Chapter # 1

Number systems
 Denary numbers:
 which are also known as decimal numbers are written
using one of the symbols 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 for each
denary digit

 Denary numbers:
 The binary number system is base-2. Each binary digit is
written with either of the symbols 0 and 1.
 A binary digit is referred to as a bit.
 Binary codes are most often based on the use of one or more
groups of eight bits. A group of eight bits is called a byte.
Number systems
 Hexadecimal numbers:
 These are base-16 numbers where each hexadecimal
digit is represented by one of the following symbols:
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F.

 A nibble can be represented by one hexadecimal digit.

 This means that each byte of binary code can be written
as two hexadecimal digits.
 a binary code must not include blanks; all positions in
the byte must have either a 0 or a 1.
Converting between binary and denary numbers
 To carry out the conversion you start at the most
significant bit and successively multiply by two and
add the result to the next digit.
 to convert the binary number 11001 to the denary
number 25:

 to convert the binary number 1001110 to the denary

number.
Converting between binary and denary numbers
 to convert a denary value to its binary equivalent is the
procedure of successive division by two with the remainder
written down at each stage.
 The converted number is then given as the set of
remainders in reverse order.
 conversion of denary 246 to binary
BACK
Conversions for hexadecimal numbers
 To convert a hexadecimal number to binary, each digit is
treated separately and converted into a 4-bit binary
equivalent, remembering that F converts to 1111, E converts
to 1110 and so on.
 To convert a binary number to hexadecimal you start with
the four least significant bits and convert them to one
hexadecimal digit.
 You then proceed upwards towards the most significant
bit, successively taking groupings of four bits and
converting each grouping to the corresponding
hexadecimal digit.
 Convert each of the denary numbers 96, 215 and 374 into
hexadecimal numbers.
 Convert each of the hexadecimal numbers B4, FF and 3A2C to
denary numbers.
 If a calculation is to be performed with values quoted with
diff erent magnitude factors there must first be conversions
to ensure all values have the same magnitude factor.
 if you needed to know how many files of size 2.4 MiB could
be stored on a 4 GiB memory stick there should be a
conversion of the GiB value to the corresponding MiB
value.
Representations of signed integers

 TASK 1 Take the two’s complement of the binary code

for –7 and show that you get the code for +7.
 TASK 2 Convert the two’s complement number 1011 to
the denary equivalent. Then do the same for 111011 and
convince yourself that you get the same value.
Binary arithmetic
 The rules for the addition of binary digits are:
 0+0=0
 0+1=1
 1 + 1 = 0 with a carry of 1
 1 + 1 + 0 = 0 with a carry of 1
 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 with a carry of 1
 the addition of the binary equivalent of denary 14 to the
binary equivalent of denary 11 can be examined.
Binary arithmetic
 The rules for the subtraction of binary digits are:
 0–0=0
 0 – 1 = 1 after a borrow
 1–0=1
 1–1=0
 the subtraction of the binary equivalent of denary 11 from
the binary equivalent of denary 14 can be examined
 Overflow: a condition when the result of a calculation is
too large to fit into the number of bits defined for storage.

 The overflow means that the answer has a leading 1, which causes a
computer system to interpret the answer as a negative number.

 This time there has been a carry when the most significant bits
were added and the result obtained is a positive number.
Binary-coded decimal (BCD) system
 The binary-coded decimal (BCD) system uses a 4-bit code
to represent each denary digit:
Uses of BCD
 The most obvious use of BCD is in the representation of digits on
a calculator or clock display.

 Each denary digit will have a BCD equivalent value which makes
it easy to convert from computer output to denary display.
ASCII codes
 The standard ASCII code character set consists of 7-bit
codes (0 to 127 denary or 0 to 7F in hexadecimal);
 this represents the letters, numbers and characters
found on a standard keyboard together with 32 control
codes (which use up codes 0 to 31 (denary) or 0 to 19
(hexadecimal)).
 Extended ASCII uses 8-bit codes (128 to 255 in
denary or 80 to FF in hex).
 This allows for non-English characters and for drawing
characters to be included.
Unicodes
 One coding system is called Unicode.
 Unicode allows characters in a code form to represent all
languages of the world,
 thus supporting many operating systems, search engines and
internet browsers used globally.
 There is overlap with standard ASCII code, since the first 128
(English) characters are the same, but Unicode can support
several thousand different characters in total.
 create a universal standard that covered all languages and all
writing systems
 » produce a more efficient coding system than ASCII
 » adopt uniform encoding where each character is encoded as 16-bit
or 32-bit code
 » create unambiguous encoding where each 16-bit or 32-bit value
always represents the same character
 » reserve part of the code for private use to enable a user to assign
codes for their own characters and symbols (useful for Chinese and
Japanese character sets).
Unicode
Sample Questions
Multimedia
 Images can be stored in a computer in two common
formats:
 bit-map image
 vector graphic
 Bit-map images
 Bit-map images are made up of pixels (picture
elements);
 the image is stored in a two-dimensional matrix of
pixels.
 Pixels can take different shapes, such as
 » at least 8bits (1 byte) per pixel are needed to code a coloured
image
 » true colour requires 3bytes per pixel (24bits), which gives
more than one million colours
 » the number of bits used to represent a pixel is called the
colour depth
 bit depth is best defined as the number of bits used to store
each of the red, green and blue primary colours in the RGB
colour scheme.
 A colour depth of 8 bits per pixel provides 256 different colours.
 A bit depth of 8 bits per primary colour provides 256 × 256 × 256
= 16 777 216 different colours.
 Image resolution: the number of pixels in the bitmap file
defined as the product of the width and the height values
 Screen resolution: the product of width and height values for
the number of pixels that the screen can display
 pixel density: the number of pixels per square inch
how pixel density can be calculated
for a given screen.
 Imagine we are using an Apple iPhone 8 which has 5.5-
inch screen size and screen resolution of 1920 pixels ×
1080 pixels:
1. add together the squares of the resolution size ((1920 2
+ 1080 2) = (3 686 400 + 16 640) = 4 852800)
2. find the square root =
3. divide by screen size (2202.907 ÷ 5.5 = 401)
 This gives us the pixel density of 401 pixels per square
inch (ppi)
Calculating bit-map image file sizes
 As an example, consider that a bitmap graphic is needed to
fill a laptop screen where the resolution is 1366 by 768. If
we want colour depth of 24 then the number of bits we
need is:
File Header
 when saving a bit-map image, it is important to
include a file header;
 this will contain items such as
 file type (.bmp or .jpeg)
 file size
 image resolution
 bit depth (usually 1, 8, 16, 24 or 32)
 any type of data compression employed and so on.
Vector graphics
 Vector graphics are images that use 2D points to describe lines
and curves and their properties that are grouped to form
geometric shapes.
 Vector graphics can be designed using computer aided design
(CAD) software or using an application which uses a drawing
canvas on the screen.
 A vector graphic will contain a drawing list (included in a file
header) that is made up of
 » the command used for each object that makes up the graphic
image
 » the attributes that define the properties that make up each object
 » the relative position of each object will also need to be included
 » the dimensions of each object are not defined, but the relative
positions of objects to each other in the final graphic need to be
defined; this means that scaling up the vector graphic image will
result in no loss of quality.
Comparison between vector graphics and bit-map images
Sound files
 Sound is an analogue value; this needs to be digitised in order to
store sound in a computer.
 This is done using an analogue to digital converter (ADC).
 If the sound is to be used as a music file, it is often filtered first
to remove higher frequencies and lower frequencies which are
outside the range of human hearing.
 To convert the analogue data to digital, the sound waves are
sampled at a given time rate.

 using a range of 0 to 127 gives a much more accurate

representation of the sound sample than using a range of, for
example, 0 to 10).
 This is known as the sampling resolution (also known as the
bit depth).
 Sampling rate is the number of sound samples taken per
second.
 The higher the sampling rate and/or sampling resolution,
the greater the file size.
 a 16-bit sampling resolution is used when recording CDs to
give better sound quality.
 Using a higher sampling rate or larger resolution will result
in a more faithful representation of the original sound
source.
• Can resize it without pixilation
• Image is redrawn/recalculated with each adjustment
• Smaller file size
• Storing points/equations/commands etc., not individual
pixels
File compression
 The two most common forms of file compression are
 lossless file compression
 lossy file compression.
 Lossless file compression
 all the data from the original file can be reconstructed
when the file is uncompressed again.
 This is particularly important for files where loss of any
data would be disastrous.
 Lossy file compression
 the file compression algorithm eliminates unnecessary
data (as with MP3 and JPEG formats, for example).
 MPEG-3 (MP3) uses technology known as audio
compression to convert music and other sounds into an
MP3 file format.
 Essentially, this compression technology will reduce the
size of a normal music file by about 90%.
 This is done using file compression algorithms that use
perceptual music shaping.
 Perceptual music shaping removes certain sounds.
 For example
 » frequencies that are outside the human hearing range
 » if two sounds are played at the same time, only the louder
one can be heard by the ear, so the softer sound is eliminated.
Run-length encoding (RLE)
 used to compress a number of different file formats.
 lossless/reversible file compression
 A repeating string is encoded into two values.
 The first value represents the number of identical data items
 The second value represents the code of the data item
 RLE is only effective where there is a long run of repeated units/bits.

 One issue occurs with a string such as ‘cdcdcdcdcd’, where compression

is not very effective.

 To cope with this we use a flag.

 A flag preceding data indicates that what follows are the number of
repeating units
 Introducing a flag (255 in this case) produces: 255 08 97 255 10 98 99 100
99 100 99 100 255 08 101
Using RLE with images
 Black and white images

 Coloured image
 1

1 mark for correct method (colour code and number of

pixels)
1 mark for first 7 groups correct
1 mark for remainder correct

• 3B9 1A3 3B3 1A2 3B1 1A2 3B2

• 1A1 3B3 1A1 3B2 1A2 3B1 1A2 3B3 1A3 3B9

5
1 mark for purpose • Stores data about the file contents/image/metadata
Max 2 marks for examples of contents
• Confirmation that the file is a BMP // confirmation of file type
• File size
• Location / offset of image data within the file
• Dimensions of the image (in pixels) // image resolution
• Colour depth (bits per pixel, 1, 4, 8, 16, 24 or 32)
• Type of compression used (if any)
1 mark per bullet point to max 2 for description
• Instead of storing each repeated sequence of characters individually
• … the character is stored and the number of consecutive occurrences
1 mark for using relevant example e.g.
• instead of storing aaaa , store a4

1 mark per bullet point to max 2

• Repeated sequences of characters rarely occur in text files // Most characters
are used only once in any sequence
• The character code and the fact that it is stored once will both be stored, which
will use as much if not more space