The Infusion e-learning
authoring tool facilitates efficient and rapid production of high-quality,
computer-based education materials. A multimedia e-learning
presentation is created in the Infusion production tool by first
importing media elements such as bitmap presentation slides, movie
files, Microsoft PowerPoint slides or pre-recorded lecture videos.
The imported slides and videos are then titled and arranged in presentation
order. Text notes can be attached to each slide to prompt the speaker
during the recording phase but will not be included in the final
streaming presentation. Finally, the audio/video presentation is
recorded along with slide change events and slide annotation. The
Infusion production tool synchronizes the audio/video stream with
slide change actions and allows live, graphical annotation of the
slides during recording and synchronization. Annotations are rendered
transparently over a slide and the user can use various drawing
tools such as a freehand pen, lines and polylines, icons, text,
or geometric primitives to mark up the slide. The timing of the
creation and deletion of each annotation is also recorded and synchronized
to the audio/video stream so that, upon playback, the annotations
appear and disappear as they were recorded. A completed presentation
can be played back in the Infusion authoring tool to verify timing
and synchronization.
After an e-learning presentation is completed, it is then published.
During the publishing procedure, the multimedia timing and synchronization
is translated into Microsoft's version of Synchronized Multimedia
Integration Language (SMIL), an XML-based language which facilitates
the synchronized streaming playback of multimedia presentations
by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The media elements are
encoded into Microsoft's streaming video format. The output of
the publishing procedure can then be streamed to e-learners over
the
internet or packaged onto CDROM.
IMTC has integrated the word-spotting engine developed by Nexidia
into Infusion allowing keyword searches of published
e-learning modules.
click on a thumbnail below for a larger view (JPG: 640 x 480)
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images from the infusion interface
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