Real World Productions

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Developing a love and appreciation for a wide range of music is a crucial outcome for students at both primary and secondary level. The world renowned Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) under it's 'Outreach' program has devised a famously successful project to achieve these goals.

Working with Melbourne design and communication studio Paoli Smith, MSO developed plans for a hybrid CD that delivered not only pristine recording of selected classical tracks, but also a PDF booklet that functioned as teachers resources and student notes.

To create the hybrid Audio CD, Paoli Smith called in Real World who have created dozens of these discs for some of Australia's leading bands. After receiving the audio master and finished PDF manual from Paoli Smith we were ready to go to work.

Firstly we re-authored the audio disc to prepare it to accept the interactive components, then the PDF file was revamped adding bookmarks, activating the Contents page, locking down page views, re-colouring and activating all weblinks to the composer sites and contact email addresses, finally the file was re-optimised for speedy access and password security added for distribution.

Next we went 'under the hood' programming a CD that would ensure trouble free usage by all school computers. Using our own custom 'sniffer' scripts once the disc has been inserted into a computer, the disc firstly establishes whether it is in a PC or a Mac then if the computer already has Acrobat Reader installed and if so what version.

If the computer does not have the required version of Acrobat Reader a custom designed installer screen sympathetic to the look and feel of the project pops up inviting the user to update (see at right) ... this whole process happens in less than a second. If the installer is required it does so right off the CD without needing an internet connection, otherwise the viewer is taken directly to the welcome screen.

Viewers on a PC only see the CD audio files and the PC interactive data ... while users on the Mac only see the CD audio plus the Mac interactive data.

Complex to create, but dead simple to use.

That simplicity of use for end users is a mantra here at Real World and even though it may take significant tweaking of code to make it so, the benefits for the project are worth the extra effort.