Premier Assistive Technology Announces the New Video Books for the 21st Century

(PRWEB) October 23, 2007 -- In 2001, Premier Assistive Technology was also the first company to incorporate MP3 file creation into its products. Text-To-Audio was a breakthrough concept at the time due to the introduction of MP3 players on the market. In today's media-driven world, almost everyone has an MP3 player, and assistive technology products should be able to create files that will play on these devices. Similar to the historical evolution of the television from the radio, a hybrid video/audio delivery emerged from an audio-only platform. As part of the continued evolution of audio and video, we now have the MP3 player, the iPodTM, and the Microsoft ZuneTM. With these most recent innovations, the timing is now right for assistive technology to incorporate video-based media.

This is the concept behind Premier Assistive Technology's new VideoCast Studio software. The VideoCast software is the new benchmark in Text-to-Video technology. In the past, individuals used text-to-speech to create MP3 files and had to visualize what was being read. This was great for people with vision problems, but for sighted people who wanted to see pictures, charts and graphs, that solution fell short. Premier Assistive realized that there were significant additional benefits to be gained from the inclusion of video capabilities in assistive technologies. Today's portable media players are also able to play video files as well as MP3 files. Similar to the MTV revolution in the '80's and '90's when video became a very important component of the music itself, video is becoming an important component of learning for the current generation. Similar to the music video, Premier Assistive Technology can now combine audio with video and deliver it in a solution that is portable to meet a variety of literacy needs.

Premier's VideoCast software can convert electronic documents into a Video Podcast. In doing so, a user is able to both hear and see words as they are being read while including charts, tables and other graphics. Video playback can even be paused so that pictures and graphics can be more closely examined (e.g., zoom). Each page of a book is considered its own video file and allows the user to create a play list or quickly navigate to a desired page. Premier's built-in training videos even show users how to quickly convert a book from a publisher's electronic format (e.g., PDF) into a page-by-page portable video book.

Premier VideoCast Software creates industry-standard "WMV" and "AVI" video files. These video files are very compact and only require about 2MB per page of text, letting the user store about 1,000 pages on a standard 2 GB Flash device. The video files can be imported and played on most media players such as the iPhoneTM, iPodTM, Microsoft's ZuneTM, and Premier's VPod. By having digital content, text and video, stored on a portable media device, students are now able to read books anywhere without being connected to a computer.

The Premier VideoCast Studio includes the following:

* Premier VideoCast Software: Turn documents on your computer into portable multimedia files which can be optimized in today's hand-held media players.

* Premier Presentation Capture: Capture both audio and video presentations, and turn them into Video Podcasts. Premier Presentation Capture is compatible with all types of interactive "digital" white boards, including SMART BoardTM and Promethean.

* VPod Video Converter: The video converter is a batch video converter which converts virtually all video file types, making them compatible with Premier Assistive Technology's Key to Access VPod.

The Suggested Retail Price for Premier VideoCast Studio is $199.95, but from now until Dec 31, 2007, you can take advantage of either of the following offers:

-- Purchase Premier VideoCast Studio for only $99.95 plus S&H.

-- Alternatively, purchase Premier Assistive's VPod at $424.95 plus S&H, and you can receive a free copy of Premier VideoCast Studio.

Please be sure to mention promotion code VC2007 when you order.

For more information about VideoCast Studio, go to Premier Assistive's web site and select Educational Solutions.

www.readingmadeeasy.com

Or contact:

Premier Assistive Technology

Executive Offices

1309 N. William St.

Joliet, IL 60435

Phone: 815-927-7390

Fax: 815-722-8802

www.readingmadeeasy.com

Premier Assistive Technology - Canada

PO Box 875, STN A

Sydney, NS

B1P 6J4

Phone: 902-482-4680

Fax: 902-270-5224

www.readingmadeeasy.ca

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