UNIT -I
Multimedia Concepts and Applications - Elective I - SEM V Notes - Studocu
Multimedia Definition:
Multimedia is any combination of text, art, sound, animation, and video delivered to you
by computer or other electronic or digitally manipulated means.
Multimedia is, as described digitally manipulated text, photographs, graphic art, sound,
animation, and video elements. To control what and when the elements are delivered, it
is called interactive multimedia. Provide a structure of linked elements through which the
user can navigate, interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia.
Characteristics of multimedia:
Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation, and video delivered
by computer or other electronic means.
Multimedia production requires creative, technical, organizing, and business ability.
Multimedia presentations can be nonlinear (interactive) or linear (passive).
Multimedia can contain structured linking called hypermedia
Use of Multimedia:
Multimedia is appropriate whenever a human user is connected to electronic information
of any kind, at the ―human interface.‖ Multimedia enhances minimalist, text-only
computer interfaces and yields measurable benefit by gaining and holding attention and
interest; in short, multimedia improves information retention. When it’s properly
constructed, multimedia can also be profoundly entertaining as well as useful.
Multimedia in Business:
Business applications for multimedia include presentations, training, marketing,
advertising, product demos, simulations, databases, catalogs, instant messaging, and
networked communications.
Voice mail and video conferencing are provided on many local and wide area networks
(LANs and WANs) using distributed networks and Internet protocols.
Multimedia is enjoying widespread use in training programs. Flight attendants learn
to manage international terrorism and security through simulation.
Drug enforcement agencies of the UN are trained using interactive videos and
photographs to recognize likely hiding places on airplanes and ships.
Medical doctors and veterinarians can practice surgery methods via simulation prior to
actual surgery. Mechanics learn to repair engines.
Salespeople learn about product lines and leave behind software to train their customers.
As companies and businesses catch on to the power of multimedia, the cost of installing
multimedia capability decreases, meaning that more applications can be developed both
in-house and by third parties, which allow businesses to run more smoothly and effectively.
Multimedia in Schools:
Multimedia will provoke radical changes in the teaching process during the coming
decades, particularly as smart students discover they can go beyond the limits of traditional
teaching methods.
There is, indeed, a move away from the transmission or passive-learner model of
learning to the experiential learning or active-learner model.
In some instances, teachers may become more like guides and mentors, or
facilitators of learning, leading students along a learning path, rather than the more
traditional role of being the primary providers of information and understanding.
The students, not teachers, become the core of the teaching and learning process.
E-learning is a sensitive and highly politicized subject among educators, so educational
software is often positioned as ―enriching‖ the learning process, not as a potential
substitute for traditional teacher-based methods.
ITV (Interactive TV) is widely used among campuses to join students from different
locations into one class with one teacher.
Remote trucks containing computers, generators, and a satellite dish can be dispatched to
areas where people want to learn but have no computers or schools near them.
In the online version of school, students can enroll at schools all over the world
and interact with particular teachers and other students—classes can be accessed at the
convenience of the student’s lifestyle while the teacher may be relaxing on a beach and
communicating via a wireless system.
Multimedia at Home:
From gardening, cooking, home design, remodeling, and repair to genealogy software,
multimedia has entered the home.
Eventually, most multimedia projects will reach the home via television sets or monitors
with built-in interactive user inputs either on old-fashioned color TVs or on new high-
definition sets.
The multimedia viewed on these sets will likely arrive on a pay-for-use basis along the
data highway.
Today, home consumers of multimedia own either a computer with an attached CD-ROM
or DVD drive or a set-top player that hooks up to the television, such as a Nintendo
Wii, X-box, or Sony PlayStation machine.
There is increasing convergence or melding of computer based multimedia with
entertainment and games-based media traditionally described as ―shoot-em-up.‖
Live Internet pay-for-play gaming with multiple players has also become popular, bringing
multimedia to homes on the broadband Internet, often in combination with CD-ROMs or
DVDs inserted into the user’s machine.
Microsoft’s Internet Gaming Zone and Sony’s Station web site boast more than a million
registered users each—Microsoft claims to be the most successful, with tens of thousands of
people logged on and playing every evening.
Multimedia in Public Places:
In hotels, train stations, shopping malls, museums, libraries, and grocery stores,
multimedia is already available at stand-alone terminals or kiosks, providing information and
help for customers.
Multimedia is piped to wireless devices such as cell phones and PDAs. Such
installations reduce demand on traditional information booths and personnel, add value, and
are available around the clock, even in the middle of the night, when live help is off duty
The way we live is changing as multimedia penetrates our day-to-day experience and
our culture. Imagine a friend’s bout of maudlin drunk dialing (DD) on a new iPhone, with
the camera accidentally enabled.
Figure shows a menu screen from a supermarket kiosk that provides services
ranging from meal planning to coupons.
Hotel kiosks list nearby restaurants, maps of the city, airline schedules, and provide guest
services such as automated checkout.
Printers are often attached so that users can walk away with a printed copy of the
information. Museum kiosks are not only used to guide patrons through the exhibits, but
when installed at each exhibit, provide great added depth, allowing visitors to browse
through richly detailed information specific to that display.
Today, multimedia is found in churches and places of worship as live video with attached
song lyrics shown on large screens using elaborate sound systems with special effects
lighting and recording facilities.
Virtual Reality:
At the convergence of technology and creative invention in multimedia is virtual
reality, or VR. Goggles, helmets, special gloves, and bizarre human interfaces attempt to
place you ―inside‖ a lifelike experience.
Take a step forward, and the view gets closer; turn your head, and the view rotates. Reach
out and grab an object; your hand moves in front of you.
VR requires terrific computing horsepower to be realistic. In VR, your cyberspace is made
up of many thousands of geometric objects plotted in three-dimensional space: the more
objects and the more points that describe the objects, the higher the resolution and the more
realistic your view.
As you move about, each motion or action requires the computer to recalculate the
position, angle, size, and shape of all the objects that make up your view, and many
thousands of computations must occur as fast as 30 times per second to seem smooth.
On the World Wide Web, standards for transmitting virtual reality worlds or scenes in
VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) documents (with the filename extension .wrl)
have been developed. Intel and software makers such as Adobe have announced support for
new 3-D technologies
Virtual reality (VR) is an extension of multimedia—and it uses the basic
multimedia elements of imagery, sound, and animation.
Because it requires instrumented feedback from a wired-up person, VR is perhaps
interactive multimedia at its fullest extension.
Delivering Multimedia:
Multimedia requires large amounts of digital memory when stored in an end user’s
library, or large amounts of bandwidth when distributed over wires, glass fiber, or airwaves
on a network.
The greater the bandwidth, the bigger the pipeline, so more content can be
delivered to end users quickly.
Multimedia projects often require a large amount of digital memory; hence they are often
stored on CD-ROM or DVDs.
Multimedia also includes web pages in HTML or DHTML (XML) on the World Wide
Web, and can include rich media created by various tools using plug-ins.
Web sites with rich media require large amounts of bandwidth.
The promise of multimedia has spawned numerous mergers, expansions, and other
ventures.
These include hardware, software, content, and delivery services.
The future of multimedia will include high bandwidth access to a wide array of
multimedia resources and learning materials.
CD-ROM, DVD, Flash Drives
CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory) discs can be mass-produced for pennies and
can contain up to 80 minutes of full-screen video, images, or sound. The disc can also contain
unique unlimited user interaction.
Virtually all personal computers sold today include at least a CD-ROM player,
mixes of images, sounds, text, video, and animations controlled by an authoring system to
provide and the software that drives these computers is commonly delivered on a CD-ROM
disc.
Many systems also come with a DVD player combination that can read and burn CD-
ROMs as well.
Multilayered Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) technology increases the capacity and
multimedia capability of CDs to 4.7GB on a single-sided, single-layered disc to as much as
17.08GB of storage on a double-sided, double-layered disc. CD and DVD burners are used
for reading discs and for making them, too, in audio, video, and data formats.
In the very long term, however, CD-ROM and DVD discs are but interim memory
technologies that will be replaced by new devices such as flash drives and thumb drives
that do not require moving parts.
As high speed connections become more and more pervasive and users become
better connected, copper wire, glass fiber, and radio/cellular technologies may prevail
as the most common delivery means for interactive multimedia files, served across the
broadband Internet or from dedicated computer farms and storage facilities.
The Broadband Internet
These days telecommunications networks are global, so when information providers
and content owners determine the worth of their products and how to charge money for
them, information elements will ultimately link up online as distributed resources on a data
highway (actually more like a toll road), where you will pay to acquire and use multimedia-
based information.
Full-text content from books and magazines is downloadable; feature movies are played at
home; real-time news feeds from anywhere on earth are available; lectures from
participating universities are monitored for education credits; street maps of cities are
viewable—with recommendations for restaurants, in any language—and online travelogues
include testimonials and video tracks.
ShowTime’s for many major cities, restaurants, vacation trips, and current news
items are quickly available on the Web. Interactive multimedia is delivered too many homes
throughout the world.
Multimedia also includes web pages in HTML or DHTML (XML) on the World Wide
Web, and can include rich media created by various tools using plug-ins. Web sites with
rich media require large amounts of bandwidth. The future of multimedia will include high
bandwidth access to a wide array of multimedia resources and learning materials.
TEXT
All multimedia content consists of texts in some form. Even a menu text is accompanied by
a single action such as mouse click, keystroke or finger pressed in the monitor in case of a
touch screen
The text in multimedia is used to communicate information to the user. Proper use of text
and words in multimedia presentation will help the content developer to communicate the
idea and message to the user.
Text-keyword using text and symbols is used to communicate with the human. Text in
multimedia
Words and symbols in any form, spoken or written, are the most common system of
communication. They deliver the most widely understood meaning to the greatest number of
people.
Most academic related text such as journals, e-magazines are available in the web browser
readable form.
Since multimedia is usually defined as the integration of sound etc. with text, we start with
text.
Strictly, speaking, text is created on a computer, so it doesn’t really extend a computer
system the way audio and video do. But, understanding how text is stored will set the scene
for understanding how multimedia is stored.
About Fonts and Faces
A typeface is a 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 boldface and italic. Your computer software may add other style
attributes, such as underlining and outlining of characters.
Type sizes are usually expressed in points; one point is 0.0138 inch, or about 1/72 of an
inch.
The font’s size is the distance from the top of the capital letters to the bottom of
the descanters in letters such as g and y. Helvetica, Times, and Courier are typefaces; Times
12-point italic is a font.
In the computer world, the term font is commonly used when typeface or face would be
more correct.
A font’s size does not exactly describe the height or width of its characters.
Computer fonts automatically add space below the descended (and sometimes
above) to provide appropriate line spacing, or leading.
With a font editing program like Fontographer from Fontlab, Ltd. at www.fontlab.com,
adjustments can also be made along the horizontal axis of text.
In this program the character metrics of each character and the kerning of character
pairs can be altered.
Character metrics are the general measurements applied to individual characters;
kerning is the spacing between character pairs.
When working with PostScript, TrueType, and Master font but not bitmapped fonts the
metrics of a font can be altered to create interesting effects.
For example, you can adjust the body width of each character from regular to condensed to
expanded, as displayed in this example using the Sabon font:
Or you can adjust the spacing between characters (tracking) and the kerning between
pairs of characters:
When it converts the letter A from a mathematical representation to a recognizable symbol
displayed on the screen or in printed output (a process called rasterizing), the
computer must know how to represent the letter using tiny square pixels (picture elements),
or dots.
It does this according to the hardware available and your specification, from a
choice of available typefaces and fonts. Search for ―free fonts.
High-resolution monitors and printers can make more attractive-looking and varied
characters because there are more fine little squares or dots per inch (dpi).
And today’s broad
selection of software
fonts makes it easier to
find the right typeface
and font for
The same letter can
look very different when
you use different fonts
and faces:
And today’s broad selection of software fonts makes it easier to find the right typeface
and font for your needs.
The same letter can look very different when you use different fonts and faces:
Cases:
A capital letter is called uppercase, and a small letter is called lowercase. In some
situations, such as for passwords, a computer is case sensitive, meaning that the text’s upper-
and lowercase letters must match exactly to be recognized.
But nowadays, in most situations requiring keyboard input, all computers recognize both
the upper- and lowercase forms of a character to be the same. In that manner, the computer
is said to be case insensitive.
Placing an uppercase letter in the middle of a word, called an intercap, is a trend that
emerged from the computer programming community, where coders discovered they
could better recognize the words they used for variables and commands when the words
were lowercase but intercapped.
Company and product names such as WordPerfect, Omni Page, Photo Disc, FileMaker,
and Web Star have become popular Serif vs. Sans Serif
Serif versus sans serif is the simplest way to categorize a typeface; the type either has
a serif or it doesn’t (sans is French for ―without‖).
The serif is the little decoration at the end of a letter stroke. Times, New Century
Schoolbook, Bookman, and Palatino are examples of serif fonts.
Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, Optima, and Avant Garde are sans serif.
Notice the difference between serif (on the left) and sans serif:
On the printed page, serif fonts are traditionally used for body text because the serifs are
said to help guide the reader’s eye along the line of text. Sans serif fonts, on the other hand,
are used for headlines and bold statements.
But the computer world of standard, 72 dpi monitor resolution is not the same as the print
world, and it can be argued that sans serif fonts are far more legible and attractive when used
in the small sizes of a text field on a screen.
The Times font at 9-point size may look too busy and actually be difficult and tiring to
read. And a large, bold serif font for a title or headline can deliver a message of elegance and
character in your graphic layout.
Using Text in Multimedia
A single item of menu text accompanied by a single action (a mouse click, keystroke, or
finger pressed to the monitor) requires little training and is clean and immediate.
Use text for titles and headlines (what it’s all about), for menus (where to go), for
navigation (how to get there), and for content (what you see when you get there).
Designing with Text:
Computer screens provide a very small workspace for developing complex ideas. At
some time or another, you will need to deliver high-impact or concise text messages on the
computer screen in as condensed a form as possible.
Too little text on a screen requires annoying page turns and unnecessary mouse clicks and
waits; too much text can make the screen seem overcrowded and unpleasant.
On the other hand, if you are creating presentation slides for public speaking support, the
text will be keyed to a live presentation where the text accents the main message.
In this case, use bulleted points in large fonts and few words with lots of white space. Let
the audience focus on the speaker at the podium, rather than spend its time reading
fine points and sub points projected on a screen.
Use Appropriate Type Fonts
Decorative o Hard to read o Used for emphasis
Serif o Creates illusion of a line and guides the eye across the screen facilitating readability
o Used on large blocks of text
San serif o Clean, Simple o Good for headings o Examples of: serif, sans serif, and other
fonts
Choosing Text Fonts:
Picking the fonts to use in your multimedia presentation may be somewhat difficult from a
design standpoint. Here are a few design suggestions that may help:
For small type use the most legible font is available. Decorative fonts that cannot be read
are useless.
Using text fonts on the same page is called ransom note typography. In text blocks, adjust
the leading for the most pleasing line spacing. Lines too tightly packed are difficult to read.
Anti aliasing blends the color along the edges of the letters to create a soft transition
between the letter and its background.
Coding an initial cap for a web page is simple. Use HTML3.0’s <font> tag’s size attributes
<!--Set to your desired font and size
<font face=‖verdana‖ size=‖1‖> <!—Increase the size of the initial letter
<font size=‖+2‖>T</font> try drop caps
Use meaningful words or phrases for links and menu items.
