Abstract:

Multimedia technology is a key issue in the actual society, which has attracted lot of attention in the last decades. The possibility of transmitting an information in several ways (video, audio, pictures,…) allows the receiver to better understand and assimilate the concepts given. In technology-related careers, multimedia systems are an even more important subject, and concepts like video capturing, video encoding, non-linear video edition, or DVD authoring, are addressed. In this paper, a way for integrating many of these multimedia-related concepts in a practical way is presented. The proposal is that the student makes a DVD-Video where the multimedia content is created by the student itself. The main content to be included is a movie trailer also done by the student.

In this work, the student begins extracting the video an audio content from a DVD-Video of a movie selected by itself, but not the whole content, only the parts that he/she need to create the trailer. This allows the student to learn the structure and the streams that integrate the DVD-Video, and the fact that the movie to work with is selected by the student itself allows for motivating him/her. Once the needed parts of the DVD-Video have been extracted, they are encoded using the proper video codec in order to have a high quality video with small size files. This allows the student to practice with different video codecs and learn about how configure their properties. These extracted and encoded video files are used to create a trailer from the selected movie using a non-linear edition software. Video is combined with pictures, audio, text,… in order to obtain the final trailer. In this way, since a final multimedia product is obtained (a trailer), the student gets motivated when he/she sees what he/she can do with his/her work.

Finally, this trailer is included in a DVD-Video, where several menus with different options are created, using a DVD authoring software. An image editing software is used to create the background and the buttons for the menus… but also the non-linear video edition software can be used to create animated backgrounds.

A final DVD-Video is physically obtained, where most of the concepts learned by the student are practically developed. The achievement of a final multimedia product created by the own student motivates him/her to get used to a great variety of subjects. Moreover, freeware, shareware and evaluation versions of software are used to do the work, allowing the student to continue getting deeper in these practical concepts if he/she is really interested in these issues.

Keywords:

multimedia, dvd authoring, multimedia product, autonomous work.