List of movie clips on the disc
Tables of contents:
How
To Read a Film
Reading
about Film
Reading
about New Media
Where We're At
How to Read a Film: Multimedia Edition was created in the late 1990s. It’s remarkable that the disk still works (for the most part). Indeed, the biggest barrier now in the mid-teens is the physical medium itself: the dvd-rom format is a relic of the last century, before a mature web, before high-speed access, before the cloud.
But the disk still encompasses a prodigious wealth of information (and entertainment).
So, if you are into antique digital media, here are some notes that will help you enjoy HTR:MM.
1. Quicktime is no longer necessary (or useful). Adobe Reader now procsses .MOV files directly. In fact, it does a better job than Quicktime 10 (Mac only). You should have no trouble with audios and videos — with one exception: the VR tours. That technology has now become a product sector of its own. (It seems that Windows Quicktime NEVER presented QTVR files!)
You should have no trouble with any other .MOV files, audio or video.
2. To solve the permissions request problem in recent editions of Adobe Reader, go to “Reader Preferences: Set Multimedia Trust (Legacy): set Quicktime Permissions” to “ALWAYS.” That should make things run more smoothly.
3. There is a slight glitch with Slide Shows and a few other .MOV files that use buttons to make choices. (These were created with QT sprites, which are no longer supported.) The workaround is to use a two-finger swipe up or down (NOT left-right) to move from frame to frame. It seems there is uneven support for such gestures on Windows machines, so this may even require an additional utility on some PCs. No problem on Macs.
4. Users have commented that the navigation is uncomfortable. (Clearly, we were trying to control the experience too rigidly.) One useful hint: toggle the Menu Bar ON. In Mac OS the switch is CMD-SHIFT-M. On Windows it is F9. This will allow you more control over navigation.
5. The “ZOE2000” program hasn’t worked for ten years. It was built with Macromedia Director. It is not worth recreating; it is no longer useful. It was designed to give readers a chance to experiment with editing their own movies. Yes, this was rare at the turn of the century! Now, any child can make a movie.
The Future? The best way to build a project like this today is clearly as a series of ebooks, with links to the assets in the cloud. But HTML5 is not quite there yet.
James Monaco
Sag Harbor, NY
August 2016
HTR in two minutes:
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