It has taken me a little while, lots of research and help from my friend Steve Scaysbrook at Konstrukshon.com to find the answer, but I have done it! I have found out how to embed movies into eBooks!
I think this is a fantastic break-through. You can now buy Vectorworks training manuals in eBook form, with movies in them. you can carry them around on your iPad, and watch the movies when ever you want. The great thing about the eBooks on the iPad, is that it is like having a book next to you. Instead of changing applications on your computer, you can keep the eBook open on your iPad and then look at the computer screen, back to the iPad, back to the computer screen and so on.
The manuals have a table of contents page that shows the cover and table of contents. The chapter headings are links to the chapters in the manual. So if you tap on a chapter, you are taken to the correct location.
When you get to the chapter you want, you might see a movie. Movies are shown in the body of the manual and they look like an image, except that the movies have a play button in the center.
When you tap on the play button, the movie starts. You can pause, fast forward or go back over the movie. With movies they don't call this fast forward anymore, the call it scrubbing.
If you pinch the movie to zoom, the movie becomes full screen, especially when you have the iPad in landscape mode.
In full screen mode ii is easier to scrub the movie forward and back, pause and play the movie, and even change the volume.
When the movie finishes, you are taken directly back to the eBook, so you can carry on reading.
I have not had success getting my eBooks on the Apple iBookstore, but there is a way around this. iTunes allows you to add eBooks to your iTunes library by dragging and dropping a downloaded eBook to the library.
Once it is in the library, tell your iPhone or iPad to sync all books. Every time you add a book to your library, it will be added to your device on the next sync.
The eBooks are very handy to carry with you. The manuals are stored in the iBooks application. Just tap on a book to open it.
http://archoncad.blogspot.com/2010/08/ebooks-on-ipad-with-movies.html
