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Multimedia – An Introduction


Text Books: 1. Ze-Nian Li and Mark S. Drew, “Fundamentals of

Multimedia”, Pearson Prentice Hall, October 2003.2. Fred Halsall, “Multimedia Communications:

Applications, Networks, Protocols and Standards”, Addison-Wesley, 2001.

3.Khalid Sayood, “Introduction to data compression “,3rd edition, Morgan Kaufman

4.David Solomon, "The Data compression; The Complete Reference”, 3rd edition, Springer, 2006


Multimedia- Definitions

Multi - many; much; multiple

Medium - means of transmission of information/data.

Multimedia thus indicates that information /data being transmitted over network may be composed of the following:

Text Image Audio Video


Scope Of Multimedia The technology of MM design utilizes various

features like animation ,video, graphics, audio..; MM technology is used for 3D cinema Animation is also used in creating special effects/

web programs. Thus scope of animation is huge in market

In the field of education , MM is being used

extensively , especially for online course and training

MM is also used for advertising purpose.


Range of MultimediaIn telephone networksData networksBroadcast television networkIntegrated services digital

networkBroadband multi service network


Multimedia Authoring ToolsMultimedia elements are composed into a project using

authoring tools.

Multimedia Authoring tools are those programs that provide the capability for creating a complete multimedia presentations by linking together objects such as a paragraph of text (song), an illustration, an audio, with appropriate interactive user control


Multimedia Authoring Tools (Contd.)By defining the objects' relationships to each other, and

by sequencing them in an appropriate order, authors (who use authoring tools) can produce attractive and useful graphical applications.

To name a few authoring tools◦ Macromedia Flash◦ Macromedia Director◦ Authorware

The hardware and the software that govern the limits of what can happen are multimedia platform or environment


Multimedia and Interactivity Interactive Multimedia is Hypermedia, when the end-

user is provided with the structure of linked elements through which he/she can navigate.

Multimedia is linear, when it is not interactive and the users just sit and watch as if it is a movie, e.g., cinema presentation

Multimedia is nonlinear, when the users are given the navigational control and can browse the contents at will, e.g., computer game, computer-based training.


Challenges for Multimedia SystemThere is a temporal relationship between many forms of

media (e.g. Video and Audio). In this case problems are: Sequencing within the media - playing frames in

correct order/time frame in video Synchronisation - inter-media scheduling (e.g. Video

and Audio). Lip synchronisation is clearly important for humans to watch playback of video and audio and even animation and audio.


Challenges for Multimedia Systems The key issues that multimedia systems need to deal with are:

◦ How to represent and store temporal information.

◦ How to strictly maintain the temporal relationships on play back/retrieval

◦ Data has to be represented digitally so many initial source of data needs to be digitised - translated from analog source to digital representation. This will involve scanning (graphics, still images), sampling (audio/video) although digital cameras now exist for direct scene to digital capture of images and video.

◦ The data is large (several Mb) for audio and video - therefore storage, transfer (bandwidth) and processing overheads are high. Data compression techniques very common.


Desirable Features Given the (mentioned) challenges the following features are

desirable (if not a prerequisite) for a Multimedia System: ◦ Very High Processing Power

needed to deal with large data processing and real time delivery of media. Special hardware commonplace.

◦ Multimedia Capable File System needed to deliver real-time media e.g. Video/Audio

Streaming. Special Hardware/Software needed e.g RAID technology.

◦ Data Representations/File Formats that support multimedia Data representations/file formats should be easy to handle yet

allow for compression/decompression in real-time. ◦ Efficient and High I/O

input and output to the file subsystem needs to be efficient and fast. Needs to allow for real-time recording as well as playback of data. e.g. Direct to Disk recording systems.


Desirable Features◦ Special Operating System

to allow access to file system and process data efficiently and quickly. Needs to support direct transfers to disk, real-time scheduling, fast interrupt processing, I/O streaming etc.

◦ Storage and Memory large storage units (of the order of 50 -100 Gb or more) and

large memory (50 -100 Mb or more). Large Caches also required and frequently of Level 2 and 3 hierarchy for efficient management.

◦ Network Support Client-server systems common as distributed systems

common. ◦ Software Tools

user friendly tools needed to handle media, design and develop applications, deliver media.


Multimedia ApplicationsMultimedia finds its application in various

areas, a few are:◦ Education

Computer-based trainings, reference e-books, documents imaging, distant learning.

◦ Entertainment Interactive games

◦ Medicine Training to doctors through virtual surgery

◦ Business Employee training, advertisements, customer

support, selling products.◦ Arts

Art exhibitions, literature presentations◦ Scientific Research

Modeling and simulations


Multimedia Applications (Contd.)

In Medicine

Source: Cardiac Imaging,YALE centre for advanced cardiac imaging


Multimedia Applications (Contd.)

In training


Multimedia Applications (Contd.)Other Applications include:

◦ World Wide Web ◦ Video conferencing ◦ Video-on-demand ◦ Interactive TV ◦ Home shopping ◦ Games ◦ Virtual reality ◦ Digital video editing and production systems ◦ Multimedia Database systems

multimedia – an introduction multimedia – an introduction msccomputerscience.com

Documents

introduction multimedia

fundamentals of multimedia

multimedia communications

multimedia systemthere

multimedia platform

environment msccomputerscience

playback of video

data compression