Visionary Design, a graphic design and video post production companyd in Tucson, began in 1993 in the corporate market producing sales, training and other industrial video. Over the years they changed their focus and today focus less on corporate video and more on broadcast-uality commercial production. Presenting themselves with traditional demo tapes was fine when in the corporate video market, but now they needed to show they were distinctive and high quality and the medium used to convey that message needed to better reflect their work.

"I needed a multimedia program that functioned and delivered results on par with our non-linear editing gear," says Steve Warner, President, Visionary Design. He said Scala's InfoChannel Designer gave them the quality result and ease of use they needed.

"InfoChannel Designer was the only program that allowed me to create professional quality multimedia for CD and web distribution without a steep learning curve," said Warner.

Visionary Design believed multimedia presentations on CD-ROM and the Internet were effective techniques for self-promotion. Most tools for this, however, required advanced technical knowledge and placed limitations on image and video quality. With InfoChannel Designer, Warner said they could create multimedia presentations on CD-ROM and the Web easily without encountering any of the limitations they found in other tools. The staff found the interface quite easy to use -- they just added backgrounds and then layered text and graphics over it. The user can view the presentation in a storyboard view where one can see and change the flow of the presentation or in a linear list view with page name, timing, transitions, sounds, etc.

InfoChannel Designer's real-time editing made it easy for Visionary Design's staff to have total creative control and freedom over the multimedia projects they create. With Designer, text can be edited in place, rather than having to edit in a separate window. All objects respond immediately to changes in opacity, color, size etc. All transitions and dissolves can be previewed without the user having to do any rendering.

Coming from a video production background, Visionary Design was used to the look and feel of TV and did not want the choppy transitions and poor image and video quality they had found with traditional Web and CD authoring tools. Designer offered their staff smooth full-screen effects and animations that play up to 30 frames per second, double buffered. InfoChannel Designer also allows MPEG 1 video playback that can be scaled to full screen without experiencing any loss in speed.

Designer also allows users to deliver presentations on laptop computers or to record the finished product onto videotapes.

Visionary Design found that most tools with interactivity were hard to use, but Designer was the exception. All button functions and branching are controlled from the graphical user interface, requiring absolutely no programming. This feature gave Visionary Design the option to use buttons to control the flow of their presentations or to even create pre-production storyboards.

InfoChannel Designer not only became a solution for Visionary Design's self-promotion, but it also gave them a tool for providing new services to clients, such as creating interactive content for CD-ROM and Web as well as producing content with the feel of television but with interactivity.