Medi@Show tutorial
Philip Moore helps you to get started with your full version of Medi@Show.

For those wanting to get their feet wet with multimedia presentation software, Medi@Show offers a good introduction. When you first start the program you may receive a message about your screen resolution. Medi@Show will only work on screens set to 1,024 by 768 pixels or 800 by 600 pixels. If you need to change your resolution, right-click the Windows desktop and select Properties, click the Settings tab, then adjust using the Screen Area slider bar.

Your first steps
When you first load Medi@Show, it looks a bit like many consumer video applications, with a timeline along the bottom and a Media Pool above for all your videoclips and still images. To import your visual media files into the program, roll your mouse over the bar at the left and a control panel will slide out. Here you will find an Import icon which will allow you to load any file or folder from your hard drive, or import from a TWAIN device like a scanner or digital camera.

Load whatever video or still image files you would like to include in your presentation. You can also import Microsoft PowerPoint files which will run as a self-contained animation with effects intact. Medi@Show does support sound, but you do not load sound files from here. More on that in a moment.

The media files you load will appear in the blank area in the middle, called the Stamp Browse Screen for some reason. They appear as thumbnails, which you can then drag and drop into the timeline (called the Sorter) along the bottom. You will notice a smaller version of the timeline along the very bottom. This simply offers an overview of the project and by clicking on the icons here, it helps you move around larger sequences more easily.

Clips in the Sorter can be rearranged at any time, and you can play the presentation by clicking the little camera icon to the left. This then blanks the screen and runs your clips as a slideshow. By default, the project will run in Auto mode and there is a three-second pause between each slide (although on our test system, this was not at all consistent). You can change this to progress with a mouse click by opening up the left control panel, clicking the Settings Icon, then selecting ‘Click to Advance’.

You may also notice that all graphics are resized, if necessary, to 800 by 600-pixel resolution. For best clarity, it is best if you can ensure all your graphic and video files are set to this resolution from the start.

Now take a look at the menu on the right-hand side. Most of the icons are disabled but the one right at the top will be active. This switches between Edit and Browse modes. Click this icon and you will be taken into Edit mode. In the middle of screen will now appear the slide that was selected in the timeline.

The slider below this preview lets you set the delay for the current slide. That is, how long a still image will stay onscreen before moving to the next (if running in Auto mode).

Transitions
While in Edit mode, you will notice that the second icon on the right-hand panel is now active. This lets you select a transition for the current slide.

The transition panel will appear and from here you can select and preview several transitions on offer. Click a transition name and you will see it preview in the windows below. The slider bar here is the same as the delay slider for each slide. Set this to determine the duration of the transition. When you find one you like, click the tick button to accept it.

This transition is then applied at the start of the image. Although there is no visual reference to it on the timeline, imagine it being placed just before the slide it is applied to.

Adding text
If you select a still image slide (as opposed to a PowerPoint presentation or videoclip), the remaining two buttons on the right-hand controls will be active. Third from the top is the Text tool. Click this to bring up the text palette.

Now note that the buttons to the right of the Preview window, the ‘+’ buttons, will be active. Click this. A text entry window will appear and you can type whatever title you want in here. Click the tick button to accept. To change the font, colour and other properties for the text, click the ‘T’ button at the bottom of the Text control palette. The properties currently chosen are shown in the box just above this. At the top of the Text palette are several animations you can choose from. Click on them one at a time and you will see your text on the preview window scroll into position, according to the animation chosen.

Once you have the colour, font size and animation you like, click the tick to accept these settings. You can have more than one text animation (in fact, up to 10 per slide is possible), each with their own font settings, although the animation you choose will apply to all.

Adding sound
The final button that is active in Edit mode on the right-hand toolbar is for sound. Click this and the Sound palette will appear. Look at the drop-down list that this offers. There are four settings.

Continue means a sound from the previous slide will continue playing over this one. This is the default and is for when you have background music or a continuous voiceover recorded as a single file. Second is No Sound, third is Audio CD, which allows you to choose a track from a CD currently in your CD-ROM drive. Tracks appear in the top section in the form ‘Track01.cda’. The final option is to choose a sound file from a list. Several sound effects are included with the program and these will preview as you click on them. Click the ‘+’ button and you can add your own sounds to the list, either as WAV or MIDI format files.

When you find a sound file you want to use with the current slide, click the tick. The sound will start playback as the slide appears when the presentation is played. Again, there is no indication of any sound given on the timeline.

Final output
We have our slides and video files laid out the way we want. We have applied transitions between them, added titles, and some background music or sound effects. Now it’s time to package this all together as a presentation we can take away and run independent of Medi@Show.

Roll you mouse over the left and pull out the main control panel again. Next to the Import button we used earlier you will see a button for Export Film. Options here include collecting all the media files together, creating an EXE or screensaver, or exporting to HTML.

Collecting the files simply bundles together all the files you have used in this presentation for easy backup or transport. To play the presentation on any other PC, you will want to create an executable version of it. This packs the whole project into a single EXE file, and if you have videoclips, this can become quite large. The HTML option creates a series of Web pages, one for each slide, with simple navigation buttons to move forward and back (although the actual graphics for these buttons are missing in this version).