Multimedia Technology

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Making Multimedia

Making Multimedia

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1. Describe the stages of multimedia applications development.
2. List the principles of multimedia design.
3. Determine the essentials in making multimedia.
4. Determine the different multimedia platforms.
5. Outline the hardware and software requirements for multimedia
development.

Stages of Multimedia Application Development

Multimedia applications range from simple linear slide show
presentations to complex multimedia games or large, sophisticated web
sites. Whatever the target end-product, good planning and careful
following of these stages of development are essential to a high-quality,
successful outcome, delivered on time to your customer.
The software development process is as follows:

Planning Meeting
A planning meeting is a crucial part of the multimedia development
process; it creates a shared vision for everyone working on the project.
The meeting usually kicks off a project, bringing together the team. During
the meeting, the project manager communicates the major goals and lays
out the milestones. The meeting may include a discussion of the target
audience and how each division can help support the overarching goal.

Script Writing
Most multimedia projects have a story behind them. After the initial
meeting, the people in charge of the background story write a script,
creative brief or outline. The text hits the main points of the project and
uses language that appeals to the audience in jargon, tone and style.

Story Boarding
A multimedia project usually includes multiple pieces: audio, video,
imagery, text for voiceovers and on-screen titles. Story boarding ties
everything together; a story board panel for a scene includes a sketch of
the visual elements, the voiceover or title text, and any production notes.
It guides the process, keeps everyone in check and gives structure to the
project.

Designing
During the design stage, designers take over the visual aspects of the
project to determine how it looks and feels. Using the notes from the
storyboard, they create graphics, design the navigation and give direction

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 to photographers and videographers regarding the correct shots.
Depending on the project, the design stage might include graphic design,
web design, information design, and photography or image collection.
Design is always done with an eye toward the audience

Editing
Editing is one of the most involved and complex stages of the multimedia
development process. The people responsible for editing the project turn
the various pieces into a cohesive product, taking into consideration the
time constraints, story line and creative specifications. Depending on the
scope of the project, pieces of the project may be edited separately. For
projects with a large amount of video, editing is often the longest stage of
the process; a minute of final video can take hours of editing. The editing
stage usually involves internal review iterations and may also include
rounds of client review and editing.

Production
The production stage is when all the parts of a multimedia project come
together. The production staff gathers all of the edited assets in one place
and puts them together in a logical sequence, using the story board as a
guide. The rough draft is then put through rounds of review and final
edits, both internally and with the client. To ensure that a project has the
desired impact on the target audience, a company may engage in user
testing as part of production. During this stage, test members of the
audience use the multimedia piece while team members observe.
Depending on the goals of the project, the staff might observe users'
reactions or have them answer questions to see if the project hits the
right marks. After user testing, there are usually further adjustments to
the project. Once the team and clients are satisfied, the project goes out
for distribution.

Principles of Multimedia Design

Twelve principles that shape the design and organization of multimedia
presentations:
1. Coherence Principle – People learn better when extraneous words,
pictures and sounds are excluded rather than included.
2. Signaling Principle – People learn better when cues that highlight the
organization of the essential material are added.
3. Redundancy Principle – People learn better from graphics and
narration than from graphics, narration and on-screen text.
4. Spatial Contiguity Principle – People learn better when
corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far
from each other on the page or screen.
5. Temporal Contiguity Principle – People learn better when
corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather
than successively.
6. Segmenting Principle – People learn better from a multimedia lesson
is presented in user-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit.
7. Pre-training Principle – People learn better from a multimedia lesson
when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts.
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8. Modality Principle – People learn better from graphics and narrations

than from animation and on-screen text.
9. Multimedia Principle – People learn better from words and pictures
than from words alone.
10. Personalization Principle – People learn better from multimedia
lessons when words are in conversational style rather than formal style.
11. Voice Principle – People learn better when the narration in
multimedia lessons is spoken in a friendly human voice rather than a
machine voice.
12. Image Principle – People do not necessarily learn better from a
multimedia lesson when the speaker’s image is added to the screen.

What You Need?

You need hardware, software, and good ideas to make multimedia. To
make good multimedia, you need a talent and skill. You also need to stay
organized, because as the construction work gets underway, all the little
bits and pieces of multimedia content will get lost under growing piles of
paper, cassettes, video tapes, disks, phone messages, permissions and
releases, cookies, photocopies, and yesterday’s mail.
You will need time and money (for consumable resources such as disks
and other memory, and possibly for paying for special services and time,
yours included) and you will need to budget these precious commodities.
You may also need the help of other people. Multimedia is often a team
effort: graphic artists perform artwork, video shoots by video producers,
sound editing by audio producers, and programming by programmers.

Multimedia Hardware
To begin your quest with a
multimedia project you must
have a decent computer. A
decent computer means you
should have adequate
hardware. If you are asked to
develop a multimedia project,
you would ask for a fast
computer with lot of speed and
storage. There are many more
things that you need to know Figure 1 Components of a computer system
like which component makes a
computer fast, what is the device for storage, etc.
The components are thus divided into five categories:
1. System Devices
 Microprocessor
 Motherboard

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 2. Memory and Storage Devices
 RAM (Random Access Memory)
 Hard disk
 Compact Disc
3. Input Devices
 Mouse
 Keyboard
 Trackball
 Microphone
 Voice Recognition Systems
 Digital Camera
 Touchscreens
 Magnetic Card Encoders and Readers
 Graphics Tablets
 Scanners
 Optical Character Recognition Devices
 Infrared Remotes
4. Output Devices
 Audio devices
 Monitors
 Video devices
 Projectors
5. Communication Devices
 Modems
 Networks
 Remote application sharing

Additional Hardware
You are now aware of the basic devices on your computer. However, there
are a few more devices that you should know.
 Video-capture card
 Sound card
 Video adapter

Configuration of a Multimedia Computer

A good multimedia system should have a Pentium 1.6 Ghz (or the one
with similar capabilities) onwards processor, at least 256 MB of RAM, 40
GB onwards hard disk drive, 1.44 MB Floppy drive, 17 inch onwards SVGA
monitor, 32MB AGP card, 52 X CD-ROM drive, a 32 bit sound card, high
wattage sub-woofer speakers, 104 PS/2 keyboard, PS/2 mouse and 56K
fax data voice modem. If you wish you can add a CD-recorder, scanner,
printer, digital camcorder and a video-capture card. Remember, there is
no set rule to define the exact hardware combination of a good
multimedia computer. The combination is dependent on the nature and
contents of the multimedia project you are dealing with. Fortunately,
there exist hardware tools for performing almost any action; the need is
to use only that hardware, which suits your purpose.

Multimedia Design Software

The software in your multimedia toolkit and your ability to use it will
determine the quality of your multimedia work.
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The basic tool set for building a multimedia project can be divided into
five categories:
1. Painting and Drawing tools
2. 3-D Modeling and Animation Tools
3. Image Editing tools
4. Sound Editing tools
5. Animation, Video, and Digital Movie tools

Painting and Drawing Tools

Painting and drawing tools are perhaps the most important items in your
toolkit because, of all the multimedia elements, the graphic impact of your
project will likely have the greatest influence on the end user. It is the
graphics that would create the first impression of your multimedia
project.
These tools are, therefore, very useful in giving you the desired capability
in terms of drawing and painting. Painting and drawing 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. These tools have the capability to color with paint and clip arts. One
can use brushes of different sizes and shapes according to the need. One
can use layers to give different treatment to each element. Most of these
tools come with built-in plug-ins for performing different tasks. Once you
are done with the drawing it can be imported or exported in many image
formats like .gif, .tif, .jpg, .bmp, etc.

Figure 2 Examples of painting and drawing tools

The following are examples painting and drawing tools:

 The Gimp
 Adobe Photoshop
 Inkscape Illustrator
 ArtRage Studio Pro
 Krita
 Autodesk SketchBook
 MyPaint
 Clip Studio Paint
 PictBear
 Corel Painter
 RealWorld Paint
 Escape Motions
 Tux Paint
 Made with Mischief
 Psyko Paint
 PhotoDonut
 Queeky Paint
 Pixarra TwistedBrush
 Sketch-Paint
 ZBrush

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3-D Drawing Tools
Realism means that you depict things in the
way they actually are. With the help of 3-D
modeling and animation tools the objects that
appear in perception in your project can look
realistic. It has become conventional to use 3-D
modeling in multimedia design. These tools
offer features like multiple windows to view
your design in each dimension. They have
menus from where you can drop shapes into
your design and combine them to create
complex designs.
The following are examples of 3-D drawing
tools:
Figure 3 Examples of 3D drawing
tools
 Blender
 Inventor
 SketchUp
 Tinkercard
 SolidWorks
 ZBrush
 AutoCAD
 Cinema 4D
 Maya
 Fusion 360
 3DS Max

Image Editing Tools

While Painting and Drawing tools let you create a drawing from scratch,
Image editing tools are used to edit existing bitmap images and pictures.
However, these tools are similar to painting and drawing tools as they can
also create images from scratch. They are capable of converting any image
data type file format. Image editing tools are primarily used for
reinventing and recreating the image, which make them an important tool
for designing a multimedia project.

Figure 4 Examples of image editing tools

The following are examples of image editing tools:

 ACDSee17
 GIMP
 ACDSee Pro 7
 Paint.NET
 Adobe Photoshop CS6
 LightZone
 Adobe Photoshop Elements 12
 Hugin
 Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5
 Picasa
 Apple Aperture 3

Sound Editing Tools

Sound editing tools let you hear sound as well as visualize it. You can
cut/copy and paste sound and edit it with great accuracy. You can
integrate sound into your multimedia project very easily by using sound
editing tools.
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The following are examples of sound editing tools:

 WavePad
 WaveLab
 Adobe Audition
 Audacity
 Acoustica Digital Audio Editor
 Ardour
 AVS Audio Editor
 Traverso
 Sound Forge
 QTractor
 Diamond Cut
 Linux Multimedia Studio

Figure 5 Examples of sound editing tools

Animation, Video and Digital Movies Editing Tools

Animations are graphic scenes played back sequentially and rapidly.
These tools adopt an object-oriented approach to animation. These tools
enable you to edit and assemble video clips captured from camera,
animations and other sources. The completed clip with added transition
and visual effects could be played back.
The following are examples of animation/video editing tools:
 Ajax Animator
 Adobe Premiere
 Blender
 Corel Video Studio
 Bryce
 MotionStudio 3D
 DAZ Studio
 Adobe Flash
 Clara.io
 Nero Video 2016

Figure 6 Examples of animation, video and digital movies editing tools

Multimedia Authoring Tools

Multimedia authoring tools provide the important framework you need
for organizing and editing the elements of your multimedia project,
including graphics, sounds, animations, and video clips. Authoring tools
are used for designing interactivity and the user interface, for presenting
your project on screen, and for assembling multimedia elements into a
single, cohesive project.
Authoring software provides an integrated environment for binding
together the content and functions of your project. Authoring systems
typically include the ability to:
 create, edit and import specific types of data
 assemble raw data into a playback sequence
 provide a structured method or language for responding to user
input.
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 With multimedia authoring software, you can make:
 Video production
 Animations
 Demo disks and interactive guided tours
 Presentations
 Interactive kiosk applications
 Interactive training
 Simulations, prototypes, and technical visualizations

Basic features of authoring tools include:

 Editing and organizing.
 Programming.
 Interactivity.
 Performance tuning and playback
 Delivery, cross-platform, and internet playability

Types of Authoring Tools

Different types of authoring tools:
1. Card- or Page-based tools
2. Icon-based, even-driven tools
3. Time-based and presentation tools
4. Object-based tools
5. Web Page authoring tools

Card- or Page-based Tools

 Using a card metaphor.
 Cards are developed that have different elements associated with
them and are put in stacks.

Figure 7 Example of card- or page-based tools

 You can link the cards by allowing the user to click on buttons or
other elements and jump to a different card in the stack.
 Examples: Hypercard, ToolBook, HyperNext Studio, Hyper Studio,
PhytonCard, Revolution

Icon-based, Event-Driven Tools

 With icon-based programs, you use symbols in a flowchart scheme.
 Each icon represents a particular event.
 For example, the Wait icon stops the process until the user clicks
the mouse button or presses a key or a specific amount of time
passes.
 An advantage of icon-based programs is that you can easily see
how a title is structured, that is, the flow of a program and
especially the branching.
 Examples: Macromedia Authorware, IconAuthor
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Figure 8 Example of icon-based event-driven tools

Time-based and Presentation Tools

 Organize the elements along a time-line.
 These tools play back the sequentially organized graphic frames at
user-set speed and time
 These programs also allow for branching to different parts of the
movie, and any amount of user control and interactivity may be
built in.
 Good for creating animations.
 Examples: Macromedia Director, Flash

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 Figure 9 Example of time-based and presentation tools

Object-based Tools
 Organize the elements in an hierarchical order as related “objects”.
These tools make these objects perform according to properties
assigned to them.
 Every object is modified.
 Examples: mTropolis, AppleMedia Tool, MediaForge

Web Page Authoring Tools

 Allows users of all skill levels to create Web pages.
 Some applications software programs include Web page authoring
programs.
 Adobe Dreamweaver allow to create web pages without learning
the underlying HTML.
 Examples: Adobe Dreamweaver, Front page

Multimedia Development Team

To produce good multimedia, you will need a similar diverge range of
skills – detailed knowledge of computers, text, graphics, arts, sound, and
video. These skills may be available in a single individual or, more likely,
in a composite team of individuals. Complex multimedia projects are,
indeed, often assembled by team of artists and computer craftspeople,
where tasks can be delegated to those most skilled and competent in a
particular discipline or craft.

Team Approach
The team approach consists of two groups of people:
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1. Key personnel. Primary personnel involved in the lifespan of the

project.
2. Support personnel. Provide limited or specialized functions
contributing to the completion of the project and includes the
editor, audio/video editor, talent photographer, and user interface
designer

The Multimedia Team

1. Production Manager. The role of the production manager in a
multimedia production is to define, coordinate and facilitate the
production of the multimedia project.

2. Content Specialist. Responsible for performing all necessary

research concerning the content of the proposed application.
Program content can be described as: the specific information,
data, graphics; facts to be presented through the multimedia
production.

3. Script Writer. In multimedia production, the medium has the

capability of presenting events in a non-linear fashion by
branching in different directions and establishing linkages
between different sections or components of the program. The
scriptwriter of a multimedia production needs to visualize this
almost three-dimensional environment and integration of virtual
reality into the product.

4. Text Editor. The content of a multimedia production, like a book

or a film, needs to flow in a logical fashion and the text must be
structurally and grammatically correct. Text and narration will be
integrated as part of the application and the development of
documentation for the application must be considered. All of the
text related elements need to be revised by the text editor.

5. Multimedia Architect (or Program Authoring Specialist). The

multimedia architect is the team member responsible for
integrating all the multimedia elements (graphics, text, audio,
music, video, photos and animation) by using an authoring
program.

6. Computer Graphic Artist. The computer graphic artist is

responsible for the graphic elements of the program - such as
backgrounds, buttons, photo collages - and the manipulation and
editing of pictures, 3-D objects, logos, animation, and etc.

7. Audio Video Specialist. The audio specialist is responsible for

recording and editing: narration; selecting, recording or editing
sound effects; recording and editing music. The video specialist is
responsible for video capturing, editing and digitizing.

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 8. Computer Programmer. The task of the computer programmer in
a multimedia development team is the programming of code lines
or scripts in the authoring language.

Activities and Exercises

Answer the following questions:
1.) Search for the latest technologies/device for each category. Provide a
picture; write the device name, function of the device, and developer.
2.) What is Multimedia PC (MPC)? List the Evolution of MPC.
3.) Differentiate between the multimedia Macintosh Platform and PC
platform.
4.) Search for best hardware configuration for Multimedia Designer’s
System.
5.) What are the advantages of using licensed multimedia software than
using free multimedia software and vice versa?
6.) Explain each feature of the authoring tools.

Glossary
Hardware - Computer hardware is the physical parts or components of a
computer, such as the monitor, keyboard, computer data storage, hard
disk drive (HDD), graphic cards, sound cards, memory (RAM),
motherboard, and so on, all of which are tangible physical objects.
Microprocessor - Is basically the heart of the computer. It is a computer
processor on a small microchip.
Motherboard - Is a device in the computer that contains the computer's
basic circuitry and other components. Motherboard contains computer
components like microprocessor, memory, basic input/output system
(BIOS), expansion slots and interconnecting circuitry. You can add
additional components to a motherboard through its expansion slot.
RAM (random access memory) - also called primary memory, locates the
operating system, application programs, and data in current use so that
the computer's processor reaches them quickly.
Hard Disk - A stores and provides access to large amounts of data on an
electro magnetically charged surface.
Compact Disc - A (CD) is a small medium that can store data pertaining to
audio, video, text, and other information in digital form
Software - is a collection of instructions that enable the user to interact
with a computer, its hardware, or perform tasks. Without software,
computers would be useless.
Multimedia Authoring - is the use of several types of communication
channels, such as texts, graphics, computers and videos, to convey
information to an audience.

References
Tay Vaughan, 2011. Multimedia: Making It Work, 8th Ed.: The McGraw-Hill
Companies
Richard E. Mayer, 2001. Multimedia Learning, UK: Cambridge University
Press
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