The basic tools set for building multimedia project contains one or more authoring systems and various editing applications for text, images, sound, and motion video. A few additional applications are also useful for capturing images from the screen, translating file formats and tools for the making multimedia production easier.
Text Editing and Word Processing Tools
A word processor is usually the first software tool computer users rely upon for creating text. The word processor is often bundled with an office suite. Word processors such as Microsoft Word and WordPerfect are powerful applications that include spellcheckers, table formatters, thesauruses and pre-built templates for letters, resumes, purchase orders and other common documents.
OCR Software Tools
Often there will be multimedia content and other text to incorporate into a multimedia project, but no electronic text file. With optical character recognition (OCR) software, a flat-bed scanner, and a computer, it is possible to save many hours of re-keying printed words, and get the job done faster and more accurately than a roomful of typists.
OCR software turns bitmapped characters into electronically recognizable ASCII text. A scanner is typically used to create the bitmap. Then the software breaks the bitmap into chunks according to whether it contains text or graphics, by examining the texture and density of areas of the bitmap and by detecting edges. The text areas of the image are then converted to ASCII character using probability and expert system algorithms.
Sound Editing Tools
Sound editing tools for both digitized and MIDI sound lets hear music as well as create it. By drawing a representation of a sound in fine increments, whether a score or a waveform, it is possible to cut, copy, paste and otherwise edit segments of it with great precision.
System sounds are shipped both Macintosh and Windows systems and they are available as soon the Operating system is installed. For MIDI sound, a MIDI synthesizer is required to play and record sounds from musical instruments. For ordinary sound there are varieties of software such as Soundedit, MP3cutter, Wavestudio.
