[XPOST] [REQ] open source multimedia authoring tools? In python maybe?

[stefanogaburri]

email9898989 at yahoo.com wrote:

> Your cheapest/simplest option would be to make it web-based.  Use HTML
> for the text, with embedded mpeg or quicktime (not free) videos and
> wav sound files.  For the quiz, use PHP scripting.  See Moodle or
> Tiki, or search for PHP-based quiz engine.

yeah, I had considered making it browser-based, but it absultely has to 
run off a CD - besides, I'm afraid of incompatibilities... the final 
product never seems to run right on different browsers/systems, and 
making sure the plugins are right is a pain.

> If you absolutely have to have it run off a CD, there are some
> non-free tools to make PHP applications run from a CD:
> http://circle.ch/blog/p661.html

mmmh, interesting. With Apache and mySQL auto-runnable I could even try 
to dump an intere Zope thingie on a CD... but for now I'm gonna stick to 
the other solution, my client wants a more-or-less reusable platform and 
I think he'll feel better with a more "standard" app.

> Otherwise, another free option would be to use java and the java media
> framework to play videos.

that's another idea...

> Or, you can use python for the app/quiz tool, and to play videos just
> launch the video file so that it opens in the user's movie player or
> browser, but you cannot play the video inside your python app.

this is quite ugly, although effective; I'd do it but the final client 
(an university) would find it undoubtely "too cheap" - also, it's bound 
to give installation/portability problems unless you install every 
possibile used tool, and I'd rather have something like SDL/pygame take 
care of that layer...

thanks a lot,
Stefano