Avenue on CD, A Multimedia Training Tool

The course is an efficient and economical learning tool for those interested in Avenue to add capability to ArcView.

Purpose:

	The purpose of this paper is to inform the ArcView user about the availability of a 

compact disk (CD) for training on Avenue, a language which conceptually is still strange 

and forbidding to the average user of ArcView and, I suspect, even many programmers 

and to take advantage of the latest in multimedia to help with the training problem. 

Another reason is to pass on the experiences of the development in the hopes that many 

can learn something about the perils of multimedia development, as undoubtedly many 

will be trying this type of development in the future.



Background

	In order for the reader of this paper to calibrate the experiences noted herein 

against his own background to help determine its applicability to oneself, a bit of the 

background of the author and developer is presented.

	The author and developer of the Avenue CD has had 30+ years in the computer 

business with experience as a vendor with large companies such as IBM Corp., Xerox, 

Intergraph, and Prime Computers; and a small company, Symbolics, in artificial 

intelligence. There was VAR experience with GIS, computer integrated manufacturing 

expert systems and video mapping system integrated with GPS. He taught computer 

sciences on a contract overseas. Almost all of his activities have been in leading edge 

high technology products, such as CAD/CAM, communications, artificial intelligence, 

operating systems, language processors, GIS, expert systems and GPS. 

	Most recently, he has been active in video infrastructure mapping system used 

with GIS maps. This has involved extensive use of image compression and de-

compression, CD-ROM technology, image representation, multimedia authoring, and the 

hardware and software involved in those efforts.

	The recent experience provides a natural fit for the venture to develop the Avenue 

CD-ROM. 



Benefits

	For the ArcView user,  many benefits can be gotten from a CD course on Avenue. 

First, there is a dearth of material to learn the system with only an Esri class or 

authorized instructor classes and the non-Esri developed Developer's Guide. The HELP 

system for AVENUE is good for reference usage only. The course developed provides 

training from a knowledgeable instructor who is the author of the ArcView Developer's 

Guide. As a result of the course, the user will find more usage for ArcView since training 

in Avenue would stimulate more potential application for the system.

	The course allows flexibility in lesson selection. One is able to select or repeat the 

lesson chapter desired at any time, whether already in the course or starting at the 

beginning. This means one is able to repeat easily a section of the course not clearly 

understood on the first viewing. This is an advantage over a human taught course where a 

momentary inattention leaves one missing a key bit of knowledge. 

	A human taught course has an advantage not to be overlooked. One can ask 

question. However many questions are due to lack of attention or for clarification which 

is handled in the CD course by the ease of repeating that section of the course material.

	Another benefit of the CD course is that one can proceed at one's own pace in 

taking the course. Taking a human taught course forces one to learn at the pace of a rigid 

course schedule, not necessarily conducive to the learning process or adaptable to a 

student's work schedule.

	Not only can one proceed at one's own pace, but one can train at home as well as 

the office. The MPEG1 capability will appear soon on WINDOWS 95 and CD-ROM 

readers are so widely available that you can self-upgrade on new technology at home. At 

the office, the hardware needed is probably already available on many of its PCs since 

CD-ROMs are becoming so necessary to business processes and the software is 

imminently available.

	And finally, a CD course is more economical since no living expense or travel 

cost is incurred in going to a location remote from one's work location for a course. It is 

even more economical when multiple students utilize the CD course, either singly or in 

groups, since the CD course is a one-time charge. This would especially be of benefit to 

companies needing to train many staff members.



D. The Plan

	The plan to develop the CD-ROM on Avenue resulted from attending a session 

where the Video-CD and its development were presented. This was shortly after 

attending a Avenue course taught here at Esri. I had also purchased the ArcView 

Developer's Guide by Amir Razavi since it was the only written documentation available 

on a complex and sophisticated language. The conclusion from all that was that there was 

a market for a CD-ROM product to fill a vacant market niche, offer some significant 

advantages over attending a class, utilize technology rapidly coming to the fore and save 

money for the ArcView user.

	The Video-CD technology has won wide acceptance in Europe and the Asia and 

almost no acceptance in the U.S. where the video tape recorder has a commanding 

presence. Also the quality requirements are more demanding here in the U.S.  The Video-

CD however has the advantage of being able to play the standard music CD, attach to a 

TV to play while being controlled by a hand receiver similar to the control for your TV 

set, and all this for a unit costing less than $400. It can play on a Phillips CD-I playback 

unit as well.

	The initial plan was proposed to Esri for their Avenue course outline to be used 

as the basis for the CD. That was deemed a violation of their copywrited proprietary 

material which was to be avoided. However a suggestion was proposed that the author of 

the ArcView  Developer's Guide be solicited for participation. This was a good 

suggestion in that it provided a knowledgeable recognized instructor for the course and 

satisfied the wish to include hardcopy material with the CD course. Several other 

authorized instructors had been approached about being the course lecturer also.

	So the final plan for the CD development came to fruition. The shooting of the 

original video of the 10-lesson course occured over a three day period in Los Angeles 

with Amir Razavi coming from Virginia to be recorded. An experienced video camera 

operator was used who recommended the use of a JVC video camera with variable scan 

frequency to avoid the scrolling shadow occuring when a computer monitor is 

videotaped. 5 -2 hour video tapes resulted which had to be digitized to an .AVI editable 

MPEG format, edited into a final format and then converted to MPEG format for 

recording on the

CD-ROM. Copies of the ArcView Developer' Guide were purchased for inclusion with 

the CDs.

	You are now able to order this CD which will be demonstrated in a scheduled 

session at this User's Meeting. A change from the original plan is that only a standard 

CD-ROM for playing on a MPEG capable PC is provided. This was due to a 

recommendation from a noted CD-ROM consultant that the Video-CD will find minor 

acceptance in the U.S. due to digital video soon to be available, the lesser cost being 

negated by the inexpensive price of CD-ROM readers today and the soon-to-be-available 

MPEG capability in WINDOWS 95. We would still be willing to provide this capability 

if we find a wide enough market for it since the only development left to get it to that 

format would be to re-record into the Video-CD format with a different file size and 

header information.



The development

	1. Hardware

	You may have heard already that if you are going to do multimedia development, 

powerful PC equipment is necessary. Let me confirm that that is very true. The 

equipment used on this project was a Cyrix 6X86 which is touted to have performance 

exceeding a Pentium 150 Mhz system. This was augmented with a 1.2Gbyte internal 

SCSI2 disk on an ADAPTEC 2940 SCSI2 controller, 16 Mbytes of RAM, a 20" monitor 

and other normal PC peripherals. Because of the large files generated from digitizing the 

video, at different times as much as 12 Gbytes of external disk, in the form of 3-4Gbyte 

Seagate Barracuda AV rated drives, were used. The AV rating indicates drives which 

don't stop recording for thermal corrections periodically while continuous video is being 

storied on it from the digitizing process; they wait until an idle state. The Barracudas 

have an average access time of 8 milliseconds. The Cyrix is touted to be a PC compatible 

chipset and so far everything has been able to run on it. So I would recommend it to you 

as a good buy, especially since the price for a system with 8Mb RAM, a 1,2 Gbyte 

harddrive, 8 Mb RAM, keyboard, mouse, and Windows was so good ($1400) for the 

performance obtained.

	It was necessary to attach my own TV set with an RF modulator connected to the 

video output signal to view generated output for editing purposes.

	2. The Software

	The software consist of the Sigma Design's RealMagic Producer system which 

comes with its own electronic board with proprietary ASICs for many functions. This 

system contains within it the ability to generate .AVI editable MPEG files, edit them with 

the included Adobe Premiere 4.0, generate 3-D automation files for incorporation into the 

production and then transcode them into MPEG files . In addition to those functional 

capabilities, one can divert video output to be viewed on the VGA or external TV 

monitor.

	The authoring tool used is the Media Styler, a program developed in Germany 

with the capability to handle MPEG1 movie files chosen for this development. The 

MPEG format was chosen because of its wide spread acceptance with MPEG hardware 

included in CPUs by Compaq, AST, IBM, and others and software coming for Windows 

95.



The Course

	The following is the course outline which is also its organization by chapter. That 

provides an idea of the completeness of the course as gained from teaching experiences in 

the field with users.

		� Course Introduction

		� Classes, Objects, & Requests

		� The Script Editor

		� Avenue, The Programming Language

		� Customizing ArcView with Avenue

		� Avenue for View Documents

		� Avenue for Table Documents

		� Inter-Application Communications

		� Distributing the Avenue Application

		� What's New in ArcView 3.0

	Each of the chapters starts with a lecture on the material of the chapter, discussing 

examples and using problems to illustrate lesson details. Several chapters have problems 

assigned to the student to work on, then followed by the instructor reviewing the problem 

solution after completion of their work. The review is to reinforce the lecture and student 

assigned work. The last chapter discusses the Avenue changes due to be released with 

ArcView Version 3.0.

	An advantage of computer based training is the use of a computer and CD-ROM 

to augment the student's learning experience. The student has pushbuttons on the VGA 

screen to select a particular lesson chapter from the outline or while in a lesson go back to 

the start of all lessons or that lesson. There is a button which allows a step(s) back in the 

lesson. The default mode of operation is to sequentially step through all the lessons. Since 

the course is made up of multiple CD-ROMs, the student is requested to insert a 

particular CD when a lesson is on another CD.

	One of the purposes earlier stated for this paper was to relate the experiences in 

making this CD so that others wanting to make multimedia products could benefit from 

those experiences. Cited below are some of the trials and tribulations 

gone thru on this project.

	Earlier it was stated that disk space is massively required. Can you believe a 700 

Mbyte file for 22 minutes of video! This was for an .AVI file which didn't have any 

compression but is the format under which editing is done. It is projected a 120 minute 

video tape will require 4+ Gbytes of disk storage. So, one can never have enough 

secondary storage. 

	With two PCs, it was planned to use one PC for video conversion while the other 

PC does editing at the same time. This meant transfering files from one machine to 

another via LAPLINK using a parallel port, the fastest transfer possible. This was deemed 

not feasible when it took 89 minutes to move the 700 Mbyte file from PC to PC. 

	Another idea to utilize both PCs was to move a disk by connecting and 

reconnecting ribbon cables to it in each PC. This would work, however it was discovered 

that the REALMAGIC Producer program generates its own type of .AVI format, which 

while it can work under Adobe Premiere, was not the same as generated by the other PC's 

video conversion board. 

	Video editing is a significant undertaking. Adobe Premiere 4.0 is the most widely 

used choice of amateurs and professionals alike. However, as of the date of preparing this 

paper, it has not been possible to edit audio since its representation of a 700Mbyte video 

and audio file is too crude at a small scale and not indicative enough at a large scale. This 

still has to be worked on and hopefully can be resolved. A call to Adobe technical 

Support ( fast to respond, by the way) found that audio working with video in the preview 

mode wasn't working

	The use of Premiere is significantly enabled by their Course in a Box  (CIB) 

which is a $50 purchase providing a course stepping thru lessons and a CD containing 

sample problems and their solution. This was a very well developed course, taught most 

of the functional capabilities of the Premiere and enabled a quick use of the system. The 

CIB was invaluable in learning Premiere and provides a strong argument for using the 

system

	A second monitor is essential for viewing the video. This was economically done 

by using a home television and RF modulating the video out signal from the RealMagic 

board to the TV. This worked fine and avoided the need to acquire another display 

monitor.

	Plan to allow much, much time for the editing process. The 5-2 hour video tapes 

would require10 hours to view even one time and in editing any segment of tape would 

be reviewed many times. After the production of this CD, one is much more 

understanding and appreciative of the work done editing in the television and film 

industry.

	The above points give an idea of problems to be faced in braving the new world 

of multimedia development. 

	This paper concludes by citing things gained from this development project. 

Certainly, it was a very instructional development project, being a very tedious in-tensive 

effort over a significant period of time. The result is a product that has significant value in 

that it provides ArcView user and potential users a source of education much more 

significant than what exists today; it has flexibility being able to switch back and forth, 

thus allowing a review of what wasn't clear in the first viewing; it belongs to you, thereby 

enabling multiple viewing by yourself and others in your organization; and it can be 

easily economically justified. The experience gained will be used on a CD for a city's 

traffic control devices and a possible course on JAVA!



Acknowledgement:

	Amir Razavi deserves credit for his lectures under a severe time constraint for 

preparation and production. Ken Govan is similarly commended for his outstanding 

camera work.