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Editors and Staff

Guidelines for Use of Multimedia in OSA Manuscripts

Updated June 16, 2008

OSA accepts multimedia files—video, tabular data, static illustrations, and other types—as a part of the manuscript to be peer-reviewed and published. Multimedia files should be submitted only if they provide a more efficient or effective presentation of the information and should not be included as merely "supplemental" data.

To ensure consistent presentation, broad accessibility, and long-term archiving, follow these guidelines on presentation and acceptable multimedia formats.

Including Multimedia Files in a Manuscript

Each multimedia file in a manuscript must be associated with a figure or table. The figure caption (or table title) should reference each associated media item as in this example:

Media files should be numbered sequentially throughout the manuscript and will be hyperlinked in the final online version. When a media file is referenced from the body of the manuscript, it should refer both to the figure (or table) and to the media object; e.g., see Fig. 2(a) (Media 4).

Accepted Multimedia Formats

To ensure accurate viewing ability of these multimedia submissions by reviewers, editors, and the reading community—and to facilitate archiving—only the following formats can be accepted at this time.

VIDEO

QuickTime Non-Streaming (.mov), AVI (.avi), and MPEG (.mpg) movies are accepted. There are a variety of software applications to aid in creating this file format. OSA accepts the following QuickTime compressor types: Video, Graphics, Animation, Motion JPEG, Cinepak, and Uncompressed/None. OSA does not accept the Indeo 5 compressor.

The following video guidelines will help with the submission process:

• 4 MB is the recommended maximum multimedia file size.
• Use one of the accepted compression codecs to minimize file sizes.
• 720 x 480 pixels (width by height) is the recommended screen size.
• Insert a representative frame from each movie in the manuscript as a figure.
• Videos must be playable using the free version of QuickTime on the Mac and PC.
• Animations must be formatted into a standard video file.

Authors are advised that, in general, multimedia files should be kept to a size of 4 MB or smaller. If it is essential to the scientific quality of the paper to have files that are larger than this, two different versions of such multimedia files (usually video files) must be made. One version, less than 4 MB in size, will serve as a low-resolution or truncated version for readers who have slower network connections and cannot download the larger file. The other version can be up to 15 MB in size. Multimedia files larger than 15 MB can be linked from the References section, but they will not be a reviewed part of the paper, they will not be kept at OSA, and they will not be part of the archival paper.

TABULAR DATA AND OTHER FORMATS

Authors have the option to submit static files to be peer-reviewed and published as multimedia. Static formats such as raw code, extensive tabular data, and supplemental static illustrations can be uploaded as multimedia files. As with all multimedia, static files should be submitted only if essential to the manuscript; they should not be included as merely "supplemental" data. Such files must be associated with a figure or table in the manscript.

Acceptable File formats

• PDF — accepted for raw code, tabular data, static illustrations.
• CSV — tabular data files can also be submitted in a plain-text comma-separated value (CSV) format for ready viewing in a variety of software packages.

Note that file-size limitations of 4 MB for primary file and 15 MB for secondary version will be strictly enforced.

AUDIO

Authors have the option to submit individual audio files or to include audio in their QuickTime movies. Authors are strongly encouraged to take advantage of benefits this technology can add to their research. Acceptable file formats include Audio Waveform (.wav), Audio Interchange Format (.aif), Pulse Code Modulation (.pcm), and MP3 (.mp3) at 128 Kbs or greater. Authors can also combine audio files with their QuickTime movies. Importable audio formats include Audio-Video Interleaved (.avi), QuickTime (.mov), MP3 (.mp3), WAV (.wav), and AIFF (.aif). By simply adding an audio track to the video file, authors can narrate the figure caption or include a soundtrack to their QuickTime movie. To get the highest quality of audio, it is best to import the audio digitally for all connections and to use the compact-disk quality for rate (44.1 kHz) and for size (16 Bit).

The follow audio parameters will help with the submission process:

• 48,000 samples per second
• 16 Bit
• Uncompressed/PCM
• Stereo or Mono

AS AN EXTERNAL REFERENCE

Through the use of hypertext links from the References and Links section of your manuscript, file formats such as Java, JavaScript and Macromedia Shockwave may become a supporting part of your paper. These files, however, should not be submitted with your manuscript and are not part of the peer-review process. Instructions for the format of these external references is available in the Style Guide.