MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS

UNIT-I

Multimedia is an interactive media and provides multiple ways to represent information to

the user in a powerful manner. It provides an interaction between users and digital information. It is
a medium of communication.Some of the sectors where multimedias is used extensively are
education, training, reference material, business presentations, advertising and documentaries.

Definition:

Multimedia is a representation of information in an attractive and interactive manner with

the use of a combination of text, audio, video, graphics and animation. In other words we can say
that Multimedia is a computerized method of presenting information combining textual data, audio,
visuals (video), graphics and animations. For examples: E-Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Video
Conferencing, and Multimedia Message Service (MMS).

Overview of Multimedia:

Multimedia is fast emerging as an important tool of information technology and as a basic

tool of tomorrow’s life. Multimedia proposes to simulate human-like communication and services in
an environment of “You see as I see” and “You feel as I feel”. Virtual reality is envisaged in
multimedia services. Multimedia transfers your message in your way. Multimedia is believed to
prosper with the general human trend from “nice to have” to “value to have” to “essential to have”.
With multimedia a society with “plug and play”, “look and feel” and “point and feel” and “point and
click” shall emerge. In near future, we shall have multimedia cities and centres. Interactive
multimedia is a service, which provides simultaneous access, dissemination, transportation and
processing of more than one information services like voice, video and data in the interactive mode
and in the real time environment. Multimedia is to integrate three communication worlds, namely,
telephone world, data world and video/TV world into a single communication world. Multimedia
application shall comprise of more than one information types, namely the nonreal time service of
data, images, text and graphics, and the real time service of voice and video. Future world of
information and communication shall be converged to multimedia application and shall provide
comfort, competition, mobility, efficiency and flexibility. As per Fred T. Hofstetter “Multimedia is the
use of a computer to present and combine text, graphics, audio and video with links and tools that
let the user navigate, interact, create and communicate”. Technologically multimedia shall be
“service of services” and non-technically a “community of communities”. Multimedia shall enable
people to communicate and access at any time and anywhere at reasonable costs with acceptable
quality and manageability.

Characteristics of Multimedia Systems:

A Multimedia system has four basic characteristics:

 Multimedia systems must be computer controlled.

 Multimedia systems are integrated.
 The information they handle must be represented digitally.
 The interface to the final presentation of media is usually interactive.

Computer Controlled:

Producing the content of the information – e.g. by using the authoring tools, image editor,
sound and video editor.

Storing the information – providing large and shared capacity for multimedia information.

Transmitting the information – through the network.

Presenting the information to the end user – make direct use of computer peripheral such as
display device (monitor) or sound generator (speaker).

Integrated:

All multimedia components (audio, video, text and graphics) used in the system must be
somehow integrated.

Every device, such as microphone and camera is connected to and controlled by a single
computer.

A single type of digital storage is used for all media type.

Video sequences are shown on computer screen instead of TV monitor.

Interactivity:

Level 1: Interactivity strictly on information delivery. Users select the time at which the
presentation starts, the order, the speed and the form of the presentation itself.

Level 2: Users can modify or enrich the content of the information, and this modification is
recorded.

Level 3: Actual processing of users input and the computer generate genuine result based on
the users input.

Digitally Represented:

Digitization: process involved in transforming an analog signal to digital signal.

Categories of Multimedia
Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories. Linear active
content progresses without any navigation control for the viewer such as a cinema presentation.
Non-linear content offers user interactivity to control progress as used with a computer game or
used in self-paced computer based training. Non-linear content is also known as hypermedia
content.

Multimedia presentations can be live or recorded. A recorded presentation may allow

interactivity via a navigation system. A live multimedia presentation may allow interactivity via
interaction with the presenter or performer.

Elements of Multimedia:
Multimedia items generally fall into one of following main categories and use varied
techniques for digital formatting.

1.Text

2.Images

3.Audio
 4.Video

5. Animation

# Text – ASCII/Unicode, HTML, Postscript, PDF

# Audio – Sound, music, speech, structured audio (e.g. MIDI)

# Image – Facsimile, photo, scanned image, photographs, drawings, maps and slides

# Video (Moving Images) – Movie, a sequence of pictures

# Animation – A sequence of graphics images

Uses / Benefits / Applications of Multimedia:

Multimedia is used everywhere in our day-to-day life. It has changed everything from
manufacturing to the advertising and education to healthcare industry and in all the places. The
following are the major benefits of Multimedia.
1. Advertising

Advertising has changed a lot over the past couple of decades, and this is mainly due to the
increased use of the internet in business. Multimedia plays a great and a vital role in the field of
advertising. As whatever it is whether print or electronic advertisement, they first are prepared on
the computer by using professionals' software's and then it is brought in front of the target
audiences.

Some of different types of advertising are:

 Print advertising

 Radio (audio) advertising

 Television (video) advertising

 Digital advertising

o Display Ads

o Remarketing

o Video

o Social

o Search

 Mobile advertising

2. Education

In the area of education too, the multimedia has a great importance. Talking particularly
about the schools, their usage has a significant role to play for children also. It is broadly used in the
field of education and training. We use audio for imparting education even in traditional method,
where charts, models etc. were used.

Nowadays the classroom need is not limited to that traditional method rather it needs audio
and visual media. With the use of multimedia everything can be integrated into one system. As an
education aid the PC contains a high-quality display with mic option. This all has promoted the
development of a wide range of computer-based training.
3. Mass Media

It is used in the field of mass media i.e. journalism, in various magazines and newspapers
that are published periodically. The use of multimedia plays a vital role in a publishing house as there
are many works of newspaper designing and other stuff also.

Nowadays it's not only the text that we can see in the newspaper, but we can also see
photographs in newspaper, this not only makes newspaper a perfect example but will also explain
the worthiness of hypermedia.

4. Gaming Industry

One of the most exciting applications of multimedia is games. Nowadays the live internet is
used to play gaming with multiple players has become popular.

In fact, the first application of multimedia system was in the field of entertainment and that
too in the video game industry. The integrated audio and video effects make various types of games
more entertaining.

5. Science and Technology

Multimedia had a wide application in the field of science and technology. It is capable of
transferring audio, sending message and formatted multimedia documents. At the same time the it
also helps in live interaction through audio messages and it is only possible with the hypermedia. It
reduces the time and cost can be arranged at any moment even in emergencies.

At the same time, it is useful for surgeons as they can use images created from imaging
scans of human body to practice complicated procedures such as brain removal and reconstructive
surgery. The plans can be made in a better way to reduce the costs and complications.

6. Pre-Production

Pre-Production comprises of everything you do before you start recording of audio or video.
This phase of your project is extremely important. Everything you do in pre-production will save time
and aggravation during production and post-production. The techniques shown will include: how to
design storyboards, including how to show correct camera angles for the scene, writing your story,
and how to use video transitions can be done with the help of multimedia.
7. Post Production

It is the final step of production involves editing scenes, adding various transition effects,
addition of voice to characters, background score, dubbing and much more can be done using
multimedia technologies.

8. Fine Arts

In fine arts, there are multimedia artists, who blend techniques using different media that in
some way incorporates interaction with the viewer. One of the famous artists is Peter Greenaway
who is blending cinema with opera with the help of all sorts of digital media.

9. Engineering

Software engineers often use multimedia in computer simulations for anything such as
military or industrial training. It is also used for software interfaces which are done as collaboration
between creative professionals and software engineers.

10. Research

In the area of mathematical and scientific research, multimedia is primarily used for
modelling and simulation. For example, looking at a molecular model by a scientist of a particular
substance and manipulate it to arrive at a new substance.

Delivering Multimedia:

Multimedia content can be delivered via the Internet, or by more traditional methods such as CDs
and DVDs.

Traditional Delivery Methods

DVD video offers high quality full motion video in a standard format which can be viewed
with a standard player and television. Multimedia CD/DVD can be played on most personal
computers and may be used for video as well as any type of multimedia content which can be
delivered online, These formats are portable for convenient viewing at different places at any time,
but interactivity is limited. Delivery can take days or weeks via “snail mail” or shipping companies.
Content distributed in this manner can become stale and updates may not be timely. This delivery
method is more feasible at lower volumes.

Internet Multimedia

More and more frequently, multimedia content is being delivered via the internet in an ever-
increasing list of ways, including public web sites, dealer portals, blogs, social media sites, and chat
rooms. Online content can be accessed by a desktop PC for on demand viewing or downloaded
locally for later viewing. Access is available anywhere at anytime subject to the constraints of the
viewer’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) and/or Local Area Network (LAN) and the owner of the
content. Control can be added to allow authorized users to access the appropriate content from a
store location. A great deal of interactivity can be achieved with Internet technologies. Content can
be fresh with timely updates but this method can be bandwidth intensive for the viewer’s local area
network. Bandwidth consumption is relative to video quality and number of concurrent users on the
same network. Open solution cache devices may help control overall bandwidth consumption by
temporarily storing content locally.

Text in Multimedia:

Text is the most common medium of presenting information. It is also used to communicate
a concept or an idea. It should effectively complement the other media. Factors that influence the
textual communication are typeface, font and style, kerning, antialiasing, animation, special effects,
special characters and hypertext .While dealing with text in multimedia it is very important to note
that it is not the only means of communication. In multimedia, text is most often used for titles,
headlines, menus, navigation and content. Overcrowding of text on a single page should be avoided.

It is recommended that text should be presented in combination with graphics.

About Fonts and Faces
A typeface is family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes and
styles. A font is a collection of characters of a single size and style belonging to a particular
typeface family. Typical font styles are bold face and italic. Other style attributes such as
underlining and outlining of characters, may be added at the users choice.

Typeface:

Typefaces are broadly categorized into two types - 'serif' and “sans-serif”. Serif is the small
decoration at the end of the letter stroke while sans serif is the letter without a decoration. Serif
fonts are commonly used in the body of the text, while sans-serif fonts are used for headlines and
bold statements.

Fonts:

A font is a collection of characters of single size belonging to particular typeface family. Style
and size are the main attributes of a font. Common font styles are bold and italic. Font sizes are
expressed in points. A point is approximately 1/72 of an inch.

In the usage of fonts, it is recommended to vary as few number fonts as possible on the
same page. The style, size and kerning may be adjusted as and when necessary. Anti-aliased text
may be used for titles and headlines. Bold text may be more suitable to convey an idea or a concept.
Text can be made attractive and pleasing to the eye by choosing the combination of colors for the
font and background. Care should be taken for selecting the appropriate type of fonts on menus and
buttons, symbols and special characters.

Text Animation:

Presentation of text can be more fun and interesting through animation. A wide variety of
methods are available to animate the text. Some of the methods are: scrolling (vertical and
horizontal), zoom-in and zoom-out, fade-in and fade-out, dissolve etc. 3D text also has an impressive
look. Care should be taken to introduce animation only at selected places where the presentation is
most impressive. Authoring Programmes like Macromedia's Director have built in tools to animate
text.

Kerning:

It refers to adjustment of the space between two characters. Kerning makes certain
combinations of letters, such as WA, MW, TA, and VA, look better. Only the most sophisticated word
processors and desktop publishing systems perform kerning. Normally, you can activate or
deactivate kerning for particular fonts.

Anti-aliasing:

Aliasing is the well-known effect on computer screens, in fact, on all pixel devices where
distortions occur at the edges of letters, in the case of text presentation. Anti-aliasing is the
technique of making the edges smooth. Antialiased text is often called"grey-scale" text. Certain
adaptations of anti-aliasing have enhanced both the legibility and aesthetics of on-screen type.

Selecting Text fonts

It is a very difficult process to choose the fonts to be used in a multimedia

presentation. Following are a few guidelines which help to choose a font in a multimedia
presentation.

As many number of type faces can be used in a single presentation, this concept of using
many fonts in a single page is called ransom-note topography.For small type, it is advisable to
use the most legible font.In large size headlines, the kerning (spacing between the letters) can
be adjusted In text blocks, the leading for the most pleasing line can be adjusted. Drop caps and
initial caps can be used to accent the words. The different effects and colors of a font can be
chosen in order to make the text look in a distinct manner. Anti aliased can be used to make a
text look gentle and blended. For special attention to the text the words can be wrapped onto a
sphere or bent like a wave. Meaningful words and phrases can be used for links and menu
items.In case of text links(anchors) on web pages the messages can be accented.

The most important text in a web page such as menu can be put in the top 320 pixels.

Computers and text

Postscript fonts are a method of describing an image in terms of mathematical

constructs (Bezier curves), so it is used not only to describe the individual characters of a
font but also to describe illustrations and whole pages of text. Since postscript makes use
of mathematical formula, it can be easily scaled bigger or smaller.

Apple and Microsoft announced a joint effort to develop a better and faster
quadratic curves outline font methodology, called truetype In addition to printing smooth
characters on printers, TrueType would draw characters to a low resolution (72 dpi or 96
dpi) monitor.

Character set and alphabets

ASCII Character set

The American standard code for information interchange (SCII) is the 7 bit character
coding system most commonly used by computer systems in the United states and abroad.
ASCII assigns a number of value to 128 characters, including both lower and uppercase
letters, punctuation marks, Arabic numbers and math symbols. 32 control characters are
also included. These control characters are used for device control messages, such as
carriage return, line feed, tab and form feed.

The Extended Character set

A byte which consists of 8 bits, is the most commonly used building block for
computer processing. ASCII uses only 7 bits to code is 128 characters; the 8th bit of the
byte is unused. This extra bit allows another 128 characters to be encoded before the
 byte is used up, and computer systems today use these extra 128 values for an extended
character set. The extended character set is commonly filled with ANSI (American National
Standards Institute) standard characters,including frequently used symbols.

Unicode

Unicode makes use of 16-bit architecture for multilingual text and

character encoding.

Unicode uses about 65,000 characters from all known languages and alphabets in the
world.

Several languages share a set of symbols that have a historically related derivation,
the shared symbols of each language are unified into collections of symbols (Called scripts).
A single script can work for tens or even hundreds of languages.

Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Netscape, IBM, Xerox and Novell are participating in
the development of this standard and Microsoft and Apple have incorporated
Unicode into their operating system.

Font Editing and Design tools

There are several software that can be used to create customized font. These tools
help an multimedia developer to communicate his idea or the graphic feeling. Using these
software different typefaces can be created.

In some multimedia projects it may be required to create special characters. Using the
font editing tools it is possible to create a special symbols and use it in the entire text.

Following is the list of software that can be used for editing and creating fonts:

Fontographer

Fontmonger

Cool3DText
 Special font editing tools can be used to make your own type so you can
communicate an idea or graphic feeling exactly. With these tools professional
typographers create distinct text and display faces.

1. Fontographer:

It is macromedia product, it is a specialized graphics editor for both

Macintosh and Windows platforms. You can use it to create postscript,
truetype and bitmapped fonts for Macintosh and Windows.

2. Making Pretty Text:

To make your text look pretty you need a toolbox full of fonts and special
graphics applications that can stretch, shade, color and anti-alias your
words into real artwork. Pretty text can be found in bitmapped drawings
where characters have been tweaked, manipulated and blended into a
graphic image.
HYPERTEXT and HYPERMEDIA
Hypertext :

Hypertext is a cross referencing tool which connects the links to other text using hyperlinks.
Hypertext is non-linear and multi sequential and it is different from our normal text. By the help of
hypertext one organized way is achieved to present information. This makes the user to move from
one part of the information to another part of the information which is in same page or any other
page. It makes the documentation simple by providing a way of easy accessible to the end user.
Example of Hypertext is that GeeksForGeeks is a computer science portal, when we read one article
it uses hypertext to link other pages and when we click on that hypertext it takes to us to that page
so that we can gather more information related to the topic.

Hypermedia :

Hypermedia is the extension of Hypertext which includes multiple forms of media such as
text, graphics, audio or video etc rather than only text based like hypertext. It provides a facility to
connect the web pages to create a network with multimedia elements with a simple click for a better
multimedia experience. Hypermedia allows links to be integrate in multimedia elements like images
and videos and when we click on that it takes us to that page. Example of hypermedia is that when
we use e-commerce site say flipkart and when we click on any product it takes us to the specific
product page which belongs to that. So here the link is embedded to the image.
 Difference between Hypertext and Hypermedia:

Hypertext Hypermedia

1. It refers to the text which links to other 1. It refers to connecting the hypertext with media
chunks of text of same or other document. such as graphics, sounds, and animations.

2. Hypertext is a part of Hypermedia 2. Hypermedia comes in the superior level entity

3. Hypermedia involves graphics, image, video, and

3. Hypertext involves only text
audio

4. Hypertext is a non-linear way. 4. Hypermedia is a linear way.

5. It doesn’t provide a better user experience. 5. It provides a better user experience.

Text File Formats:

 Portable document format (PDF) A PDF file is a common file type in many work
environments. ...
 Word document (DOC and DOCX) ...
 Hypertext markup language (HTML and HTM) ...
 Text file (TXT)