Chapter 1: Introduction
• Multimedia has become an expected part of any
presentation.
• It has found a range of applications right from
entertainment to education.
• The evolution of internet has also increased the demand for
multimedia content.
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1.1 What is Multimedia?
Different people define the term multimedia, they often have relatively
different viewpoints.
♣ A PC vendor: a PC that has sound capability, a DVD-ROM drive,
multimedia-enabled microprocessors that understand additional
instructions.
A consumer entertainment vendor TV with hundreds of digital
channels, or a cable TV-like service delivered over a high-speed
Internet connection.
• A Computer Science (CS) or IT student: applications that use
multiple modalities, including text, images, drawings (graphics),
animation, video, sound including speech, and interactivity.
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cont.…
• Multimedia is the media that uses multiple forms of
information content and information processing to inform or
entertain the user.
• The use of electronic media to store and experience
multimedia content.
• Graphics, visualization, HCI, Computer vision, data
compression, networking, graph theory, database systems all
have important contribution to multimedia at current time.
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Component of multimedia
Multimedia involves multiple modalities of text, audio, images,
graphics/drawings, animation, video.
1. Text: - characters that are used to create words, sentences, and paragraphs.
2. Graphics: - A digital representation of non-text information, such as a
drawing, charts, or photograph.
3. Animation - is flipping through a series of still images. It is a series of
graphics that create an illusion of motion.
4. Video: - photographic images that are played back at speeds of 15 to 30
frames a second and provide the appearance of full motion.
5. Audio: - music, speech, or any other sound
Categories of Multimedia
Multimedia may be broadly divided into two.
I. Linear multimedia:- is a type of multimedia when active content
progresses without any navigation control for the viewer such as
a cinema presentation.
II. Non-linear Multimedia: - is a type of multimedia when content
offers user interactivity to control progress as used with a
computer game or used in self-paced computer based training.
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.
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Applications of Multimedia
• Multimedia can be applied in various areas including but not limited to
Education: - Multimedia is used as a source of information in the field of
education.
Entertainment: - Multimedia is used to create special effects in films, TV
serials, radio shows, games and animations.
Medicine: - doctors acquire training by watching a virtual surgery or they can
simulate how the human body is affected by diseases spread by germs and then
develop techniques to prevent it.
Advertisements/Business: - Multimedia is used for advertising and selling
products on the Internet. Some businesses use multimedia tools such as CD-
ROMs, DVDs or online tutorials for training or educating staff members about
things the employer want them to learn or know.
Scientific research and spatial(3-D & 4-D)
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Multimedia Research Topics and Projects
Multimedia consists of varieties of research topics and projects. Some of them are:
A. Multimedia processing and coding. This includes content analysis, content-
based retrieval, security, audio/image/video processing, compression, and etc.
B. Multimedia system support and networking. People look at such topics as
network protocols, Internet, operating systems, servers and clients, quality of
service (QoS), and databases.
C. Multimedia tools, end systems, and applications. These include hypermedia
systems, user interfaces, authoring systems, multimodal interaction, and
integration, computer supported collaborative learning and design, and
applications of virtual environments.
Multimedia and Hypermedia
Hypertext is a text which contains links which are used to
move to other texts. These links are called Hyperlinks.
By using these links we can move from one page to
another page.
hypermedia is one of the most common applications of
multimedia.
Hypermedia is controlled to be text-based.
Hypertext is therefore usually non-linear.
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Multimedia and World Wide Web
World Wide Web is the best example of hypermedia application;
however it can include graphics, images, and especially the
continuous media such as sound and video.
A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted
documents.
The documents are formatted in a markup language called
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) that supports links to
other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This
means you can jump from one document to another simply by
clicking on hot spots.
Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.
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Characteristics of a Multimedia System
• 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.
