Video Integration: The Big Picture
Video plays an ever-increasing role in how we process and understand complex ideas via the Internet, and it is a powerful way for you to reach your end-users. Video complements media that has been transmitted mainly through the written word and still images. Just as task-based documentation is modularized so that new documents can be created from pieces of existing text, video segments - each assigned a unique id - may be reordered into new configurations. These video segments can be managed, remixed, searched, and reused across as many documents as you like.
Wild Basin Media offers video solutions and consultation services to help you blend video with online documentation. Whether your goal is to provide online training, create e-learning courses, or merge video with your product's technical documentation, we assist our clients through all aspects of integration, including video production, content management consulting, and authoring tool customization.
One of the major hurdles to using video with online documentation has been that it is not searchable in a meaningful way. We rarely glean the necessary level of information in the first pass and require a means to revisit discrete sections of video at a later time. Similarly, we may want to watch only video segments that are related to the tasks that we need to learn and perform, so we require a way to find and view these segments efficiently. MPEG-7, a multimedia content description standard, is at the core of better searching capabilities. In a nutshell, MPEG-7 is nothing more than XML geared for the multimedia world that stores information about each relevant section within video sequences.
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) is a mark up language for multimedia that enables authoring of interactive audiovisual presentations. While the SMIL standard has many uses within multimedia presentations, its ability to handle timing considerations is a key component of Wild Basin Media's online video-integrated documentation (OVID) model.
Imagine the benefits of having a methodical way of viewing discrete steps within, for instance, an engine maintenance manuals. Mechanics could search across MPEG-7 repositories to find and view appropriate video segments and read the associated task-based documentation adjacent to them. Conversely, video segments could be opened and viewed through links in topics. Alternatively, thumbnails could be browsed and clicked to open precisely the right footage. Because many parts and procedures are identical across engine models, standard reuse and effectivity principles could be employed for video in the same way as for text-based content. Therefore, the cost of using multimedia in documentation can be reduced because "chunked" video provides more opportunities for reuse (i.e., less production and post-production work).
At Wild Basin Media, we have not only created ways for your Web viewers to benefit from online video-integrated documentation (OVID), we can also work with you to create a seamless authoring and content management pipeline.
