, of course, different.<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/composite-ipod-landscape-full-screen2.jpg" width="1012" height="698" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />Next, we look at the iPad where video can be played in-situ, full-screen (proportional) and full screen (non-proportional). We start with the portrait in-situ view.<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/composite-ipad-portrait-in-situ2-.jpg" width="1012" height="698" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; ">Here, the iPad advantage is that video can be played in context with other book elements such as text. Tapping on the expander button will bring us to the proportional full screen view which looks like this:<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/composite-full-screen-prop-0026-non-prop.jpg" width="1017" height="689" /><span style="font-size:17px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:17px; "><br />Notice that the collapse button on the video control bar (bottom) is the same in both images. Tapping this element will return to the in-situ video where you may continue watching or stop the video and resume reading text. The expander buttons at the top have a different function. The one on the leftmost image expands to the non-proportional full-screen image on the right. The one on the rightmost image returns the full screen proportional video on the left. <br /><br />All of these views need to be checked in order to assure that your audience is seeing the video as you intend. Fortunately, the algorithms that Apple uses to scale video in these widely different environments is very good. If you start with high quality source at 1280x720 and then export using the iPod preset, you will likely be satisfied with all of these views. <br /><br /></span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-57732116365692596942010-12-24T13:44:00.000-08:002014-11-22T08:12:34.037-08:00The Prospects for EPUB Version 3<span style="font-size:15px; ">As we know, the EPUB standard is being revised to version 3. It's on a fast track (approval expected Q3 2011) and the 14 point </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://www.idpf.org/idpf_groups/IDPF-EPUB-WG-Charter-5-24-2010_Approved.html" rel="external">charter</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> is ambitious. In addition to danger, change also presents opportunity.<br /><br />Apple is among those who have an interest in shaping that change and they have been overtly busy with the iBooks.app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch as well as the iBookstore that supports that app. Apple has also been busy in the background. Among the many things that Apple is doing that are just out of view for most of the general public is what I believe can only be characterized as a concerted effort to influence the evolution of version three of the EPUB standard.<br /><br />Although Apple claims to follow the EPUB standard, they have recently introduced features supported in the iBooks app that do not conform to the current standard. Conforming EPUB files play just fine in iBooks but these new, super, EPUBs do things in iBooks that haven't been possible before, especially on mobile devices. <br /><br />Using the HTML 5 [video] and [audio] tag was the first, simple but dramatic move. This has been followed by other features that require rather sophisticated Javascript coding such as the recent implementation of "fully illustrated books" in iBooks 1.2 that open graphic and tabular information in a new window that overrides the conventional ePub "flowed" text format in favor of full-screen display, even in landscape mode.<br /><br />Deconstructing these super ePub files reveals important insights into both the iBooks app and Apple's EPUB strategy. Standard ePub files are but Zip archives containing text and image files. Those contained files evidence a striking similarity with the code of the web. Thus, eReaders are akin to web browsers, albeit very specialized ones. Apple has simply added Javascript and new HTML 5 constructs to the CSS, XHTML and so on found in conventional ePub files and interpreted by conventional eReaders. Rather than web-like, Apple's ePub files are web files, period. Similarly, the iBooks app is more of a modern HTML 5 web browser than an ePub eBook reader.<br /><br />It has been </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/12/apple-disses-ebook-developers-at-their.html" rel="external">pointed out</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> that Apple isn't currently sharing how-to information on these techniques with medium to small publishers and self-publishers. I suspect that there's more that's not being shared. It may well be that Apple isn't yet sharing the tools to easily implement these features except with the chosen few. Why do I think that? Here is why:<br /><br />Apple developers have access to tools and documentation that others do not. One of the tools recently released to Apple developers is the iAd Producer application. It looks like this:<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/iad-first-look.jpg" width="896" height="624" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br />What iAd Producer does is provide one with a drag and drop UI to assemble an interactive, animated display, an iAd. This iAd is actually an HTML 5 mini-web site. That is, a folder containing HTML, CSS, images, media and Javascript that any modern web browser will display properly because it is standards-based. This tool is only available to Apple developers.<br /><br />Might there be a similar tool that is only available to the larger publishers? I don't know for sure but confirmation of the existence of such a tool would be unsurprising to me. It would be trivial. I think, to adapt what we see as iAd developer to an application that could be called iBook Developer. Nowadays, web and mobile technology are all converging toward HTML 5. <br /><br />So, why is Apple out in front on this? Alan Kay, former Apple Fellow, said it this way in 1971: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." By putting out living examples of EPUB that human readers respond positively to, Apple is inventing the future. It is, thereby, also influencing the development of this key standard. Those who are working on the standard simply cannot ignore these events.<br /><br />Apple is engaged in a very smart campaign that will benefit all those who create and read digital books as well as benefit Apple. Yet another example of "doing well by doing good."<br /><br /><br /></span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-77057250036305555512010-12-12T07:55:00.000-08:002014-11-22T08:37:54.804-08:00Internet Archive eBook Reader Released<span style="font-size:15px; ">The Internet Archive has a new online eBook Reader with some very nice features such as the ability to share eBooks on your web site or via your blog. Here's an example:<br /><br /></span><iframe src='http://www.archive.org/stream/intlepisode00jamearch?ui=embed#mode/1up' width='480px' height='430px' frameborder='0' ></iframe><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br />Of course you can also download the eBook in ePub and other formats for reading on mobile and other devices, Here's a screenshot:<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/safariscreensnapz001.jpg" width="936" height="702" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br />Read more about this at </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://blog.openlibrary.org/2010/12/09/new-bookreader/" rel="external">The Open Library Blog</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; ">.</span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-85550198153080343282010-10-31T07:24:00.000-07:002014-06-04T05:41:07.704-07:00<span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">I've started sampling some of the ePub eBooks available via iTunes U. One of the technically more interesting ones so far is "The Restless Universe" from The Open University. What caught my eye in this textbook was the implementation of a simple interactive Q&A which uses a hyperlink to show the answer, presumably after the learner has written down what they think the answer is, workbook style. Many would consider this to be essential for eTextbooks.<br /><br />The following screen shot illustrates this feature:<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/restless-universe-page-with-quiz-question0028600x8000029.png" width="600" height="800" /><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; "><br /></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">I believe that this is easily implemented in the Pages application (part of Apple's </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#000000;font-weight:bold; "><em>iWork</em></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> suite of applications c. $77 education price) and will attempt to test that in the coming days.<br /></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br />Here are three iTunes U sites that were ready with ePubs at launch:<br /><br />- </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/institution/connexions/id375198208" rel="self">Connexions</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> - Open Textbooks<br />- </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/institution/the-open-university/id380206132" rel="self">The Open University</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"> - OpenLearn Course Material <br />- Oxford - </span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=400639473" rel="self">Shakespeare's First Folio</a></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><u><br /><br /></u></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;">What is currently supported:<br /><br />For content providers:<br />˜ Uploading ePub files to a hosted iTunes U site<br />˜ Adding ePub via RSS to a feed-based iTunes U site<br /></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#000000;font-weight:bold; "><em><br />NOTE: The latter option is the most commonly used method in the University System of Georgia. Content is uploaded to the USG Podcasting Server which generates an RSS feed that can be used to populate a collection (aka course or channel) in iTunes U. This method enables faculty to disseminate content in other venues. <br /><br />Here is an </em></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#000000;font-weight:bold; "><em><a href="http://hercules.gcsu.edu/%7Eflowney/USG_PCS/index.html" rel="external">examples page</a></em></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; font-weight:bold; color:#000000;font-weight:bold; "><em> showing the various options for sharing an entire channel or a single episode (aka lecture, lesson or item).</em></span><span style="font:15px Verdana, serif; color:#000000;"><br /><br />For end-users:<br />˜ Downloading ePub files from iTunes U to an iTunes client on Mac and PC<br />˜ Syncing downloaded ePub files from iTunes to iBooks on an iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad<br />˜ Downloading ePub files, over the air, from iTunes U to iBooks on an iPad<br /><br /><br />Coming soon:<br />˜ Downloading ePub files, over the air, from iTunes U to iBooks on an iPod touch or iPhone (this will come later with iOS 4.2)<br /><br /></span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-82131548739837066852010-10-29T08:52:00.000-07:002014-06-04T05:41:06.682-07:00<span style="font-size:15px; ">On October 29, 2010, iTunes U administrators received the message shown in the screen shot below. It announces the fact that ePub-based eBooks may now be included in iTunes U collections (aka courses or channels) and items (aka lessons or episodes).<br /><br />This is a very significant development as I argued back in April 2010 that it would be. Support for ePub in iTunes U provides faculty with an excellent vehicle for disseminating instructional materials in the form of ePub documents. These can range in size from 300-400 page textbooks to much smaller documents such as handouts or even syllabi. <br /><br />We should also expect to see an upsurge in interest in applications that facilitate the creation of ePub documents and there are already many options to choose from. Apple's pages application added support for ePub as reported here back in August 2010. Pages and the iWork suite of which it is a part will undoubtedly become must have software.<br /><br /><br /></span><p style="text-align:center;"><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/epub-in-itunes-u-announcement.jpg" width="669" height="820" /></p>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-77875103625750212092010-10-28T13:31:00.000-07:002014-06-04T05:41:02.495-07:00<span style="font-size:18px; ">My presentation was very well received and we were able to capture both the slides and presenter audio/video to produce this 54 minute screencast. I hope that you find it interesting and useful. One of three versions will be auto-selected for you depending upon the device that you are using (computer or mobile device with a good web browser and MPEG-4 video capability). The desktop computer version is quite large (1.13 GB) so may take a while to load enough data to play without interruption to the end if your bandwidth is limited.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="864" height="640" src="http:/dig1.gcsu.edu/Frank_lowney/screencasts/Rock_Eagle_2010/index.html" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-size:18px; "><br /><br />This is also a good example of screencasting using the terrific ScreenFlow application from Telestream. The slideshow was captured on the presenter's MacOS X 10.6.x MacBook Pro laptop and the presenter audio and video were captured by a Canon DV cam and wireless mic (thanks to Blake Bridges of the </span><span style="font-size:18px; "><a href="http://digroup.gcsu.edu/" rel="external">Georgia Digital Innovation Group</a></span><span style="font-size:18px; ">).</span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-88820187376771113602010-09-27T13:30:00.000-07:002014-06-04T05:41:01.606-07:00<span style="font-size:15px; ">With the Pages application (part of Apple's iWork suite), we can now easily include audio and video in our ePub-based eBooks. These advanced eBooks are viewable only in the iBooks application on an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch but these iOS devices are selling like hotcakes so that's OK for now. The others will catch up eventually.<br /><br />However, easy as it is to include audio and video in an ePub using Pages, we still have to exercise care in preparing these media files for our eBooks. It's is quite easy to create a video file that won't play back properly or at all and we don't want to inflict that kind of experience on our readers.<br /><br />Obviously, Flash is out so we are talking about files that are in an MPEG-4 or QuickTime container. But that's not all. We also have to make sure that the CODEC used for the video track is H.264 and the CODEC used for the audio track is AAC. In addition to that, we must take care to keep the data rate, expressed in bits per second, below certain threshold values. Here, for example, are the </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/" rel="external">technical specifications</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> for the iPad. Read the sections on "Audio playback" and "TV and video" to get the general idea. No need to study or memorize these, just get the flavor and we'll move on.<br /><br />These specifications are all aimed at accommodating the requirements of the firmware chips in most mobile devices that decompress and display video. Using dedicated and specialized firmware is far more efficient than decompressing video in software. This yields superior performance and a good video experience.<br /><br />So, with all of these specifications, it should be easy to get things wrong, right? No, that's not the case. There are lots of virtually foolproof ways to make sure that the audio and video you include in an ePub file will play back properly in iBooks on an iOS device, currently the only venue where this kind of media can be played back in an ePub file.<br /><br />There are two general scenarios that will determine how best to proceed: whether we are creating the media from scratch or repurposing extant media. Let's examine both cases.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; font-weight:bold; ">Creating and exporting media from scratch.</span><span style="font-size:15px; "> This is easiest scenario but has the most variations. If you are creating video with or without an audio track, always export using the iPhone preset (480x360 ). This will usually keep the data rate below one megabit per second which will perform very well on any iOS device. There are many applications that create video. Similarly, audio-only applications have iPhone presets. Here's a screencast medley of popular MacOS X apps that export video and audio that will be playable in the iBooks app on iOS devices.<br /><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="864" height="540" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/CreateMediaForEPUB/index.html" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; font-weight:bold; ">Repurposing extant media.</span><span style="font-size:15px; "> There are several good approaches to this task depending upon the characteristics of the source video. The general goal is to convert the source file into a 480x360 H.264/AAC file in an MPEG-4 or QuickTime container. Source files can be almost anything (Flash, DVD, Windows Media, AVI and so on) but you may need to extend your MacOS X system with extra QuickTime components in order to handle all of these. Here is a short list of the most important QuickTime components to add:<br /><br />• </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://perian.org/" rel="external">Perian</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> (free) Formats supported: </span><span style="font:14px 'Lucida Grande', LucidaGrande, Verdana, sans-serif; color:#1A1A1A;">AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW</span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br />• </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm" rel="external">Flip4Mac WMV</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> ($29) Formats supported: Windows Media video and audio<br /><br />Here is a list of applications that are useful in repurposing non-MPEG-4 files to the proper iPhone specs:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php" rel="external">Handbrake 0.9.4</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> (free) Converts DVDs to MPEG-4, including iPhone output.<br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/" rel="external">Miro Video Converter 2.2</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> (free) Converts almost anything to MPEG-4, including iPhone output.<br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://cocoamug.com/cosmopod/" rel="external">CosmoPod</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> ($12) Downloads and converts YouTube and other Flash video to MPEG-4 iPhone output.<br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/" rel="external">QuickTime X Player</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> (free) Converts anything it can play (see components above) to iPhone format.<br />MacOS X Automator </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="http://www.macosxautomation.com/services/download/index.html" rel="external">Movie Services</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> (free) Converts andy QuickTime movie to iPhone format.<br /><br />Here's a screencast medley of these applications at work repurposing video that will be playable in the iBooks app on iOS devices.<br /><br /></span><iframe type="text/html" width="864" height="540" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/ConvertMediaForEPUB/index.html" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br /></span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-10480830116921059892010-09-17T15:32:00.000-07:002014-06-04T05:41:00.684-07:00<span style="font-size:14px; ">My proposal for a presentation to the 39th University System Annual Computing Conference entitled, "Creating and Publishing eBooks Using the EPUB Standard" has been accepted. This conference is not held in a hotel in some big city. Rather, it happens on the 1,452 acre Rock Eagle 4-H Center just outside Eatonton, Georgia. Here's the </span><span style="font-size:14px; "><a href="http://www.usg.edu/rock_eagle/" rel="external">official site</a></span><span style="font-size:14px; "> for the conference where you'll find all of the info on it that you might want.<br /><br />Thus, I'll be holding forth on this topic for 45 minutes beginning at 8:30 AM on Thursday October 21 in the "International Paper 3" room. Not exactly the "Boom Boom" room but it will be a good experience I'm sure. Here is the abstract:<br /><br />Creating eBooks using the EPUB standard is now within the grasp of faculty as well as any other subject matter expert with basic computer skills. Additionally, publishing eBooks for consumption by students and others on desktop. laptop and mobile devices will soon be a drag and drop operation. In addition to an overview of the eBook creation and publishing process, attendees will have access to a companion web site with links to in-depth information, tutorials and resources.<br /><br />See you at the Rock!</span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-69114416029043532242010-08-31T06:28:00.000-07:002014-06-04T05:40:59.942-07:00Apple's iWork Suite is composed of three applications: Pages, a word processor and page layout application, Keynote, a slide show app like Powerpoint and Numbers, a spreadsheet app like Excel. Microsoft Office (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc.) is also available to MacOS X users. The essential difference is that iWork is focused on elegance and ease-of-use whereas Microsoft Office is focused on power, cross-platform compatibility, feature parity and so on.<br /><br />An update to the iWork suite late last week included a new export option for Pages. The Pages app can now export a document as an .epub file, the predominant standard for eBooks. While there have been other WYSIWYG editors for producing ePub documents such as Sigil and eCub, Pages is the first mainstream commercial application to support ePub export. What's more, Pages is somewhat ahead of the standard by enabling the inclusion of audio and video media in an ePub document.<br /><br />In addition to the Pages update, Apple has provided this <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4168" rel="external">support page</a> which describes a number of ePub best practices and includes a link to download a very helpful <a href="http://images.apple.com/support/pages/docs/ePub_Best_Practices_EN.zip" rel="self">sample file</a> that can be used as a template or a source from which the proper ePub styles may be imported. I used it as a template by saving that file with a different name and then replacing the content with my own. <br /><br />The key to creating a properly formed ePub document is to select the appropriate Pages Section types (Title Page, TOC, Forward, Chapter, etc.) and use the appropriate Paragraph Styles as you insert the content.<br /><br />Here's a brief tour of the Pages template showing how Sections and Paragraph Styles are used to define the structure (cover, TOC, chapters, etc.) of the exported ePub file. First, we look at the template as Apple provided it and then with a different file name and different content.<br /><br /><br /><iframe type="text/html" width="864" height="540" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/screencasts/blog/ReviewPagesExportEPUB//index.html" frameborder="0"><br /></iframe>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7408609780362557112.post-19853872652040631432010-08-22T14:06:00.000-07:002014-06-04T05:40:59.108-07:00<span style="font-size:15px; ">We've talked about publishing via RSS and via OPDS Catalogs but that is all about publishing unencumbered EPUB documents without payment to the author. While that may be your intent, there are other options. It is also possible to market an ePUb document and be compensated for that work. One attractive option is to use Apple's iBookstore which uses the agency model: you set the price and get 60% of all sales with Apple getting the remainder. <br /><br />There are two basic approaches to using the iBookstore, doing all the work yourself or getting some help from an approved aggregator.<br /><br />Your first step should be to acquaint yourself with the rules. They are simple and few in number. Go to </span><span style="font-size:15px; "><a href="https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply" rel="external">iTunes Connect</a></span><span style="font-size:15px; "> where you will see this :<br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/itunes-connect-entry.png" width="1025" height="586" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br />... be sure to use the drop-down menu to choose "Books."<br />Here you'll see the requirements for submitting an eBook to the iBookstore. <br /><br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibookstore-requirements.png" width="1025" height="586" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br />The next two screenshots show the application and the info requested prior to uploading your .epub files. Of course it is essential that your book be exactly as you intend it to be. Involving an editor or at least other literate people as critical readers would be a wise move before uploading.<br /><br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibookstore-application.png" width="1025" height="586" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibookstore-application-2.png" width="1024" height="922" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br />If this seems too much to bear, you always have that second option which is to involve an Apple-approved aggregator. For a small fee, these folks will handle most of what needs to be done. However, they generally do not support or market the book. That's your job and it can be a mighty challenge. There are lots of comments by other authors on this point so it's good to make an effort to find, read and consider the experience of others.<br /><br /><br /></span><img class="imageStyle" alt="" src="http://dig1.gcsu.edu/frank_lowney/blog/files/ibookstore-aggregators.png" width="1032" height="609" /><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /></span><span style="font-size:15px; "><br /><br />You'll want to investigate the requirements of each aggregator as they are not all the same. Smashbooks, for example, has a Style Guide that you should consult well ahead of time. Their style guide is an .epub file and they only accept manuscripts in the form of a Microsoft Word document. Smashwords also offers the option to publish via other venues in addition to the iBookstore.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span>flowneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11463325863108585202noreply@blogger.com0