The Multimedia Reference

treehouse builders toolkit

Use the multimedia reference to learn more about file formats to use on the WWW and how to create them. See adding images and media to find out how to upload images and media to the ToL and insert them into your page.

Images Information about creating digital images, including help for creating images of graphs for your treehouse pages. Text Information about text for web pages and creating documents you can upload to the ToL. Sound Movies Interactive Media (games, online quizzes etc.)

Equipment for Creating Media Software Programs for Creating Images, Audio, Movies and more Additional Links and Tutorials

Images

Images for use on the World Wide Web need to be in JPEG or GIF format. For most images, JPEG will be the best format. Photographs should always be in JPEG format. GIF is very good for things like logos and simple diagrams with mostly straight lines and solid blocks of color.

You can usually tell what format an image is in by looking at the file extension, that is the three or four letters at the end of the file name, after the period. JPEG files usually end in .jpg or .jpeg, and GIF files usually end in .gif. Examples of image file names are purplefrog.gif or greenslime.jpg.

Image Size

The size of the image is also important. Images for the Tree of Life should not be too large, both in terms of pixel size and in terms of file size. In order to fit on most people's screens, images should not be wider that 800 pixels or higher than 600 pixels. Most images should actually be quite a bit smaller than that, because you probably want to show your image along with some text or other images. However, we offer a way for you to resize images that you insert into ToL pages so it isn't necessary to shrink images before you upload them to the ToL unless they are really large.

Image files that are very large will take a long time to load on people's computers. In order to make ToL pages load relatively fast, we ask that you keep your images under 100KB (kilobytes). Thanks!

Creating a JPEG or GIF

There are many ways to get an image into JPEG or GIF format.

Getting images that are not digital (e.g. a drawing in your notebook, or a non-digital photograph) into a usable digital format:

• Scan the image. Most scanners will allow you to save the scanned image as a JPEG or GIF, or you can convert the scanned image to a JPEG or GIF using an image processing application such as Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks, or one of the simple image converters that can be downloaded for free on the web. If you don't have a scanner at home, you may be able to use one at your school or at your public library. Most copy shops will also scan images for you for a small fee.
• Take a picture of your image with a digital camera, and download it to your computer. Most digital cameras store images in JPEG format.

Converting digital images into .jpg or .gif format:

Open the image up in an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks, MS Paint (available on all windows machines), or a simple image converter that can be downloaded for free on the web. Next select save as (or save for web) and choose either JPEG or GIF.

Editing and Making Adjustments to Digital Images

You may want to make some adjustments to your digital image. See the links below for assistance.

• Adjusting Digital Images provides some examples of what you may need to do to your image.
• Getting Your Own Images Ready for the ToL offers some instructions on how to edit images.

Creating Images of Graphs

Many users will want to publish graphs on their treehouses to demonstrate the results of an investigation. There are several ways this can be done. Though graphs created in MS Excel or other programs can be uploaded to the ToL as documents and inserted into the treehouse as a linked file, ideally the user can see the graph as an image on the treehouse page. To create an image of a graph you can:

• Copy and paste a graph you create in MS Excel into Adobe Photoshop or another image editing software program, save the image as a jpeg and then upload it to the ToL. You may need to shrink the size of the original image before you upload it to the ToL if it is larger than 800 x 600px.
• Use the US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Create a Graph program. This program lets you create a wide variety of graph types on the NCES website. When you have completed your graph, choose to download the graph to your computer and save it as a web ready image (jpeg). Then upload the jpeg file to the ToL.

Text

Text for Web Pages

Text for web pages is in a code called hyper-text markup language, better known as HTML. However, we provide an editor called the ToL Easy Editor for you to write text for your treehouse pages so that you do not need to write your own HTML.

See the ToL Easy Editor for information on how to use the Easy Editor to add text, and check out All the HTML You Need to find out what you will need to know if you want to write you own HTML code. We don't expect or want you to use very much HTML for your pages because of the way our pages are built. When you create a treehouse page the majority of the text formatting will be done by our database after you input your work into the treehouse data entry form. It's really not that hard to learn some basic HTML, and since most of the layout and formatting of ToL pages is done on the ToL site, that's really all you will ever need.

Creating Documents (Other Than Web Pages)

You can also upload documents to the ToL database. Documents can be in a variety of formats, such as MS Word and Excel, PDF, Power Pt. and more. You may want to link to a document from your treehouse, such as a graph you created in excel, a worksheet that is used for a teacher resource or a file that doesn't lend itself to presentation as a web page for whatever reason.

Sound

Sound files that you contribute to the ToL must be 15MB or under. In general, sound files that are under 10 minutes long will have no problem meeting this requirement.

Digital audio must be recorded digitally, e.g. not by a tape recorder that uses cassette tapes. It can be difficult and requires specific software to transfer analog recordings (cassettes, records) to digital. However, you can use a microphone to record a sound on your computer. You can also use an MP3 player that records to MP3 files.

Sound files for the Internet and WWW can be in a variety of formats such as MPEG (MP3), .aif (Audio Interchange) , .au (Sun-standard audio), .wav (WAV audio), and MIDI (.md). Waveform (.wav) files can generally be played from whatever media player you have on your computer, but they can get too large for the WWW very quickly. Remember, files that are large take a long time to download to a person's computer. However, there are freeware programs (like Audio Magic for Windows) that let you convert sound files to other file formats, and programs and tools to help you "stream" audio files. "Streaming" the sound data let's the file download onto your computer as you listen to it, so this is a good choice for longer recordings. Some file types that stream audio are Real Audio files (.ram).

Related Sites

The Macaulay Library at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology (another National Science Digital Library affiliated project) provides excellent technical information on how to create your own audio files available from links on their Contribute page.

Movies

Movie files that you contribute to the ToL must be 15MB or under. In general, movies that are under 6 minutes long will have no problem meeting this requirement as long as they are compressed to Quicktime or MP4 formate.

Digital video can be produced fairly simply with digital still cameras and digital video cameras. Video produced by digital video cameras will most likely be larger in size and also more complicated to edit than the video that you produce with a digital still camera. However, many video cameras also allow you to capture and save a small portion of video that you have taken. To edit video there are sophisticated programs such as Adobe Premiere, as well as less complicated programs that come with the software packaging for many computers (such as !MOVIE for the Mac).

Common file types for movies on the internet are: .MPG, .MPEG, .MOV, .QT .RA, .RAM, and .RM. The media player you have on your computer will generally play these file types, however there may be some problems across platforms (e.g. between Mac and Windows).

Related Sites

The sites listed below are National Science Digital Library affiliated projects.

Science goes to the Movies: Creating Moving Images

This page goes over four steps for creating your own digital movies. This information is part of Moving Image Collections, MIC which provides archivists, educators, and the general public the ability to discover, locate, and in some cases view moving images from repositories around the world.

The Macaulay Library at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology

The Macaulay Library (the largest collection of animal sounds in the world) provides excellent technical information on how to create your own video files available from links on their Contribute page.

Interactive Media

There are a variety of web sites and software programs that are available to support the process of creating online interactive media. More information coming soon.

Equipment and Software Programs for Media Creation and Manipulation

Equipment You May Want or Need for Media Creation and Manipulation

Images	Digital camera Non-digital Photograph Camera Notebooks, pencils Scanner Computer with image editing software (see below)
Sound	Built in computer microphones Microphone attached to a computer. Noise cancelling microphones are best. (make sure audio input is set to the external device) Camcorders (and some digital cameras) MP3 recording device (like the Sandisk Sansa series, an MP3 player that also records audio). Digital audio must be recorded digitally, e.g. not by a tape recorder that uses cassette tapes. Computer with sound editing software (see below) for example, on a Mac you can record directly into iMovie or Garageband
Movies	Digital still camera Digital video camera Computer with video editing software (see below)
Text	Notebooks and paper Computer with word processing program Computer with internet connection and web browser (see below)

Software Programs for Media Creation and Manipulation

The programs listed below are by no means exhaustive, rather, they represent some of the standards being used for media creation today.

Media	Free or free for educational use only: see individual entries)	Commercial	Programs that may come with your computer
Images Used for resizing, rotating, manipulating image content and quality, saving in web-ready and print read file formats	The GIMP Free. Tutorials available. Can use with: Windows Linux Mac OS X	Photoshop Illustrator Can use with: Windows Mac OS X	MSPaint comes free on all Windows machines. Paint has limited capabilities for image manipulation. iPhoto comes with Apple computers
Text: Word Processing	Open Office Can use with: Windows Linux		MSWord, MSWorks, and/or Notepad may already installed on your computer. These programs have Windows and Mac versions.
Text: Spreadsheets and Graphs	Open Office Can use with: Windows Linux	MSExcel	MSExcel may already installed on your computer. These programs have Windows and Mac versions.
Text: Web Editors	ToL Easy Editor We prefer that you use the ToL Easy Editor to create ToL web pages.	Dreamweaver Can use with: Windows Mac OS X
Sound Use for recording and editing sounds	Audacity Free. Tutorials and forum available. Can use with: Windows Linux Mac OS X	GarageBand (Mac) - see the entry to the right for more information.	GarageBand (Mac) If you have iLife suite it is very likely you have Garageband. GarageBand is a great way to record audio, and with GarageBand3 you can also create audio podcasts with images. You can also record audio with iMovie.
Movies Used for editing and creating digital video. Also: Programs for Compression / Conversion of movies	It's best if once you create your movie you can save/export your movie as an MP4. You can use ffmpegx, a free program, to compress and convert video.	Final Cut Express (more affordable) Adobe Premiere Real-time editing for professional video production Final Cut Pro Quicktime Pro	Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker (which comes with WinXP) can be used for editing digital and creating digital video. iMovie (Mac) can be used for editing and creating digital video (and recoding audio). It's best if you can save/export your movie as Quicktime or an MP4. You can use ffmpegx, a free program, to compress video.
Interactive Media: Quizzes, Tests, Surveys Games	The Hot Potatoes Hot Potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available on the web (e.g. using Hot Potatoes for the ToL is qualified use of hot potatoes as freeware). Other users must pay for a licence. Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Can use with: Windows Linux Mac OS X

 

Additional Links and Tutorials

Image editing software tutorials