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CD-ROM Artwork:

First you need a template file for creating your artwork that defines the outer edges and other parts of the card that must be free of text or other important parts of your artwork. We have included a sample template for a CD-ROM business card that can be used by many replicators and for printing labels on a home printer using common label utilities such as NeatO and SureThing.

For mass duplication you should pick a replicator first and determine their printing capabilities and find out if they have templates and additional instructions specifically for use with their printing process.

Some replicators can only use 3 color screening others can do full color including photographs. Some leave a ring around the middle where text cannot be printed others do not. You should find out the requirements of your replicator before designing your artwork.

You should design your artwork to bleed past the actual edges of the CD-ROM, see the included cardartsample files for examples. The cardartsample.psd file includes a Photoshop alpha channel mask which defines the border of the actual CD-ROM and inner circle.

Create a JPEG version of the artwork that actually looks like the CD-ROM for you and your client to proof and for the replicator to match the final screened version. You can do this in Photoshop by selecting the alpha channel mask outline, flattening the entire image then cutting out the shape of the CD-ROM and removing the unused background, then flatten the image again and resave the file in JPEG format (see the cardartsample.jpg sample included with the APTLauncher).

If you are printing your own labels on a home printer or you are sending your artwork to a replicator you should flatten your artwork file to a TIFF file without compression. Send the original artwork, JPEG sample and the TIFF format file to your replicator (unless they have a different system for working with them). When sending original artwork files also include font files.

For printing your own labels you can use a program such as SureThing or NeatO. Load your TIFF file as the background image, pick the label type and make sure the bleed is set to print the label properly. This may take some tweaking of the image and your printer label settings to get it all right.

For printing larger quantities of your own labels and cards you might want to consider a CD-ROM label printer from www.affex.com

Autorunning Your Presentation:

When your CD-ROM is placed in the users drive it requires a file called autorun.inf to exist in the root of the CD-ROM.

The autorun.inf includes the link to the program to be autorun and an optional icon file to associate with the CD-ROM.

The text of the autorun.inf file is as follows:

[autorun]
open = aptl.exe
icon = myicon.ico

In this case the aptl.exe program (the APTLauncher) automatically runs when the CD-ROM is put in the drive. Then the APTLauncher calls your presentation which could be anything including a web site, Flash, PowerPoint, Acrobat PDF or another executable program.

3rd Party Viewers:

Your CD-ROM should be designed to be self-contained. You should not require your end users to download and install other software first to use your presentation.

For example, if your presentation is a PowerPoint file you should include the freely distributable PowerPoint viewer on your CD-ROM.

The APTLauncher's INI file (aptl.ini) is designed so you can include both your presentation and the required viewer program in a way that doesn't require the end user to have to first install the viewer.

If you do need to have other software installed to view your presentation such as QuickTime, Acrobat Reader, etc. you may have to put links to the installers into your presentation. Depending on the size of the CD-ROM you are using you may be able to include all the viewers and installers on your CD-ROM, otherwise you will have to post links to the download pages.

For example, if you are creating a CD-ROM on a 45mb business card CD-ROM which requires the Acrobat reader. The acrobat reader installer can take 9mb just by itself. If you have room, put the viewer installer on your CD-ROM with an easy link for your users to be able to install it. If you do not have room post a link to the Acrobat reader download page at Adobe's web site.

Packaging Your Presentation:

CD-ROM presentations can be burned as-is to only run off of the CD-ROM and they can also be packaged to be downloaded from the web or installed on the end users computer.

Programs such as InstallShield can be used to create an installable version of your presentation. Package for the Web can also be used to create a single executable program that can be downloaded from the web or copied onto a CD-ROM.

Many of our presentations are distributed both over the web and on CD-ROM. The CD-ROM version contains the actual presentation to be autorun and may also contain a 2nd version in the form of an installable executable created by InstallShield.

Your CD-ROM will need enough room for both the presentation and the installable executable which may take as much space as the presentation.

For example, if you are creating a 45mb CD-ROM business card and your presentation takes 20mb and your installable version creates a 22mb executable you will only have 3mb of free space left.

Hybrid CD-ROM's:

If you are creating a single CD-ROM for both PC and Mac there are a few issues to consider.

You need enough space on the CD-ROM to contain both versions. There are ways to share files between the two versions to save space or you can separate the two completely. If you are going to share files you will need to research the subject further, contact your replicator for more details.

If you are going to split the CD-ROM you will need to dedicate about half the CD-ROM to each operating system. There is some software available that can burn a hybrid CD-ROM such as Toast for the Mac, or you can work with your replicator to send them separately each system and have them combine them into a hybrid master. Contact your replicator for details before designing your project.

One problem with the Mac is that they can not play the new shaped CD-ROMs in the slot loading CD-ROMs which are popular on many new Macs. This limits the market for users who can view shaped CD-ROMs on the Mac platform.

Testing Your Presentation:

If you are creating your own CD-ROM you will have to make sure it will work on the majority of systems your end users own. While a final cut of a CD-ROM may work fine on your development computer it may quickly fail on many others.

If you are developing a lot of presentations you should have a test system of both notebook and desktop PC's (and Macs if developing for Macs). An easy test system to build is a low end PC with a removable hard drive bay. Put each different operating system (Win95/98/NT/ME/2000/XP) on a different hard drive with a bare bones installation. Then simply swap drives, reboot and test your presentation on each operating system. This will quickly test multiple operating systems and catch problems with required components that may exist on your development computer but not on the test computers.

Outsourcing the testing of a single CD-ROM can cost thousands of dollars and may be useful for very complex projects.

While this is not legal advise, you may want to consider having your clients sign off on the approval of their project once both you and they have tested the presentation. You don't want to be held responsible for problems that occur after a CD-ROM is mass produced. It is far cheaper to catch problems during testing than after you have paid a replicator to mass produce thousands of copies. Also consider having a limited warranty or other clause that your client signs off on up front that not all presentations will work on all platforms. There will be some computers systems and even entire models that will possibly fail to run your presentation. For contracts, estimate tools and other materials for the professional developer click here.

Some common examples are that not all computers will autorun a CD-ROM, some particular models of notebooks have also been known to crash some presentation software outside of the developers control.

Burning Your CD-ROM:

You can burn samples and small runs with an off-the-shelf CD burner. Most personal CD burners can write to the new shaped CD-ROMs including the business card sizes.

Personally burned CD-ROM's have to be labeled by hand or some replicators will screen blank CD-RW disks for you in quantity for burning by hand in small quantities. This is useful for presentations that change frequently where you still want the highest quality printing.

Another option for personally burned CD-ROM's is a dedicated CD-ROM label printer such as those available from www.affex.com where you can buy blank CD-ROM's with blank labels ready to burn and print right on the CD.

Once you have your artwork finalized and your presentation tested and approved you can have it mass produced. Most replicators do not want to do runs under a quantity of 1000. When they do the prices are very high to the point it is more cost effective to just get 1000. This means you usually have two options for duplication: do it yourself or have a replicator do 1000 or more.

Additional Services:

Contact Cyberi, Inc. for consulting and production services. The Cyberi, Inc. staff have been creating award winning multimedia presentations since 1997. We produce a number of products and systems for multimedia developers such as:

• PresentationKit - Proposal and project estimate systems for developers
  
  
• APT Xtra - Presentation tracking systems for Director developers
  
  
• APTLauncher - Presentation launching utility for multimedia developers
  
  
• TemplateKit - Backgrounds and objects for presentations
  
  
• CyberiCard - Multimedia presentations on CD-ROM