Department of Information

communication Technology

Multimedia Systems and

Development

Introduction to Multimedia

Chapter One
Kalayu N.
2016 E.C
 Contents
 Definition
 Introduction
 Categories of Multimedia
 History
 Applications of Multimedia
 Multimedia development life cycle
 Multimedia system
 Components of Multimedia systems
 Elements of Multimedia
 Overview of multimedia software tools
 Multimedia production phase
 Future of multimedia technology applications
 Standard file formats 2
 Definition
The word multi and media are combined to
form the word multimedia. The word
“multi” signifies “many.”
Multimedia is a type of medium that allows
information to be easily transferred from
one location to another.

3
 Introduction
• Multimedia is the presentation of text,
pictures, audio, and video with links and
tools that allow the user to navigate,
engage, create, and communicate using
a computer.
• Multimedia refers to the computer-
assisted integration of text, drawings,
still and moving images(videos)
graphics, audio, animation, and any
other media in which any type of
4
information can be expressed, stored,
communicated, and processed digitally.
 Why
Multimedia?
Multimedia content helps to vary and enhance
the learning process, and leads to better
knowledge retention. It enhances learning,
memory, and retention.
 Audio stimulation 20% retention rate
 Audio/visual up to 30% retention
rate
 Interactive multimedia - up to 60%
retention rate
5
6
 Categories of Multimedia
Linear Multimedia:
• It is also called Non-interactive
multimedia. In the case of linear
multimedia, the end-user cannot
control the content of the application.
• It has factually no interactivity of any
kind. Some multimedia projects like
movies in which material is thrown in
a linear fashion from beginning to
end.
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7
Categories of Multimedia
Non-Linear Multimedia:
• In Non-Linear multimedia, the end-
user is allowed the navigational control
to ramble through multimedia content
at his own desire.
• The user can control the access of the
application. Non-linear offers user
interactivity to control the movement of
data.
• For example computer games, websites,
self-paced computer-based training
packages, etc. 8
 History of Multimedia:
The word itself, sometimes spelled with a hyphen as multi-
media, has been used since 1962, from multi-, or "many,"
rooted in the Latin multus, "many or much;" and media, the
plural form of medium, or "system of communication."

1. Newspaper: perhaps the first mass communication

medium, uses text, graphics, and images.
2. Motion pictures: conceived of in 1830's in order to
observe motion too rapid for perception by the human
eye.
3. Wireless radio transmission: Guglielmo Marconi, at
Pontecchio, Italy, in 1895.
4. Television: the new medium for the 20th century,
established video as a commonly available medium and
has since changed the world of mass communications.

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History of Multimedia:

5. The connection between computers and ideas about

multimedia covers what is actually only a short
period:
 1945 - Vannevar Bush wrote a landmark article
describing what amounts to a hypermedia system
called Memex.
 1960 -Ted Nelson coined the term hypertext.
 2000 - WWW size was estimated at over 1 billion
pages.

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Applications of Multimedia

Education
• In the subject of education, multimedia is
becoming increasingly popular. It is often
used to produce study materials for pupils
and to ensure that they have a thorough
comprehension of various disciplines.
• Edutainment, which combines education and
entertainment, has become highly popular in
recent years.

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Applications of Multimedia

Entertainment
• The usage of multimedia in films
creates a unique auditory and video
impression.
• Today, multimedia has completely
transformed the art of filmmaking
around the world.
• Multimedia is the only way to achieve
difficult effects and actions.
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Applications of Multimedia
Business
• Marketing, advertising, product demos,
presentation, training, networked
communication, etc. are applications of
multimedia that are helpful in many
businesses.
• The audience can quickly understand
an idea when multimedia
presentations are used.

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Applications of Multimedia
Technology & Science
• In the sphere of science and
technology, multimedia has a wide
range of applications. It can
communicate audio, films, and other
multimedia documents in a variety of
formats.
• Only multimedia can make live
broadcasting from one location to
another possible.
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Applications of Multimedia
Fine Arts
• A visual art considered to have been
created primarily for artistic and
intellectual purposes and judged for its
beauty and meaningfulness.
Specifically, painting, sculpture,
drawing, watercolor, graphics, and
architecture.

• For example, a variety of digital

mediums can be used to combine ●●●

movies and operas. 15

Applications of Multimedia
Engineering
• Multimedia is frequently used by
software engineers in computer
simulations for military or industrial
training.
• It’s also used for software interfaces
created by creative experts and
software engineers in partnership.

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 Multimedia System
A multimedia computer system is a computer
system that can create, import, integrate, store,
retrieve, edit, and delete two or more types of
media materials in digital form, such as audio,
image, full-motion video, and text information.

Characteristics of a Multimedia System

A Multimedia system has four basic chxs:
 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. 17
Components of a Multimedia
System
 Capture devices
- Video Camera, Video Recorder, Audio
Microphone, Keyboards, mice, graphics
tablets, 3D input devices, tactile sensors, VR
devices. Digitising/Sampling Hardware
 Storage Devices
- Hard disks, CD-ROMs, Jaz/Zip drives, DVD,
etc
 Communication Networks
- Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI (Fiber
Distributed Data Interface), ATM, Intranets,
Internets.
 Computer Systems
- Multimedia Desktop machines,
Workstations, MPEG/VIDEO/DSP Hardware
 Display Devices 18
Elements of Multimedia

Text
• Characters are used to form words,
phrases, and paragraphs in the text.
Text appears in all multimedia creations
of some kind.
• The text can be in a variety of fonts and
sizes to match the multimedia
software’s professional presentation.

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19
 Elements of Multimedia
Graphics
• Non-text information, such as a sketch,
chart, or photograph, is represented
digitally. Graphics add to the appeal of
the multimedia application.
• In many circumstances, people dislike
reading big amounts of material on
computers

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 Elements of Multimedia

Animations
• A sequence of still photographs is being
flipped through. It’s a set of visuals that
give the impression of movement.
• Animation is the process of making a
still image appear to move.

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 Elements of Multimedia
Video
• The term video refers to a moving
image that is accompanied by sound,
such as a television picture.
• Photographic images that appear to be
in full motion and are played back at
speeds of 15 to 30 frames per second.

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22
 Elements of Multimedia
Audio
• Any sound, whether it’s music,
conversation, or something else. Sound
is the most serious aspect of
multimedia, delivering the joy of music,
special effects, and other forms of
entertainment.
• Decibels are a unit of measurement for
volume and sound pressure level.

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Multimedia system development life
cycle
The Multimedia system development
process involves a number of steps like
traditional software system development
and is known as the Multimedia System
Development Life Cycle (MSDLC).
 Defining the system
 System Design
 Tools selection
 Authoring/rendering
 Testing
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MSDLC
Defining the system to be
developed, understand precisely
who the user is
Establishing a navigation
methodology for the user
Multimedia product requires many types of
software tools, for instance, creating text
often requires a word processor; working with
digital images requires graphics software;
using video requires a video-capture program
and editing software;
After the creation of all the
contents, it is required to put
them all together.
 Is it a product to read (in case of
descriptive text)?
 Is it user friendly?
 Is it interactive and easy to
navigate? ●●●
Overview of Multimedia
Software Tools
In this subsection, we look briefly at some of the
software tools available for carrying out tasks in
multimedia.
The categories of software tools here are
 Music sequencing and notation
 Digital audio
 Graphics and image editing
 Video editing
 Animation
 Multimedia authoring

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 Overview of Multimedia
Software Tools
1. Music Sequencing and
Notation
Cakewalk: is a well known older name for what is
now called Pro Audio.
Cubase: is another sequencing / editing program,
with capabilities similar to those of
Cakewalk. It includes some digital audio
editing tools.
Macromedia Sound edit: it is a mature program
for creating audio for multimedia projects
and the web that integrates well with other
Macromedia products such as Flash and
●●●
Director. 27
 Overview of Multimedia
Software Tools
2. Digital Audio

Digital Audio tools deal with accessing and editing

the actual sampled sounds that make up audio.
Cool Edit: a powerful, popular digital audio
toolkit with capabilities (for PC users, at
least) that emulate a professional audio
studio
Sound Forge: Sound Forge is a sophisticated PC
- based program for editing WAV files.
Pro Tools: is a high - end integrated audio
production and editing environment that
mns on Macintosh computers as well as ●●●
Windows. 28
 Overview of Multimedia
Software
3. Graphics Tools
and Image Editing
 Adobe Illustrator: a powerful publishing tool
for creating and editing vector(use
mathematical formulas consisting of lines and
curves that make shapes) graphics, which can
easily be exported to use on the web
 Adobe Photoshop: Layers of images,
graphics, and text can be separately
manipulated for maximum flexibility
 Macromedia Fireworks: is software for
making graphics specifically for the web.
 Macromedia Freehand: a text and web
graphics editing tool that supports many
●●●
bitmap formats, such as GIF, PNG, and JPEG. 29
 Overview of Multimedia
Software
4. Video Editing
Tools
 Adobe Premiere : is a simple, intuitive video
editing tool for nonlinear editing — putting
video clips into any order. Video and audio are
arranged in tracks, like a musical score.
 CyberLink PowerDirector 365 : available for
Windows and Mac, and strong stabilization
and video correction tools, professional effects,
multi-cam editing, motion tracking and easy
trimming.
 Pinnacle Studio : a good video editing tool
for beginners and is offered by Apple for the
Macintosh platform. ●●●
30
 Overview of Multimedia
Software Tools
5. Animation
A. Multimedia APIs
 Java3D: is an API used by Java to construct
and render 3D graphics.
 DirectX: a Windows API that supports video,
images, audio, and 3D animation, is the most
common API used to develop modern
multimedia Windows applications, such as
computer games.
 OpenGL(Open Graphics Library): OpenGL is
highly portable tool and will run on all popular
modern operating systems, such as UNIX,
Linux, Windows, and Macintosh. ●●●
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 Overview of Multimedia
Software
B. Rendering Tools Tools
 3D Studio Max: includes a number of high -
end professional tools for character animation,
game development, and visual effects
production.
 Softimage XSI (previously called Softimage
3D) is a powerful modeling, animation, and
rendering package for animation and special
effects in films and games.
 RenderMan is a rendering package created by
Pixar. It excels in creating complex surface
appearances & images and has been used in
numerous movies, such as Monsters Inc., Final
Fantasy etc…
 GIF Animation Packages For a simpler
●●●
approach to animation that also allows quick 32
 Overview of Multimedia
Software Tools
6. Multimedia Authoring
Tools that provide the capability for creating a
complete multimedia presentation, including
interactive user control, are
called authoring programs.
 Macromedia Flash
 Macromedia Director Adobe
Director (formerly Macromedia Director)
 Author ware: is used for creating interactive
programs that can integrate a range of
multimedia content, particularly e - learning
applications.
 Quest: ●●●
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 Multimedia production phases
A multimedia program are developed by multimedia
developers that must go through multimedia
production phases.
The process before
producing the
multimedia project.

The process of
producing the
multimedia project.

Is a process after
producing the
multimedia project.
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Multimedia production phases
Analysis Phase
This is the first and the main phase in a multimedia
production. The multimedia developers interview the
clients to find out their needs and write the Problem
Statement and a Proposal.
Design Phase
It refers to the planning of the design of the
Multimedia project to be developed. Flow charts and
Storyboards are used
Implementation Phase
In this phase, the multimedia developers will convert a
design plan such as Storyboard into a multimedia
project.
Testing Phase

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Multimedia production phases
Testing Phase
The purpose of this phase is to ensure that the program
runs correctly without errors. Developers are involved in
this phase.
Evaluation Phase
It focuses on the overall presentation and effectiveness of the
multimedia. Selected users use the Evaluation Form to
check the multimedia program and to give feedback. Two
aspects are evaluated; content and user interface.
Publishing Phase
The two common delivery mediums for multimedia programs
are; Web-based and CD-based.

Web-based multimedia is delivered in the form of Web

pages.
Multimedia developers use a CD writer to produce a
●●●
multimedia CD 36
Multimedia production phases

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37
 Future of multimedia technology
applications
Following are the common areas of applications of
multimedia.
 Multimedia in Business- Multimedia can be
used in many applications in a
business. Mailing, fax, office needs etc…
 Multimedia in Marketing and Advertising-
By using multimedia marketing of new products
can be greatly enhanced.
 Multimedia in Education- Many computer
games with focus on education are now
available. Consider an example of an
educational game which plays various rhymes
for kids.
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 Future of multimedia technology
 Multimediaapplications
in Bank- Bank is another public
place where multimedia is finding more and
more application in recent times. Bank also
displays information about its various schemes
on a PC monitor placed in the rest area for
customers.
 Communication Technology and Multimedia
Services- The advancement of high computing
abilities, communication ways and relevant
standards has started the beginning of an era.
 Multimedia in Entertainment- Multimedia is
widely used in the entertainment industry. It is
especially used to develop special effects in
movies and video games. ●●●
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 Standard file formats

1. Text Formats
 RTF
Rich Text Format is the primary file format
introduced in 1987 by Microsoft with the
specification of their published products and
for cross-platform documents interchange.
 Plain text
Plain text files can be opened, read, and
edited with most text editors. commonly used
are Notepad (Windows), Gedit or nano (Unix,
Linux), TextEdit (Mac OS X) and so on.
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40
 Standard file formats
2. Image Formats
 TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
This format is common in desktop publishing world
(high quality output), and is supported by almost all
software packages.
 BMP (Bitmap)
Initially this format is in use with Windows 3.1. It is quite
large and uncompressed and hence BMP is used for the
high-resolution or large images.
 DIB (Device Independent Bitmap)
A device independent bitmap contains a color table.
The color describes how pixel values corresponds to
RGB color values, which describes colors that are
produced by emitting light. ●●●
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 Standard file formats
2. Image Formats
 GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
GIF is a compressed image format. Most of the
computer color images and backgrounds are GIF files. It
is the most popular format used for online color photos.
13-bit Color look up table is used by the GIF format to
identify its color values.
 JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPEG is a commonly used method of lossy compression
for digital images.
 TGA (Tagra)
It is the first popular format for high-resolution images.
TGA files are common in animation video industry.
 PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
PNG acts as replacement for GIF and also replaces
multiple common uses of TIFF. ●●●
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Standard file formats

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43
 Standard file formats
3. Digital Audio File Formats
 WAV (Waveform Audio File Format)
It is the most popular audio file format in windows for
storing uncompressed sound files. In order to attain the
reduced file size it can also be converted to other file
formats like MP3.
 MP3 (MPEG Layer-3 Format)
MPEG Layer-3 format is the most popular format for
storing and downloading music. The MP3 files are
roughly compressed to one-tenth the size of an
equivalent WAV file.
 OGG
A free, open source container format that is designed
for obtaining better streaming and evolving at high end
quality digital multimedia. It can be compared to MP3
files in terms of quality. ●●●
44
 Standard file formats
3. Digital Audio File Formats
 AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)
It is an audio file format developed by Apple Inc. used
for storing sound data for personal computers and other
electronic audio devices.
 WMA (Windows Media Audio)
It is a popular windows media audio format owned by
Microsoft. WMA is a file extension used with windows
media player.
 RA (Real Audio Format)
Real Audio format is designed for streaming audio over
the Internet.

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45
 Standard file formats
3. Digital Audio File Formats
 AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)
It is an audio file format developed by Apple Inc. used
for storing sound data for personal computers and other
electronic audio devices.
 WMA (Windows Media Audio)
It is a popular windows media audio format owned by
Microsoft. WMA is a file extension used with windows
media player.
 RA (Real Audio Format)
Real Audio format is designed for streaming audio over
the Internet.

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46
Standard file formats

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47
 Standard file formats
4. Digital Video File Formats
 AVI (Audio/Video Interleave)
AVI is the video file format for Windows. Here sound and
picture elements are stored in alternate interleaved
chunks in the file.
 MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)
MPEG is a standard for generating digital video and
audio compression under the International Standards
Organization (ISO) by the group of people.
MPEG-1 to MPEG-21, Simply MPEG is the standards for
digital video and audio compression.

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48
Standard file formats

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