Question 1

Images

Accepted Answer

There are two main image types: JPG and PNG. JPG are smaller and the preferred option. Cameras and phones tend to take high resolution images that are thousands of pixels wide. However, 1200 pixels is the sweet spot for Info Point. The best modern smartphones barely have a screen width any wider (believe it or not but iPads have smaller screen dimensions), and many phones have smaller screens, so anything larger is a waste. On the flip side, avoid images smaller than 800 pixels wide because these may look pixelated on screen.

Changing the pixel size can be done on both a Mac and Windows computer using pre-installed software. On a Mac, open the image in Preview, select ‘Tools’ from the tab at the top of the screen and then ‘Adjust size’. In Windows you can use Paint. Ensuring you are in the ‘Home’ tab, find the option called ‘Resize’. Select the ‘Pixels’ option to change the size.
Once your images are the correct size drag and drop them into tinyjpg.com. This online tool will remove any unnecessary metadata and optimise the image without any loss in visual quality. It can reduce image file size by up to 80%, ensuring the quickest possible download speeds for your app users.

Question 2

Audio

Accepted Answer

If you have oral history recordings, music or other audio it must be uploaded to the Info Point CMS in MP3 format. We recommend saving the audio in mono (unless the left and right channel are being used differently) and between 96 and 128 kilobits per second (Kbps).
128Kbps, in our opinion, is the sweet spot for app content. The human ear will notice a significant drop in quality for anything below about 90Kbps. A 256Kbps audio file will be twice as large as one saved at 128Kbps.
As a listener, the most noticeable difference between mono and stereo is that the latter is capable of producing the perception of width, because there is a left and right channel. Stereo is not necessary for one person telling a story, but for a piece of music where you’d like to localise where the sounds (e.g. different instruments) are coming from.
A one minute mono MP3 file saved at 128kbps is approximately one megabyte.

Question 3

Video

Accepted Answer

Video does not need to be broadcast quality for an Info Point. It should be compressed to MP4 format from the highest quality original video to enable efficient downloading over the Info Point Wi-Fi network, using the following settings:

Encoding (also known as ‘codec’) H264
Frame Rate 25-30fps
Frame size (screen size)
Resolution 480 is a safe number to keep file sizes smaller
Bit Rate 2.5 kbps
Interleaving: None or ‘P’ or ‘progressive’ (eg. 480p not 480i)
Profile (if settable) Baseline

The audio within the video should be set to:

Encoding (also known as ‘codec’) AAC
Sample rate 44.1 Khz
Channels 2 (or 1 if available)

Question 4

PDF

Accepted Answer

PDFs are a great resource for Info Points because they can be downloaded by the user and saved to their device. This could be to provide take away information such as a guided walk.
Because the PDF will likely be viewed on a phone it is best to design the PDF in a single column, like this manual, so it is easier to read. Be sure to compress images etc as detailed above to ensure the download size is kept as small as possible.

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