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Adding Sound
Sounds on the net and embeded in your pages can be a great thing for viewers with sound cards and a few shareware programs.
Remember when we talked about the legality of images? Well, here's the lecture of sounds clips. What sound clips or recording can you legally place on your page. Here's some simple guidelines.
Enough for the lecture.
Helper Applications
Before we talk about placing sound on your page let's discuss some of the helper application available to the viewer to play the sounds you are embedding on your site. Helper applications are programs that were called upon by Netscape browsers but were not part of the browser itself. In other word someone else wrote them.
Here's how helper applications work.
Putting Sound on the Page
Follow this format if you have a sound you would like to offer. This will make your Web visitors use a helper application.
Here's the syntax:
<A HREF="http://www.yoursite.com/filename.wav">Click Here</A>
Of course, there are sound formats other than .wav. Notice that the preceding code is nothing more than a simple link pointed at the sound file you wish to use. This is really all you need to offer a sound file, nothing really fancy. Place it is the same directory as the page calling for it and the viewer;s browser will take it from there. Just be sure to FTP transfer the sound file to your Web site as binary or raw data; any other way can corrupt the file.
Embedding Sound on a Page
Embedding means that you include the sound command in your HTML document and use a plug in to run it.
What's a plug in. A plug-in is a program the assists your browser to perform at an enhanced level. They are called plug ins because the require they browser to be open to function correctly. Helper applications are independent of the browser while plug-ins are not.
A sound plug-in does basically the same thing the helper application dose, but the plug-in works for with the browser rather then opening up a entirely separate program.
How Do I Do It?
I'm going to show this to you using a MIDI file. MIDI is an acronym that stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. That's a program that acts as a go-between for an instrument and something that creates the sound. Sort of like running a guitar through a computer and then out a speaker. A midi file over the Web works as a program that runs the sound card. The midi file is not simply read and reproduced like a .wav or an .au file. The midi file sort of "plays" the sound card. It tells the sound card what note to produce and for what duration. Put enough of these notes together and it sounds like music. Most of the midi music you hear sounds like a bad little Casio keyboard. Probably because that's the level at which your sound card can reproduce the sounds. Higher level sound cards can reproduce the MIDI just as clear as any instrument could. It's really amazing when you hear it.
The Syntax for embedding is:
<EMBED SRC="sound.mid" AUTOSTART=FALSE LOOP= WIDTH=45 HEIGHT=55
ALIGH="center">
</EMBED>
EMBED tells the browser an embed sound is here -- go get the plug-in.
Remember, embed commands are associated with plug-ins.
Note: If no plug-in is
available, the browser will do one of three things:
SRC stands for "source." It tells the browser where to go to get the audio file.
AUTOSTART deals with whether you want the sound to play by itself or by the viewer starting the file after the plug-in box pops up. "True" starts the file straight away, "false" prompts the viewer. Note I used "false" above. "True" would have started the file straightaway upon load.
LOOP works the same way. "True" loops the sound so it plays forever. Make the loop "false" if you only want it played once.
More About Embedding
1.You can embed just about any type of sound file as long as the person using your page has the ability to read it. My plug-in will play just about any file except RealAudio (spelled correctly).
2.RealAudio still works as a helper application. What's great about RealAudio is that it plays the sound as it is being downloaded. The play is almost instantaneous. Great invention.
3.Download time with an embed is not sped up or slowed. The entire file must download before the plug-in plays it. What is different (and better) about this is that an embed starts the download process without anyone clicking on blue words. Also, you can play with the page while the download is occurring, rather than just sitting and waiting like you have to do with helper applications.
MIDI Soundtrack Samples
Audio Soundtrack Samples - The following file were created using Smartsound for Multimedia. This is the tune you heard when you opened this page.
Video on the Net There are many different formats of video that will play on one type of computer
or another depending on the software the user has installed. But over the Internet,
there are three formats that are used almost exclusively, AVI, QuickTime and
MPEG. The important thing to remember here is for the most part to be viable both
the person creating and video and the person viewing the video and going to
need to spend some time and money to have the system and hardware capable of
recording an viewing videos. This rule is pretty much wide open thanks to the creators of You Tube. You Tube was just sold to Google for 1.65 billion dollars. Just in case you don;t think there is money to be made on the Internet. Film vs. Video Film I have no doubt that all of you have seen a piece of film. A film is put together
through one little picture replacing the one before it. As the film strip passes
over the light, each frame (the little picture is called a frame) is displayed.
The frames roll past fast enough that your eyeballs perceive some sort of motion.
The pictures on a film strip do not carry motion. Your eye just perceives the
quick passing of static frames as motion. It's a neat little trick that will
help us later. In case you're wondering, 24 frames pass over a film projector's light every
second. Video Ah, video. A big fat cassette tape that carries pictures and sound. And it's
not a whole lot more than that. The tape that is used in a video cassette is
not all that much different than the tape in a cassette. It's just made to carry
sound and video rather than just sound. It would seem that if film used 24 frames a second, then video would just
follow through and do the same. Not so. You see, video is used on television
mostly and television uses a 30-frame-per-second speed. So video does, too. What about those slower video speeds like SLP and LP? Those do run the tape
more slowly, but still produce the 30 frames a second. It's just that by running
the tape slower, the VCR is asking more and more information to be saved in
a smaller and smaller space. This makes for a less pleasing picture. The slower
speeds are a trade-off between picture quality and amount of data on a VCR tape.
This little ditty of information will also be helpful later. Digital Video The three video files above are all digital video. Each is a different format,
but basically they do the same thing. They play back a "video" in digitized
form. Just as a scanner will make a digital photocopy of a picture, a video
card will make a duplicate of a video movie. I say it will make a digital copy of a video rather than a film, because film
is not in the correct frame rate format; 24 doesn't go into 30 cleanly. In addition,
video is already movement in a mechanical format. Video is captured motion played
back through electronic transducing of metal particles into color and motion. Huh? Every time one of the 30 frames rolls past, the information saved on the VCR
tape is read by a video reader or "head." That head is electrified and the magnetic
particles on the tape disrupt the electrical "field" the head is producing.
That disruption is displayed to you as a picture. That's as un-technical as
I could explain it without resorting to hand puppets. Now, since the magnetic field is already there, why can't we just send that
disrupted signal to a computer rather than another VCR or TV? We can. That's
how those three pups above were produced. The Hardware The equipment one needs for video capture is quite simple. You'll need something
that plays the video -- like a VCR -- and a video capture card of some sort
that slides into your computer. In addition, you'll need a fairly strong computer
with memory... lots and lots of memory. A big hard drive doesn't hurt either.
You hook the VRC's out-ports to the video capture card's in-ports and you're
pretty much good to go. I'm sure software will come with the card, and barring
any unforeseen problems you should be able to grab video with the best of them. Cost is a factor, I'm sure. As with anything else, the better you buy, the
more you will pay. The more options you want, the more you pay. My video card
has the ability to capture a full 30 frames a second in two different formats
using a few different types of compressions rations. I paid $600 for the card
and the software I wanted. Video Formats There are three basic formats of video used on the Internet today. I am not
including the streaming videos that are just starting to come out. I'm talking
simple video formats. Here are all three: I own IBM computers, so I capture in AVI format. Once I have the video in AVI,
I then use two separate pieces of software to change the video from AVI to one
of the other two formats. AVI can be turned into MPEG straight away. The encoding
process takes around two minutes for every one second of AVI video. Quicktime
is a little different story. The entire AVI file must be resaved with a different
compression rate, known as "Intel Indeo." Then the AVI can be run through a
Quicktime converter. That process is very fast. What Is This Compression You Keep Talking
About?!?! Allow me to explain using two image formats first, GIF and JPEG. GIF format
is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format. The file saves at the same
size it displays at. If it's a 10K file size, then it takes up 10K on your hard
drive and then must be transported at 10K. Period. JPEG, on the other hand,
is a compressed format. It may display at 10K, but it saves and transfers at
only, say, 6K. Pretty slick. The thinking is that the phone lines aren't getting
any bigger, so let's make the files smaller. Videos work the same way. AVI does use a compression rate, but not as aggressive
a rate as a Quicktime video. You can see that above where the Quicktime film
is less than half the size of the AVI. However, the AVI is a far better quality
image. So where's the happy medium? I don't know. Which is better, quality or
transfer rate? That's up to you. It's my opinion that the future of TV and video is all in the compression
rate. What if you could purchase a TV show to watch whenever you wanted? For
instance, you want to watch Seinfeld right now. Well, it may not be on right
now. But what if you could put your credit card into a computer and order the
show over the Internet from NBC? Would you? I would. I'd even pay a little more
to get a copy without commercials. At today's compression rates, a half hour show would take up in excess of
75 megabytes. That's where the future is -- in compressing a show so it downloads
in a minute. It's coming -- I can feel it in my bad knee. Playing the Videos If you attempted to play the three videos above and couldn't, it's not because
I don't like you, it's because you don't have the correct video player. And
you should have them -- they're free. Some may have even come with your computer.
But if not, here are a few links you can use to get in on the video fun Try to grab a plug-in version of your player. It works much better than the
older helper application model. If one isn't available, then don't worry about
it. Sample AVIs Metatags Read the following discussion on the importance of Meta
Tags and down load the demo copy of META Master. Install the Meta tag maker on your system.
If you are using a Mac or would prefer not to download a file try this free
service.
Meta tags provide a useful way to control your summary in some search
engines. Meta tags can also help you provide keywords and descriptions on pages that for various
reasons lack text. Examples are splash pages and frames pages. They might also
boost your page's relevancy. However, simply including a meta tag is not a guarantee that
your page should suddenly leap to the top of every search engine listing. They are a
useful tool but, as said above, not a magic solution. There are several meta tags, but the most important for search engine indexing are the description
and keywords tags. The description tag returns a description of the page in place
of the summary the search engine would ordinarily create. The keywords tag provides
keywords for the search engine to associate with your page. Before getting into further specifics, let's assume you have a page without the tags.
The page is titled "My World," with a header that says "Welcome to My
World," then a giant graphic image, then a link at the bottom that says
"enter." (Did I mention I hate your page?). Search engines that index this
daring creation will probably return a listing like this: My World Meta Tag Format Let's assume that within "My World" is a site chock full of information
about stamp collecting. Here visitors can find out about stamp prices, stamp
conventions, stamps for sale and trade, the history of stamps and much more.
We'll use the meta tags to communicate this without destroying the image you've
worked so hard (ahem) to create. The meta tags go inside the header tags, so
that everything looks like this (right click on the picture if you want to copy
and paste the HTML for your own use): Now your listing will look something like this in search engines that support the
descriptions tag: My World Notice how the description matches what's in the description tag? That's exactly
what the meta description tag does. It lets you control the description that
appears. Meta keywords What about the meta keywords tag? It gives your page a chance to come up if
someone types in any of the words listed. For example, someone might enter "stamp
collecting," which will match with one of the keywords in the tag. Without
that tag, there would be no chance at all, since "stamp collecting"
doesn't appear on the page or in the description tag. Should you have different variations for keywords, such as shown in the example? It may
help you with some search engines and not at all with others. Having "stamp collecting" together as a word vs. "stamp" and
"collecting" can help if someone is searching for the exact phrase "stamp
collecting." In general, try not to worry about it too much. You'll drive yourself
crazy trying to cover which engines understand plural forms as a default choice vs. those
without a thesaurus vs. those that do phrase searching as a default setting. Still with
me? Remember, you are using these tags to help make up for the lack of text on your pages,
not as a way to successfully anticipate every keyword variation a person might enter into
a search engine. The only hope you have of ever doing that is to have good, descriptive
pages with good titles and text that is not buried on the bottom of the page by
JavaScript, frames tags or tables. The meta tags are a tool to get around these
aforementioned problems. One other meta tag worth mentioning is the robots tag. This lets you specify
that a particular page should not be indexed by a search engine. The format
is like this (right click on the picture if you want to copy and past the HTML
for your own use): Not all search engines support this tag. As an alternative, all the major search
engines support the robots.txt convention of blocking indexing. Definitely add meta description and meta keyword tags to your web pages. Some search
engines will give you a boost if you have them. But don't expect that to necessarily be
enough to put you in the top ten. Meta tags are mainly a design element you can tap into,
a crutch for helping information-poor pages better be acknowledged by the search engines. Create and upload a page with the following criteria: Material for this lesson has been adapted from the HTML GOODIES site created
by Joe Burns located at http://www.htmlgoodies.com/
AVI
Quicktime
MPEG
Welcome to My World
Everything you wanted to know about stamps, from prices to history.
Last updated January 2007