Multimedia Madness

If you want to learn how to use your computer to explore multimedia-video, sound, MIDI sequencing and other computer music applications, animation, graphics, and similar technologies, Multimedia Madness is an excellent introduction. At the time of this review, the book is showing its age a bit. Specifically, it was written in a "pre-Web" world, before streaming audio and video were all the rage, way back when the CD-ROM still felt like the most exotic way to deliver multimedia content.

Nevertheless, the book is an ambitious attempt to provide a framework for understanding both the underlying technologies in multimedia authoring and the products that set the standards. For example, the book explores MIDI first by providing details on how MIDI works, then by showcasing some sequencing software that works with most sound cards and offering some hands-on experience. Multimedia presentation tools are weighed on various scales, and the book suggests some typical configurations and some guidelines for evaluating which products are the most appropriate to different users. The product focus is much more IBM PC compatible then Macintosh, but many of the tools described are cross-platform.

The included CD-ROMs contain megabytes of demonstration versions, shareware, and freeware tools for making your own product decisions, comparing features, and getting hands-on experience with multimedia tools.