Fundamentals of Multimedia

2nd Edition 2014

Ze-Nian Li
Mark S. Drew
Jiangchuan Liu

Chapter 1 : Introduction and Multimedia

vContent:

1-1: What’s Multimedia?

1-2: Multimedia and Hypermedia.
1-3: Overview of Multimedia Software tools

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vObjectives:

— This chapter considers what multimedia

is.
— It also supplies an overview of multimedia
software tools, such as video editors and
digital audio programs

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1.1 The term “multimedia “.

— applications that use multiple modalities,

including text, images, drawings (graphics),
animation, video, sound including speech,
and interactivity.

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1.1 The term “multimedia “.

Derived from the word “Multi” and “Media”

— It’s the applications that use multiple

modalities, including text, images, drawings
(graphics), animation, video, sound
including speech, and interactivity.

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1.1 Multimedia and Computer
Science

— Graphics, HCI, visualization, computer

vision, data compression, graph theory,
networking, database systems --- all have
important contributions to make in
multimedia at the present time.

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Components of Multimedia

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— Multimedia involves multiple modalities of
text, audio, images, drawings, animation,
and video.
— Examples of how these modalities are put
to use:
§ Video teleconferencing.
§ Distributed lectures for higher education.
§ Tele-medicine.
§ Co-operative work environments that
allow business people to edit a shared
document.
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§ Searching in (very) large video and image
databases for target visual objects.
" Augmented" reality: placing real-appearing
computer graphics and video objects into
scenes.
§ Making multimedia components editable,
allowing the user side to decide what
components, video, graphics, and so on
are actually viewed and allowing the client
to move components around or delete
them.
§ Using voice-recognition to build an
interactive environment. 9
1.2 Multimedia and Hypermedia
To place multimedia in its proper context, in this
section we briefly consider the history of
multimedia, a recent part of which is the connection
between multimedia and hypermedia.

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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. –Se Picture on Next Slide-
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:

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History of Multimedia:

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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. Memex was meant to be a universally
useful and personalized memory device that even included the concept of
associative links - it really is the forerunner of the World Wide Web.
— 1960 -Ted Nelson coined the term hypertext.
— 2000 - WWW size was estimated at over 1
billion pages.

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 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 –See Figure 1-1 on Next Slide-
— 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.
— Multimedia means that computer information can
be represented through audio, graphics, images, video,
and animation in addition to traditional media (text
and graphics).
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Hypermedia and Multimedia

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SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia
Integration Language)

— SMIL: pronounced "smile“ -- a particular

application (Extended) of XML that allows for
specification of interaction among any media
types and user input, in a temporally scripted
manner.

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SMIL
— Purpose of SMIL: it is also desirable to be able
to publish multimedia presentations using a
markup language.
— A multimedia markup language needs to enable
scheduling and synchronization of different
multimedia elements, and define their
interactivity with the user.
— SMIL 2.0 is specified in XML using a
modularization approach similar to the one
used in xhtml. All SMIL elements are divided into
modules - sets of XML elements, attributes, and values that
define one conceptual functionality.
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 SMIL
— Basic elements of SMIL as shown in the following
example:
<!DOCTYPE smil PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SMIL 2.0"
"http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/SMIL20.dtd">
<smil xlmns="http://www.w3.org/2001/SMIL20/Language">
<head>
<meta name="Author" content="Some Professor" />
</head>
<body>
<par id="MakingOfABook">
<seq>
<video src="authorview.mpg" />
<img src="onagoodday.jpg" />
</seq>
<audio src="authorview.wav" />
<text src="http://www.cs.sfu.ca/mmbook/" />
</par>
</body>
</smil> 19
 SMIL
— Explanation of the Previous Example:

— A SMIL document can optionally use the < ! DOCTYPE . . . > directive to
import the SMIL DTD, which will force the interpreter to verify the
document against the DTD. A.
— SMIL document starts with <smi1> and specifies the default namespace, using
the xmlns attribute.
— The <head> section specifies the author of the document.
— The body element contains the synchronization information and resources we
wish to present.
— In the example given, a video source called "authorview.mpg", an audio source,
"authorview.wav", and an HTML document at ''http://booksite.html'' are
presented simultaneously at the beginning. When the video ends, the image
"onagoodday. j pg" is shown, while the audio and the HTML document are still
presented. At this point, the audio will thank the listeners and conclude the
interview.

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1.3 Overview of Multimedia Software
Tools
— software tools available for carrying out tasks in
multimedia are:
1. Music Sequencing and Notation
2. Digital Audio
3. Graphics and Image Editing
4.Video Editing
5. Animation
6. Multimedia Authoring

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1.Music Sequencing and Notation
— Cakewalk: now called Pro Audio.
-The term sequencer comes from older devices that stored
sequences of notes ("events", in MIDI [Musical
Instrument Digital Interface]).
-It is also possible to insert WAV files and Windows MCl
commands (for animation and video) into music tracks.

— Cubase: another sequencing/editing program, with capabilities

similar to those of Cakewalk. It includes some digital audio
editing tools.

— Macromedia Soundedit: mature program for creating

audio for multimedia projects and the web that integrates
well with other Macromedia products such as Flash and
Director.
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2.Digital Audio
— tools deal with accessing and editing the actual sampled
sounds that make up audio:
- Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit) is a powerful,
popular digital audio toolkit that emulate a professional
audio studio, including multitrack productions and sound file
editing, along with digital signal processing effects.

- Sound Forge Like Audition, Sound Forge is a sophisticated

PC-based program for editing WAV files.

- Pro Tools: a high-end integrated audio production and

editing environment . It offers MIDI creation and
manipulation; powerful audio mixing, recording, and editing
software.
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3. Graphics and Image Editing
— Adobe Illustrator: a powerful publishing tool from Adobe for
creating and editing vector graphics, which can easily be
exported to use on the web.
— 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. It includes a bitmap editor, a
vector graphics editor, and a JavaScript generator for
buttons and rollovers.
— Macromedia Freehand: a text and web graphics editing tool
that supports many bitmap formats such as GIF, PNG, and JPEG.
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 4. Video Editing
— Adobe Premiere: an intuitive, simple video editing tool for
nonlinear editing, i.e., putting video clips into any order:

— 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: is a video editing tool offered by Apple for

the Macintosh platform. It allows the capture of video and
audio from numerous sources, such as DV.
— It provides a complete environment, from capturing the
video to editing and color correction and finally output to
a video file or broadcast from the computer.

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 4. Video Editing
— For More Exploration:

— CyberLink PowerDirector: PowerDirector produced

by CyberLink Corp.
◦ is by far the most popular nonlinear video editing software.
◦ It provides a rich selection of audio and video features and special
effects
◦ easy to use.
◦ It supports all modern video formats (AVCHD 2.0, 4K Ultra HD, and
3D video)
◦ It supports 64-bit video processing
◦ it is not as “programmable” as Premiere.

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 5. Animation
— Multimedia APIs:

- Java3D: API used by Java to construct and render 3D graphics, similar

to the way in which the Java Media Framework is used for handling
media files.

— DirectX : a Windows API that supports video, images, audio, and 3D

animation, is the most common API used to develop modem
multimedia Windows applications, such as computer games.

— OpenGL: the highly portable, most popular 3-D API.

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 5. Animation
— Animation Software (Rendering 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.
— RenderMan: rendering package created by Pixar.

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 5. Animation
— GIF Animation Packages :

- simpler approach to animation, allows very quick

development of effective small animations for the web.

- GIFs can contain several images, and looping through them

creates a simple animation.

- Linux also provides some simple animation tools, such as

animate.

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 6. Multimedia Authoring
— Tools that provide the capability for creating a complete
multimedia presentation, including interactive user control, are
called authoring programs.

- 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. It is very powerful and includes a
built in scripting language, Lingo, that allows creation of
complex interactive movies.

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 6. Multimedia Authoring
For More Exploration:

- Authorware: a mature, well-supported authoring product

based on the Iconic/Flow-control metaphor.

- Quest: similar to Authorware in many ways, uses a type of

flowcharting metaphor. However, the flowchart nodes can
encapsulate information in a more abstract way (called
frames) than simply subroutine levels.

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 End of Chapter 1
Introduction and Multimedia Data Representations

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This Summary is an Online Content from this Book:

Ze-Nian Li and Mark S Drew, Fundamentals of Multimedia, 1/e, Prentice-Hall, 2004

It is edited for
Multimedia Systems Course 6803316-3
by:
T.Mariah Sami Khayat
Teacher Assistant @ Adam University College
For Contacting:
[email protected]
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