Help: Multimedia and Supplementary Information

Multimedia enhancements are available in a number of IOP Publishing journals and serve to enhance the online versions of published research articles. For printed journals the paper copy remains the archival version and multimedia items are supplements which enhance a reader's understanding of the paper but are not essential to that understanding. In purely electronic journals multimedia attachments may be used to convey essential information. Examples are: video clips, animations, experimental data, supplementary figures or tables, software.

Articles featuring multimedia are indicated by:

  • The Multimedia link and icon in the Table of Contents.
  • The Multimedia icon on the online article's abstract page.
  • References to multimedia enhancements at appropriate places in the text of the article.

Details on how to submit multimedia material can be found in our Information for Authors.

Contents

Getting started

To make use of a multimedia file, e.g., to play a movie, you may need to install additional software to play the file and then configure your browser to launch it as a "plug-in" or "helper application" whenever it encounters a relevant multimedia file. Information on obtaining software follows in the sections on the different multimedia formats. Information on how to configure your browser is often provided too, but your browser's Help system will also provide comprehensive information.

  • Netscape: choose Edit menu > Preferences... > Navigator > Applications to configure the browser. (On Windows/Macintosh, press Help on the Preferences dialog box for information.)
  • Internet Explorer works in a different way. It uses your computer's file association defaults as helper applications. In other words, if you follow a link to a multimedia file in Internet Explorer, it will start the same application that would have started had you double-clicked on a multimedia file of the same type in Windows Explorer.

Due to the large variety of plug-ins and helper applications available, IOP Publishing is unable to offer technical support on configuring your browser. However, brief details of the common types of multimedia enhancements and helpful links to downloads and further information are provided below. Please contact your system administrator if you have difficulties.

Animated GIFs

Your browser will automatically display animated GIFs without the need for additional software or browser configuration.

MPEG video

http://www.mpeg.org is a comprehensive reference website on MPEG. To download a free MPEG player and for information on configuring your browser, see: http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/MPEG-video-player.html.

Windows AVI

See: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/default.aspx for the latest information on Windows Media Technologies and downloads of the free Windows Media Player.

More information on Windows AVI for UNIX users is given below.

QuickTime

See http://www.apple.com/quicktime for the latest information on QuickTime. To download a free QuickTime player, see: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download.

More information on QuickTime for UNIX users is given below.

Windows AVI and QuickTime for UNIX users

We recommend: Mplayer.

GRACE 2D plotting files

Grace is a WYSIWYG 2D plotting tool freely available from http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/. Grace runs on Unix, VMS, OS/2 and Win9*/NT. Your browser can be set up to run Grace as a helper application by defining a new application within the browser with the Description 'Grace', MIME Type 'application/grace', Suffix 'gr' and with the full pathname of the Grace binary followed by %s (such as /usr/local/bin/grace %s).

See also: