Multimedia Systems

Introduction

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 What is Multimedia?
• Multi – Many and Media – a way to transmit
information
• Multimedia is used exclusively to describe
multiple forms of media and content.
–Multimedia concerns the representation of mixed modes
of information as digital signals.
–It includes a combination of text, audio and speech,
video, images and graphics content forms
–Multimedia represents the convergence of text,
image, video and sound into a single form.

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 Media Types: Two broad classes
• Discrete (or Static) media: it refers to text, graphics, and
images as they are composed of time independent
information item.
– Information in these media consist exclusively of a sequence of
individual elements without a time component. Indeed they may
be displayed according to a wide variety of timing or even
sequencing and still remain meaningful
• Continuous (or Dynamic) media: refers to time-dependent
media like sound, and video, where the presentation requires a
continuous play-out as time passes.
– Information is expressed as not only of its individual value, but
also by the time of its occurrence. In other word, time dependency
between information items is part of the information itself.
– Thus if the timing of the items change, or the sequence is
modified, the meaning of the items is altered.

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 Multimedia System
• Multimedia system represents a technology/tool used to
combine two or more categories of information having
different transport signal characteristics.
– Examples of media: Image, audio, video, text and graphics

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 Properties of Multimedia System
• Multimedia system handles discrete & continuous media
– It is a system capable of handling at least one discrete and one
continuous media in digital form
– E.g. Multiple forms of information content are often not
considered multimedia if they don't contain, say, audio or video.
• It integrates and synchronizes the different medias
simultaneously into a coherent framework.
– integrate and use minimal number of different devices for
presentation of multimedia
– Synchronize well the presentation of the result of the different
media such that information flows in the correct order
• Multimedia system must be computer controlled.
– A digital device, like computer must be involved in the
presentation of the multimedia information to users 5
 Why we learn Multimedia?
• Existence of wide variety of application potential in
different areas
–Huge markets
–Potential for improving our lives (e.g., learning, entertainment,
and work)
• Convergence of computers, telecom, and TV industries
–Caused by technology and competition
–Dramatic changes in products, infrastructure, etc.
• It helps to simulate our day-to-day activities
–Collaboration: video conferencing, tele-conferencing
–virtual environments: (e-commerce, e-education, …)
–Webcasting (broadcasting on Web)

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 Application
• Multimedia finds its application in various areas with
the help of Web technologies
–Education: hypermedia courseware, e-learning, audio/video
conferencing
–Business: e.g. multimedia authoring, video-on-demand
–Digital and virtual libraries
–Entertainment: e.g. games
–Advertisements: e.g. interactive television
–Scientific research: e.g. virtual worlds
–Engineering: e.g. AutoCAD
–Art, Medicine, Mathematics, etc.

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 Multimedia Computing
• It involves extensive practices from multimedia capturing,
processing, transmitting, content representing to
multimedia database management
• Multimedia systems involve multimedia information
handling and some basic enabling techniques:
– Multimedia Data Generation: production/authoring tools
• Software Authoring Tools: e.g., Adobe flash, MS silver light,
Macromedia, etc.
• For Web publishing: HTML, Java, Macromedia Director, etc.
– Multimedia Data Representation: compression and formats
• Storage and file systems design
– Multimedia Database Management: Multimedia Data
Processing and Analysis, indexing, searching and retrieval.
– Multimedia Data Transmission through communication and
computer networks.
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 Challenges of Multimedia Computing
• Memory space requirement: multimedia data need a lot of
space to store
–At least 256MB main memory; Up to 10-30 GB secondary storage;
TB’s of tertiary storage
• Data transmission bandwidth: Multimedia needs very high
bandwidth to transmit.
–Faster network (up to 25Mbs per video stream) with very high
bandwidth to transmit
• Complexity of multimedia data management: Multimedia
needs more complex and more efficient algorithms, say
–Automatically analyzing, indexing and organizing information in
audio, image and video is much harder than from text. They
involve many different research issues.
• Hardware platforms: Multimedia data need efficient
hardware platforms
–Better CPU, graphics card, video card, sound card
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 Issues in Multimedia Computing
The following are some of the hottest issues under study.
• How can multimedia be efficiently stored and transmitted?
–The need for compression and indexing
• Can multimedia be retrieved by its content?
–Proper representation of multimedia content through feature
extraction and pattern analysis
• How can we enhance quality of multimedia?
• Is the image as high-quality as users need? What could we do if the
image is poor quality?
• Are the different media (audio, video, image ...)
synchronized well? How?
–Ensure proper multimedia information flow order in a time line
• How can a user formulate a query for video/audio/image
retrieval?
–How we enable users to search for multimedia information
retrieval using multimedia query, such that, for instance image by
image search takes place 10
Multimedia is a Multidisciplinary
subject
Operating
system,
Computer
networks
Image, audio, Computer vision,
Multimedia pattern recognition
speech
computing
processing
Computer
Human-computer graphics
interaction
 Assignment one
1.Write the definition of the following terms:-

 Text
Audio
Image
Graphic
 video
Animation
2. Write the difference between Animation and Video.
3. Write the difference between image and graphic.
4. Do you thing DAT file is multimedia? Write your answer with a
clear reasoning

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