Pachyderm Advice

Tips by Jared Bendis of Case Western Reserve University


Never, never, never hit the back button!
(I found this out myself. Great advice.)

Stay away from using videos (mov) files. Version 2.0 produces and error and then opens in another window not within the pachyderm display.

Do not add links to web pages. Keep the project self contained. Otherwise you may lose your viewer to another web site and may never get them back.

Start at the most specific elements and work back to general information.

Jared’s analogy: Treat a Pachyderm project like a tree. Start with the leaves then the branches and finally the trunk.

We must control the flow of the project to the viewer.

Each page should be independent of its information.

The user should load the images or assets first.

Max image size is 2560 x 2048 pixels.

Name images factually. No goofy names to confuse any searches.

When entering metadata to each image use at least the two below"
Contributor = the creator (don't use real name, use initials or false name)
Tombstone – a must to fill out. If no other information is given on an asset the tombstone text will be used.

You can search on Media after it is entered.

Design ahead of time.

Do not use the Time Line template.

Type your text in Word then spell check it. From your word file you will cut and paste into Pachyderm.

We can do basic html for bold and italic.

We can’t change font or size.

Jared recommended that I try the Slider template! Keep images to 8 or 10 only. I did so and used 9 images for promoting MediaVision's Video Production.

When exporting the final product via the Zip button, we must use a third party zip program such as WinZip. Pachyderm is not compatible with XP or Vista’s Zip program. This I also found out on my own.

All in all, Jared was very informative.

Dreamweaver's Code Navigator

I am in LOVE with Dreamweaver's Code Navigator! Where have you been all my life.

This makes finding CSS code quick and easy. Since I am new to Dreamweaver CS4 I have been curious about the Code Navigator icon that shows up. It can be quite annoying. Now I know how to turn it off if I need to.

In default mode, you can just rest you selector tool on some text. After few seconds the Code Nav icons appears. It looks like a ships wheel. Just click on icon and it will bring up a list of code pertaining to the text. You can run your selector over the list of code for more info. What is great is that you can click on the code and it will take you to the CSS code, even the source code. So you can make fast edits. For example, since I was talking about text, you can easily change font size, colors or etc...

Code Navigator works just about everywhere. You can even select from the nav bars above the properties information.

This is just terrific!

Once you have Code Navigator open to a list, you have an option of turning off the annoying icon. To use Code Nav you just have to alt/click on a element to bring it up.

Enjoy,
DJ

Pachyderm testing

I have been doing some testing of Pachyderm Multimedia online application.

My first experience has been positive. It is very intuitive and easy to use. One of the templates I used was the phone Dial template but found it redundant having to load 2 images, one for a full size image and one for a thumbnail. Adding URL links is straight forward.

My first two sets turned out very nice. I had created one about the Cleveland Ohio Cultural Gardens. It had three pages linked to it. My second was about my passion of motorcycles also produced positive results. It had 11 pages linked from it. Both sets had URL links that worked.

My next step was to add sound to the motorcycle project. This is where things got pretty tough. Pachyderm is not able to use WAV files. I had used sound recorder to produce two clips of my narration. I also found wav files of desired sound effects. Pachyderm will use only mp3 or swf files for audio. My experience told me that the swf files would be smaller than mp3.

Here is a comparison:
Original file WAV: 3,877 KB
Converted to SWF: 187 KB
Converted to MP3: 225 KB

So I converted all my wav files to swf. I imported some test files into Pachyderm. They loaded just fine and I tagged them accordingly. However, when I went to test the pages the swf files came in with 2 copies. It would auto play right away. The first copy would play followed by the second copy about 3 second later. There was also no play, volume or pause control. I searched online at the Pachyderm site and also on Google. I could not figure out why this was happening. I sent an email to Pachyderm's help page.

Finally, I converted my wav files into mp3 files. I then removed the swf files and replaced them with the mp3 files. To my surprise it worked! The audio file would not play until I clicked on the play button. Only one copy of the file played. I could pause, reset and play the audio.

About 4 hour after sending a email to pachyderm I received a response. It confirmed that it was the swf files that caused the problem. Why does pachyderm list swf as a compatible file is beyond me.

I used Sound Recorder to capture my voice for two clips. I then downloaded Power Sound Editor to resize my imported sound clips and edit the length of each. The only issue with Power Sound Editor is that it will only export as wav files. Not compatible with Pachyderm. So I downloaded Media Center which I them used to convert the wav files to mp3. Power Sound Editor and Media Center are both free programs.

Next up will be trying videos in pachyderm. It should be interesting.

DJ

Limits of Flickr's Free Version

I have a large collection of images taken for Case Western Reserve University.

I have downloaded the free version of Flickr to help organize these images. I used Lynda.com to get me up to stead on how to use Flickr.

With the free version we can only download 100 mgbs a month. The full version is $24.95 for a year with unlimited storage and bandwidth.

According to Lynda.com I should add metadata before hand and also resize the images before going importing into Flickr.

I have a Microsoft Power tool called Resizer. I have resized select images before importing them. It's really too bad that Resizer is not standard on XP and Vista. I hope it is available on Windows 7.

I aslo used Adobe Bridge to go in and add metadata to my library of images. So at least I can now do searches on names of staff, events and other categories.

I need to create folders in order to organize all my images. With the free version of Flickr I am able to create Sets to store grouped images. The sample project was to organize all my images of campus buildings. My goal is to create a folder called Campus Buildings and in it have sets that include images of individual buildings.

In Fickr Professional, we are able to create folders called Collections. Once I have a folder created I would be able to move my Sets into it. I can then make Collections for all categories. This feature is not available with the free version.

I have maxed out our space on Flickr. They most images we can have stored is 200. I am right at 200 now.

For now, perhaps the best idea is to load all these images onto the new server and them give access to anyone in ITAC or ITS permission to go in and view the images.

My conclusion on Flickr is it is too limited for the free version. It's a great way to show off images to family members it is not a professional tool. Upgrading to Flickr Professional is a must for serious logging of photos.

DJ