Chapter 1Introduction to Multimedia

Mr. Nael A. Aburas

1

Outline What is Multimedia? Where to use multimedia? Multimedia and Hypermedia World Wide Web Overview of Multimedia Software Tools

2

1.1 What is Multimedia?When different people mention the term multimedia, they

often have quite different, or even opposing, viewpoints. A PC vendor: a PC that has sound capability, a DVD-ROM

drive, and perhaps the superiority of multimedia-enabled microprocessors that understand additional multimedia instructions.

A consumer entertainment vendor: interactive cable TV with hundreds of digital channels available, or a cable TV-like service delivered over a high-speed Internet connection.

A Computer Science (CS) student: applications that use multiple modalities, including text, images, drawings (graphics), animation, video, sound including speech, and interactivity.

Multimedia and Computer Science: Graphics, HCI, visualization, data compression, graph

theory, networking, database systems. Multimedia and Hypermedia, all of these have important contributions to make in multimedia at the present time.

3

1.1 What is Multimedia? Multimedia is everything you can hear or see: texts,

books, pictures, music, sounds, CDs, videos, DVDs, Records, Films, and more.

Multimedia is the design, implementation, manipulation, storing, and proper delivery of various types of media to interested users

Multimedia is divided into three major types: interactive multimedia where users control the delivery of the integrated elements, hypermedia where users are presented with navigational capabilities, and liner multimedia such as TV or radio where users have no control over the flow of information and have no interaction.

4

Components of Multimedia Multimedia involves multiple modalities of text, audio,

images, drawings, animation, and video. Examples of how these modalities are put to use:

1. Video conferencing.2. Distributed lectures for higher education.3. Co-operative work environments, that allow

business people to edit a shared document, or school children to share a single game.

4. Searching in (very) large video and image databases for target visual objects.

5. “Augmented” reality: placing real-appearing computer graphics and video objects into scenes.

5

Components of Multimedia

7. Making multimedia components editable, allow the user side

to decide what components, video, graphics, etc., are

actually viewed; allow the client to move components

around or delete them.

8. Using voice-recognition to build an interactive environment,

say a kitchen-wall web browser.

6

Where to use multimedia? Education Broadcasting & Entertainment Research & Development Health

7

Education Computer Aided Learning

To assist student through simulation for better understanding.

Virtual Campus

Learning takes place in a virtual classroom using video conferencing and online lecture so that students all around the world can attend

Instructor support.

Resource materials for instructors.

8

Broadcasting & Entertainment Electronic catalogue Product features and descriptions are advertises

through web, CD and mobile devices.

On-demand News or movies News, Movies and TV series can be watched on

demand through web and mobile devices

9

Broadcasting & Entertainment 3D or animation movies

Movies created through advance 3D technology and animation techniques.

Video Games

Advances in the field of multimedia have led to more attractive video and computer games being available now in the consumer market.

10

Broadcasting & Entertainment Virtual Reality Virtual Reality refers to the use of a computer to

immerse the user into a simulated experience that it seems real. Virtual Reality systems often use special hardware to enhance the experience, including visual displays.

11

Benefits of using multimedia in software

Ease of use- User friendly, increase user’s effectiveness.

Intuitive Interface- Allows user to determine functions of an

application by their own intuition.

Immersive Experience- Software application takes over the entire computer screen, allows user to focus on application.

12

Benefits of using multimedia in software

Better understanding- Simultaneous presentation of different media provides

richer & broader range of information.

Cost effectiveness- Less training, less technical support.

13

Evaluating Multimedia Products

Evaluation can be done from two perspectives:

14

User’s Perspective Developer’s Perspective

Subject and Content Content

Platform Performance

Usability Delivery

Cost Interface

User’s perspective

Subject /content Area of interest Entertainment value – multimedia game

and sports – related products Education, training or learning objectives

15

User’s perspective

Platform (Hardware and Software) Focus on what type of equipment the user has,

and if it is compatible with a specific product.

Criteria for evaluation: Hardware platforms Computer processor speed and data bus

requirements Memory sizing

16

User’s perspective

UsabilityUsability means that user can apply, learn, use the

program efficiently.

The key criteria here are: Learning/training time: how long dose it take to learn

how to use the product. Error rate: how often mistakes made by the users

and how severe is the mistake? Task Time: how long does it take to accomplish a task Retention: how difficult is for the user to operate and

how attractive is the product to use

17

User’s perspective

CostThe cost can be the first or the last factor considered by

many people. Generally, users are willing to spend depending on how much is gained.

18

Developer’s Perspective

Developer must evaluate and aim to improve their product better than the last.

From the developer’s perspective, evaluation will

cover Content Performance Delivery interface

19

Developer’s Perspective

Content Product domain or subject matter-is the material

useful for the user. Message – How does the product communicate

the information? Will the users understand it? Comparison to comparable products

20

Developer’s Perspective

Performance Developer must consider that general users have

equipment that has much less capabilities, so products should always be tested on a range of

platforms before they are released.

Graphics, audio and video presentation should be use wisely not to slow down the application for slower machine

21

Developer’s Perspective

Delivery Delivery means how fast user is able to use the

product depending on the speed of the installation

procedure, the configuration and documentation.

The instructions should be straightforward, easy to configure and documentation are through and adequate.

22

Developer’s Perspective

Interface Ease-of-use for novice users Depth for experience or expert users Navigation features all work and are all useful and

user-friendly

23

Multimedia Research Topics and ProjectsTo the computer science researcher, multimedia consists

of a wide variety of topics: Multimedia processing and coding: multimedia content

analysis, content-based multimedia retrieval, multimedia security, audio/image/video processing, compression, etc.

Multimedia system support and networking: network protocols, Internet, operating systems, servers and clients, quality of service (QoS), and databases.

Multimedia tools, end-systems and applications: hypermedia systems, user interfaces, authoring systems.

24

Current Multimedia Projects Many exciting research projects are currently

underway. Here are a few of them:

1. Camera-based object tracking technology: tracking of the control objects provides user control of the process.

2. Multiple views: allowing photo-realistic (video-quality) synthesis of virtual actors from several cameras or from a single camera under differing lighting.

3. Digital fashion: aims to develop smart clothing that can communicate with other such enhanced clothing using wireless communication.

25

Current Multimedia Projects4. Electronic Housecall system: an initiative for providing

interactive health monitoring services to patients in their homes

5. Augmented Interaction applications: used to develop interfaces between real and virtual humans for tasks such as augmented storytelling.

26

1.2 Multimedia and Hypermedia History of Multimedia:

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.

27

1.2 Multimedia and Hypermedia5. The connection between computers and ideas about

multimedia covers what is actually only a short period: 1969 – Nelson and van Dam at Brown University created an

early hypertext editor called FRESS. 1989 – Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web 1991 – MPEG-1 was approved as an international standard for

digital video —led to the newer standards, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and further MPEGs in the 1990s.

1991 – The introduction of PDAs in 1991 began a new period in the use of computers in multimedia.

1992 – JPEG was accepted as the international standard for digital image compression — led to the new JPEG2000 standard

28

1.2 Multimedia and Hypermedia 1994 – Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen created the Netscape

program. 1995 – The JAVA language was created for platform-

independent application development. 1996 – DVD video was introduced; high quality full-length

movies were distributed on a single disk. 1998 – XML 1.0 was announced as a W3C Recommendation. 1998 – Hand-held MP3 devices first made inroads into

consumerist tastes in the fall of 1998, with the introduction of devices holding 32MB of flash memory.

2000 – WWW size was estimated at over 1 billion pages.

29

Hypermedia and Multimedia A hypertext system: meant to be read nonlinearly, by

following links that point to other parts of the document, or to other documents (Fig. 1.1)

HyperMedia: not constrained to be text-based, can include other media, e.g., graphics, images, and especially the continuous media – sound and video. The World Wide Web (WWW) — the best example of a hypermedia

application.

30

Hypermedia and Multimedia

31

Hypermedia and MultimediaExamples of typical present multimedia applications include: Digital video editing and production systems. Electronic newspapers/magazines. World Wide Web. On-line reference works: e.g. encyclopedia, games, etc. Home shopping. Interactive TV. Multimedia courseware. Video conferencing. Video-on-demand. Interactive movies.

32

1.3 World Wide WebThe W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has listed the

following goals for the WWW:1. Universal access of web resources (by everyone

everywhere).2. Effectiveness of navigating available information.3. Responsible use of posted material.

33

1.4 Overview of Multimedia Software Tools

The categories of software tools briefly examined here are:1. Digital Audio2. Graphics and Image Editing3. Video Editing4. Animation5. Multimedia Authoring

34

Digital Audio

Digital Audio tools deal with accessing and editing the actual sampled sounds that make up audio:

Sound Forge: a sophisticated PC-based program for editing audioWAV files.

Cool Edit: a very powerful and popular digital audio toolkit; emulates a professional audio studio — sound file editing including digital signal processing effects.

35

Graphics and Image Editing Adobe Photoshop: the standard in a graphics, image

processing and manipulation tool. Allows layers of images, graphics, and text that can be

separately manipulated for maximum flexibility. Filter factory permits creation of sophisticated lighting-

effects filters. Macromedia Fireworks: 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.

Adobe Illustrator: a powerful publishing tool from Adobe. Uses vector graphics; graphics can be exported to Web.

36

Video Editing Adobe Premiere: an intuitive, simple video editing tool for

nonlinear editing, i.e., putting video clips into any order: Video and audio are arranged in “tracks”. Provides a large number of video and audio tracks,

superimpositions and virtual clips. A large library of built-in transitions, filters and motions for clips

allows easy creation of effective multimedia productions with little effort.

Adobe After Effects: a powerful video editing tool that enables users to add and change existing movies. Can add many effects: lighting, shadows, motion blurring; layers.

Final Cut Pro: a video editing tool by Apple; Macintosh only.

37

AnimationRendering Tools: 3D Studio Max: rendering tool that includes a number of

very high-end professional tools for character animation, game development, and visual effects production.

Softimage XSI: a powerful modeling, animation, and rendering package used for animation and special effects in films and games.

Maya: competing product to Softimage; as well, it is a complete modeling package.

GIF Animation Packages: a simpler approach to animation, allows very quick development of effective small animations for the web.

38

Multimedia Authoring Macromedia Flash: allows users to create interactive movies

by using the score metaphor, i.e., a timeline arranged in parallel event sequences.

Macromedia Director: uses a movie metaphor to create interactive presentations — very powerful and includes a built-in scripting language, Lingo, that allows creation of complex interactive movies.

39

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

HTML: a language for publishing Hypermedia on the World Wide Web.

A traditional hypertext documents is similar to a text file.

The different is that a hypertext document also contains special symbols called tags

40

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) HTML uses tags to describe document elements. The tags are in the format <token params> to

define the start point of a document element and </token> to define the end of the element.

Some elements have only inline parameters and don’t require ending tags.

The most two important tags are HEAD and BODY. The head describes document definitions (page

title, meta-information) Body part describes the document structure and

content.

41

Simple HTML page<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>

A sample web page

</TITLE>

</HEAD>

<BODY>

<P>

Here you can put any text you like, since this is a paragraph element.

</P>

</BODY>

</HTML>

42

Stages of multimedia project Planning Design and production Testing Delivery

43

Planning The needs of a project are analyzed by outlining

its messages and objectives. A plan that outlines the required multimedia

expertise is prepared. A graphic template, the structure, and

navigational system are developed. A time estimate and a budget are prepared. A short prototype or proof-of-concept is prepared

44

Design and production The planned tasks are performed to create a

finished product.

The product is revised, based on the continuous feedback received from the client

45

Testing & delivery Testing

The program is tested to ensure that it meets the objectives of the project, works on the proposed delivery platforms, and meets the client requirements.

Delivery The final project is packaged and delivered to the end

user

46

Roles and responsibilities in a multimedia team.

The project manager is responsible for:

1. The overall development, implementation, and day-to-

day operations of the project.

2. The design and management of a project.

3. Understanding the strengths and limitations of

hardware and software.

4. Ensuring people skills and organizational skills.

5. Conveying information between the team and the

client.47

Roles and responsibilities in a multimedia

team. Multimedia designer - This team consists of

1. Graphics designers, animators, and image processing specialists who deal with visuals, thereby making the project appealing and aesthetic.

2. Instructional designers, who make sure that the subject matter is presented clearly for the target audience.

3. Interface designers, who devise the navigational pathways and content maps.

4. Information designers, who structure content, determine user pathways and feedback, and select presentation media.

5. Building a user-friendly interface.

48

Roles and responsibilities in a multimedia team.

A multimedia writer is responsible for:1. Writing proposals and test screens.

2. Scripting voice-overs and actors' narrations

49