What is Multimedia?

Multimedia is an engaging kind of media that offers a variety of effective ways to

convey information to users. Users can interact with digital information through it. It
serves as a communication tool. Education, training, reference materials, corporate
presentations, marketing, and documentary are a few industries that heavily utilize
multimedia.

Multimedia, by definition, is the use of text, audio, video, graphics, and animation to
convey information in an engaging and dynamic way. In other terms, multimedia is a
technological way of presenting information that combines audio, video, images, and
animations with textual data. Examples include video conferencing, Yahoo Messenger,
email, and the Multimedia Messaging Service ( MMS Service (MMS).

As the name implies, multimedia is the combination of the words "multi" and "media,"
which refers to the various media (hardware/software) utilized for information
transmission.

What are the components of multimedia?

The following are typical multimedia elements:

1) Text - Text appears in all multi-media projects to some extent. To match the
successful presentation of the multimedia program, the text may be presented in a
variety of font styles and sizes.

2) Graphics - The multimedia program is appealing because of its graphics. People

frequently find it difficult to read long passages of text on screens. As a result, visuals
are frequently utilized instead of writing to convey ideas, give context, etc. Graphics
can be of two different types:

o Bitmap - Bitmap images are authentic pictures that can be taken using tools
like digital cameras or scanners. Bitmap pictures are often not modifiable.
Memory use for bitmap pictures is high.
o Vector Graphics - Computers can draw vector graphics because they just need
a little amount of memory. These images can be changed.

3) Animation - A static picture can be animated to appear to be in motion. A

continuous succession of static images shown in order is all that makes up an
animation. Effective attention-getting may be achieved by the animation. Additionally,
animation adds levity and appeal to a presentation. In multimedia applications, the
animation is fairly common.

4) Audio - Speech, music, and sound effects could all be necessary for a multimedia
application. They are referred to as the audio or sound component of multimedia.
Speaking is a fantastic educational tool. Analog and digital audio are both kinds. The
initial sound signal is referred to as analog audio or sound. Digital sound is saved on a
computer. Digital audio is therefore utilized for sound in multimedia applications.
5) Video - The term "video" describes a moving image that is supported by sound,
such as a television image. A multimedia application's video component conveys a lot
of information quickly. For displaying real-world items in multimedia applications,
digital video is helpful. If uploaded to the internet, the video really does have the
highest performance requirements for computer memory and bandwidth. The quality
of digital video files may still be preserved while being saved on a computer, similarly
to other data. A computer network allows for the transport of digital video files. The
digital video snippets are simple to modify.

What are the applications of multimedia?

The typical areas where multimedia is applied are listed below.

1) For entertainment purposes - Multimedia marketing may significantly improve

the promotion of new items. Both advertising and marketing staff had their doors
opened by the economical communication boost provided by multimedia. Flying
banner presentations, video transitions, animations, and audio effects are just a few
of the components utilized to create a multimedia-based advertisement that appeals
to the customer in a brand-new way and encourages the purchase of the goods.

2) For education purposes - There are currently a lot of educational computer

games accessible. Take a look at an illustration of an educational app that plays
children's rhymes. In addition to merely repeating rhymes, the youngster may create
drawings, scale items up or down, and more. There are many more multimedia
products on the market that provide children with a wealth of in-depth knowledge and
playing options.

3) For business purposes - There are several commercial uses for multimedia.
Multimedia and communication technologies have made it possible for information
from international work groups. Today's team members can work remotely and for a
variety of businesses. A global workplace will result from this. The following facilities
should be supported by the multimedia network:

o Office needs
o Records management
o Employee training
o Electronic mail
o Voice mail

4) For marketing purposes - Multimedia marketing may significantly improve the

promotion of new items. Both advertising and promotion staff had their doors opened
by the economical communication boost provided by multimedia. Flying banner
presentations, video transitions, animations, and audio effects are just a few of the
components utilized to create a multimedia-based advertisement that appeals to the
customer in a brand-new way and encourages the purchase of the goods.

5) For banking purposes - Another public setting where multimedia is being used
more and more recently is banks. People visit banks to open savings and current
accounts, make deposits and withdrawals, learn about the bank's various financial
plans, apply for loans, and other things. Each bank wants to notify its consumers with
a wealth of information. It can employ multimedia in a variety of ways to do this. The
bank also has a PC monitor in the clients' rest area that shows details about its
numerous programs. Online and internet banking have grown in popularity recently.
These heavily rely on multimedia. As a result, banks are using multimedia to better
serve their clients and inform them of their appealing financing options.

Multimedia Application:
Multimedia applications are created with the help of following mentioned tools and
packages.
The sound, text, graphics, animation and video are the integral part of multimedia
software. To produce and edit these media elements, there are various software tools
available in the market. The categories of basic software tools are:
Text Editing Tools- These tools are used to create letters, resumes, invoices,
purchase orders, user manual for a project and other documents. MS-Word is a
good example of text tool. It has following features:

 Creating new file, opening existing file, saving file and printing it
 Insert symbol, formula and equation in the file.
 Correct spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
 Align text within margins
 Insert page numbers on the top or bottom of the page.
 Mail-merge the document and making letters and envolpes.
 Making tables with variable number of columns and rows.

Painting and Drawing Tools- These tools generally come with a graphical
user interface with pull down menus for quick selection. You can create almost
all kinds of possible shapes and resize them using these tools. Drawing file can
be imported or exported in many image formats like .gif, .tif, .jpg, .bmp, etc.
Some examples of drawing software are Corel Draw, Freehand, Designer,
Photoshop, Fireworks, Point etc.These software have following features:

 Tools to draw a straight line, rectangular area, circle etc.

 Different colour selection option.
 Pencil tool to draw a shape freehand.
 Eraser tool to erase part of the image.
 Zooming for magnified pixel editing.

Image Editing Tools- Image editing tools are used to edit or reshape the
existing images and pictures. These tools can be used to create an image from
scratch as well as images from scanners, digital cameras, clipart files or original
artwork files created with painting and drawing tools. Examples of Image editing
or processing software are Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.

Sound Editing Tools- These tools are used to integrate sound into multimedia
project very easily. You can cut, copy, paste and edit segments of a sound file by
using these tools. The presence of sound greatly enhances the effect of a mostly
graphic presentation, especially in a video. Examples of sound editing software
tools are: Cool Edit Pro, Sound Forge and Pro Tools. These software have
following features:

Record your own music, voice or any other audio.

Record sound from CD, DVD, Radio or any other sound player.
 You can edit, mix the sound with any other audio.
Apply special effects such as fade, equalizer, echo, reverse and more.

Video Editing Tools- These tools are used to edit, cut, copy, and paste your
video and audio files. Video editing used to require expensive, specialized
equipment and a great deal of knowledge. The aritistic process of video editing
consists of deciding what elements to retain, delete or combine from various
sources so that they come together in an organized, logical and visually
planning manner. Today computers are powerful enough to handle this job, disk
space is cheap and storing and distributing your finished work on DVD is very
easy. Examples of video editing software are Adobe Premiere and Adobe After
Effects.

Animation and Modeling Tools- An animation is to show the still images at a

certain rate to give it visual effect with the help of Animation and modeling
tools. These tools have features like multiple windows that allow you to view
your model in each dimension, ability to drag and drop primitive shapes into a
scene, color and texture mapping, ability to add realistic effects such as
transparency, shadowing and fog etc. Examples of Animations and modeling
tools are 3D studio max and Maya.

Multimedia Images & Graphics

An image consists of a rectangular array of dots called pixels. The size of the image is
specified in terms of width X height, in numbers of the pixels. The physical size of the
image, in inches or centimeters, depends on the resolution of the device on which the
image is displayed. The resolution is usually measured in DPI (Dots Per Inch). An
image will appear smaller on a device with a higher resolution than on one with a
lower resolution. For color images, one needs enough bits per pixel to represent all
the colors in the image. The number of the bits per pixel is called the depth of the
image.

Image data types

Images can be created by using different techniques of representation of data called
data type like monochrome and colored images. Monochrome image is created by
using single color whereas colored image is created by using multiple colors. Some
important data types of images are following:

1-bit images- An image is a set of pixels. Note that a pixel is a picture element
in digital image. In 1-bit images, each pixel is stored as a single bit (0 or 1). A bit
has only two states either on or off, white or black, true or false. Therefore, such
an image is also referred to as a binary image, since only two states are
available. 1-bit image is also known as 1-bit monochrome images because it
contains one color that is black for off state and white for on state.
A 1-bit image with resolution 640*480 needs a storage space of 640*480 bits.
640 x 480 bits. = (640 x 480) / 8 bytes = (640 x 480) / (8 x 1024) KB= 37.5KB.
The clarity or quality of 1-bit image is very low.

8-bit Gray level images- Each pixel of 8-bit gray level image is represented by
a single byte (8 bits). Therefore each pixel of such image can hold 2 8=256
values between 0 and 255. Therefore each pixel has a brightness value on a
scale from black (0 for no brightness or intensity) to white (255 for full
 brightness or intensity). For example, a dark pixel might have a value of 15 and
a bright one might be 240.

A grayscale digital image is an image in which the value of each pixel is a single
sample, which carries intensity information. Images are composed exclusively of
gray shades, which vary from black being at the weakest intensity to white
being at the strongest. Grayscale images carry many shades of gray from black
to white. Grayscale images are also called monochromatic, denoting the
presence of only one (mono) color (chrome). An image is represented by bitmap.
A bitmap is a simple matrix of the tiny dots (pixels) that form an image and are
displayed on a computer screen or printed.

A 8-bit image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of 640 x 480
bytes=(640 x 480)/1024 KB= 300KB. Therefore an 8-bit image needs 8 times
more storage space than 1-bit image.

24-bit color images - In 24-bit color image, each pixel is represented by three
bytes, usually representing RGB (Red, Green and Blue). Usually true color is
defined to mean 256 shades of RGB (Red, Green and Blue) for a total of
16777216 color variations. It provides a method of representing and storing
graphical image information an RGB color space such that a colors, shades and
hues in large number of variations can be displayed in an image such as in high
quality photo graphic images or complex graphics.
Many 24-bit color images are stored as 32-bit images, and an extra byte for
each pixel used to store an alpha value representing special effect information.
A 24-bit color image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of 640 x
480 x 3 bytes = (640 x 480 x 3) / 1024=900KB without any compression. Also
32-bit color image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of 640 x 480
x 4 bytes= 1200KB without any compression.

Disadvantages
 Require large storage space
 Many monitors can display only 256 different colors at any one time. Therefore, in
this case it is wasteful to store more than 256 different colors in an image.

8-bit color images - 8-bit color graphics is a method of storing image

information in a computer's memory or in an image file, where one byte (8 bits)
represents each pixel. The maximum number of colors that can be displayed at
once is 256. 8-bit color graphics are of two forms. The first form is where the
image stores not color but an 8-bit index into the color map for each pixel,
instead of storing the full 24-bit color value. Therefore, 8-bit image formats
consists of two parts: a color map describing what colors are present in the
image and the array of index values for each pixel in the image. In most color
maps each color is usually chosen from a palette of 16,777,216 colors (24 bits: 8
red, 8green, 8 blue).
The other form is where the 8-bits use 3 bits for red, 3 bits for green and 2 bits
for blue. This second form is often called 8-bit true color as it does not use a
palette at all. When a 24-bit full color image is turned into an 8-bit image, some
of the colors have to be eliminated, known as color quantization process.
A 8-bit color image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of 640 x
480 bytes=(640 x 480) / 1024KB= 300KB without any compression.
Color lookup tables
A color loop-up table (LUT) is a mechanism used to transform a range of input colors
into another range of colors. Color look-up table will convert the logical color numbers
stored in each pixel of video memory into physical colors, represented as RGB triplets,
which can be displayed on a computer monitor. Each pixel of image stores only index
value or logical color number. For example if a pixel stores the value 30, the meaning
is to go to row 30 in a color look-up table (LUT). The LUT is often called a Palette.
Characteristic of LUT are following:
 The number of entries in the palette determines the maximum number of colors
which can appear on screen simultaneously.
 The width of each entry in the palette determines the number of colors which the
wider full palette can represent.
A common example would be a palette of 256 colors that is the number of entries is
256 and thus each entry is addressed by an 8-bit pixel value. Each color can be
chosen from a full palette, with a total of 16.7 million colors that is the each entry is of
24 bits and 8 bits per channel which sets the total combinations of 256 levels for each
of the red, green and blue components 256 x 256 x 256 =16,777,216 colors.

Image file formats

GIF - Graphics Interchange Formats- The GIF format was created by
Compuserve. It supports 256 colors. GIF format is the most popular on the
Internet because of its compact size. It is ideal for small icons used for
navigational purpose and simple diagrams. GIF creates a table of up to 256
colors from a pool of 16 million. If the image has less than 256 colors, GIF can
easily render the image without any loss of quality. When the image contains
more colors, GIF uses algorithms to match the colors of the image with the
palette of optimum set of 256 colors available. Better algorithms search the
image to find and the optimum set of 256 colors.
Thus GIF format is lossless only for the image with 256 colors or less. In case of
a rich, true color image GIF may lose 99.998% of the colors. GIF files can be
saved with a maximum of 256 colors. This makes it is a poor format for
photographic images.
GIFs can be animated, which is another reason they became so successful. Most
animated banner ads are GIFs. GIFs allow single bit transparency that is when
you are creating your image, you can specify which color is to be transparent.
This provision allows the background colors of the web page to be shown
through the image.

JPEG- Joint Photographic Experts Group- The JPEG format was developed by
the Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG files are bitmapped images. It store
information as 24-bit color. This is the format of choice for nearly all photograph
images on the internet. Digital cameras save images in a JPEG format by default.
It has become the main graphics file format for the World Wide Web and any
browser can support it without plug-ins. In order to make the file small, JPEG
uses lossy compression. It works well on photographs, artwork and similar
materials but not so well on lettering, simple cartoons or line drawings. JPEG
images work much better than GIFs. Though JPEG can be interlaced, still this
format lacks many of the other special abilities of GIFs, like animations and
transparency, but they really are only for photos.
PNG- Portable Network Graphics- PNG is the only lossless format that web
browsers support. PNG supports 8 bit, 24 bits, 32 bits and 48 bits data types.
One version of the format PNG-8 is similar to the GIF format. But PNG is the
superior to the GIF. It produces smaller files and with more options for colors. It
supports partial transparency also. PNG-24 is another flavor of PNG, with 24-bit
color supports, allowing ranges of color akin to high color JPEG. PNG-24 is in no
way a replacement format for JPEG because it is a lossless compression format.
This means that file size can be rather big against a comparable JPEG. Also PNG
supports for up to 48 bits of color information.

TIFF- Tagged Image File Format- The TIFF format was developed by the
Aldus Corporation in the 1980 and was later supported by Microsoft. TIFF file
format is widely used bitmapped file format. It is supported by many image
editing applications, software used by scanners and photo retouching programs.
TIFF can store many different types of image ranging from 1 bit image,
grayscale image, 8 bit color image, 24 bit RGB image etc. TIFF files originally use
lossless compression. Today TIFF files also use lossy compression according to
the requirement. Therefore, it is a very flexible format. This file format is
suitable when the output is printed. Multi-page documents can be stored as a
single TIFF file and that is way this file format is so popular. The TIFF format is
now used and controlled by Adobe.

BMP- Bitmap- The bitmap file format (BMP) is a very basic format supported by
most Windows applications. BMP can store many different type of image: 1 bit
image, grayscale image, 8 bit color image, 24 bit RGB image etc. BMP files are
uncompressed. Therefore, these are not suitable for the internet. BMP files can
be compressed using lossless data compression algorithms.

EPS- Encapsulated Postscript- The EPS format is a vector based graphic. EPS
is popular for saving image files because it can be imported into nearly any kind
of application. This file format is suitable for printed documents. Main
disadvantage of this format is that it requires more storage as compare to other
formats.

PDF- Portable Document Format- PDF format is vector graphics with

embedded pixel graphics with many compression options. When your document
is ready to be shared with others or for publication. This is only format that is
platform independent. If you have Adobe Acrobat you can print from any
document to a PDF file. From illustrator you can save as .PDF.

EXIF- Exchange Image File- Exif is an image format for digital cameras. A
variety of tage are available to facilitate higher quality printing, since
information about the camera and picture - taking condition can be stored and
used by printers for possible color correction algorithms.it also includes
specification of file format for audio that accompanies digital images.

WMF- Windows MetaFile- WMF is the vector file format for the MS-Windows
operating environment. It consists of a collection of graphics device interface
function calls to the MS-Windows graphice drawing library.Metafiles are both
small and flexible, hese images can be displayed properly by their proprietary
softwares only.
PICT- PICT images are useful in Macintosh software development, but you
should avoid them in desktop publishing. Avoid using PICT format in electronic
publishing-PICT images are prone to corruption.

Photoshop- This is the native Photoshop file format created by Adobe. You can
import this format directly into most desktop publishing applications.