BITC 421: Multimedia Systems

Introduction
to
Multimedia Systems

BY

J.K MUTAI
What is Multimedia?

⚫ Derived from the word “Multi” and “Media”

⚫ Multi
⚫ Many, Multiple,
⚫ Media
⚫ Tools that is used to represent or do a certain
things, delivery medium, a form of mass
communication – newspaper, magazine / tv.
⚫ Distribution tool & information presentation – text,
graphic, voice, images, music and etc.
BITC 421: Multimedia Systems

Multimedia Requirements and

development Process

BY

J.K MUTAI
Agenda

⚫ Multimedia systems requirements

⚫ Multimedia development Process
Characteristics of a Multimedia
System
⚫ A Multimedia system has four basic
characteristics:
⚫ 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.
Desirable Features for a Multimedia
System
⚫ Very High Processing Power — needed
to deal with large data processing and real
time delivery of media.
⚫ Multimedia Capable File System —
needed to deliver real-time media — e.g.
Video/Audio Streaming.
⚫ Special Hardware/Software needed –
e.g. Storage devices (External HDD).
CNTD….
⚫ Data Representations — File Formats
that support multimedia 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.
CNTD…

⚫ 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, I/O streaming etc.
CNTD…
⚫ Storage and Memory — large storage units
and large memory (several Gb or more

⚫ 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.
Components of a Multimedia System. i.e
H/W & S/W
⚫ Capture devices — Video Camera, Video
Recorder, Audio Microphone, Keyboards,
mice, graphics tablets, 3D input devices,
sensors, Digitising Hardware
⚫ Storage Devices — Hard disks, CD-ROMs,
DVD-ROM, etc
⚫ Communication Networks — Local
Networks, Intranets, Internet, Multimedia or
other special high speed networks.
CNTD…

⚫ Computer Systems — Multimedia

Desktop machines, Workstations,
⚫ Display Devices — CD-quality speakers,
HDTV,SVGA, Hi-Res monitors, Colour
printers etc.
Multimedia Authoring Tools

⚫ Use to merge multimedia elements (text,

audio, graphic, animation, video) into a
project.
⚫ Designed to manage individual multimedia
elements and provide user interaction (if
required).
 Authoring Tools
⚫ Example:
⚫ Macromedia Authorware
⚫ Macromedia Director
⚫ Macromedia Flash
⚫ Microsoft Power Point
Multimedia use

⚫ There are a number of fields where

multimedia could be of use. Examples
are:-
⚫ Business
⚫ Education
⚫ Entertainment
⚫ Home
⚫ Engineering
⚫ medicine
 Importance of Multimedia

⚫ Business
⚫ Use and Applications

⚫ Sales / Marketing Presentation

⚫ Trade show production

⚫ Staff Training Application

⚫ Company Kiosk
 Importance of Multimedia

⚫ Education
⚫ Use and Applications

⚫ Courseware / Simulations

⚫ E-Learning / Distance Learning

⚫ Information Searching
 Importance of Multimedia

⚫ Entertainment
⚫ Use and Applications

⚫ Games (Leisure / Educational)

⚫ Movies (Enhance special

effects)
⚫ Video on Demand

⚫ Online
 Importance of Multimedia

⚫ Home
⚫ Use and Applications

⚫ Television

⚫ Satellite TV

⚫ SMS services (chats, voting, reality TV)

 Importance of Multimedia

⚫ Engineering
Software engineers may use multimedia in
Computer Simulations for anything from
entertainment to training such as military or
industrial training. Multimedia for software
interfaces are often done as collaboration
between creative professionals and software
engineers.
Importance of Multimedia

⚫ Medicine
In Medicine, doctors can get trained by
looking at a virtual surgery or they can
simulate how the human body is affected
by diseases spread by viruses and
bacteria and then develop techniques to
prevent it.
Importance of Multimedia

⚫ Industry
In the Industrial sector, multimedia is used
as a way to help present information to
shareholders, superiors and co-workers.
Multimedia is also helpful for providing
employee training, advertising and selling
products all over the world
Multimedia Development Process

• Long-term projects-Takes a long time to produce.

• Typicallly involve four major stages:

1. Planning and costing

2. Designing and Producing
3. Testing
4. Delivering
Planning and Costing

• Plan to fulfill the expectation of the audience.

Steps to start a project:

1. Define the objectives and scope

2. Target audience
3. Set the content
4. Estimating cost
5. Hardware
6. Software
7. Build a multimedia team
1. Define the objectives and scope

What is the purpose of creating the project?

• Try to achieve the objective.

Define the scope or the boundary of the project.

• Consider how much time to develop the project.
• Consider the knowledge and skills needed
• Consider the how to organize the project
2. Target audience

• Target audience – applications users or information recipient.

• To whom the project is created for
• Do some background research about
• the target audience because this will affect
• the complexity of your design.
• Consider the following factors:
• Age
• Knowledge or educational background
• Technological background
• Language
• Gender
• Economical background
• Profession
3. Set the content

• Content or information will determine the size of the

project
• Content production depend on the availability of the
existing resources or the need to create new materials.
• Consideration before determining the content are:
• Obtaining rights to use exiting resources.
• Digitizing pictures, audio, and video.
• Produce materials including text, graphics, audio
effects and animation
• The amount of information available must be based on
the audience expectation.
4. Estimating cost
• Three general elements that can vary in project
estimates: time, money and people. If we decrease
any of these elements, we may generally increase one
or both of the others.
Time Money It will take longer time to
develop multimedia
If there is a large People application if developer
Money
number of developer team (people) and
Time
team, time and money is less.
money (cost) to
People develop multimedia
application could be
reduced.
Money (cost) can be saved if
we decrease the number of Time
developer team and time Money
duration in multimedia People
application development.
5. Hardware Requirement

• Developer side.
• It is also for the end user expectation – the type of
hardware platform.
• Several types of hardware components that need to
be considered:
✓ Memory and storage device
✓ Input devices
✓ Output devices
✓ Communication Device (optional)
Tips-Output device
• The size of the monitor also should be considered
because larger monitor gives the user larger view
and this makes creating graphics easier.
• Projectors suitable in briefing or educational
multimedia products where the information is
displayed to a large number of viewers.
• Note that displaying information with projectors
may not be the same as displaying on monitors
because information such as text must be large
enough and have contrast color so that it is easier
to read.
6. Software requirement

• Expensive software offer advance and powerful

features which requires higher skill. However, there
are software that can help to save time and to
organize a project which are less expensive.

• Several types of software:

• Text Editing and Word Processing Tool
• Painting and Drawing Tools
• 3D Modeling and 2D Animation Tools
• Image Editing Tools
• Sound Editing Tools
7. Build a multimedia team

• Require a specific set of skills.

• Most of the time, multimedia project involves a lot
of people to be produced. Each person has their
own specialized skills required to do specific task.
• The examples of multimedia team members and
their roles:
➢ Project Manager
➢ Multimedia Designer
➢ Audio/Video specialist
➢ Multimedia programmer
Multimedia team
Project Manager
• The leader of a project.
• Responsible for overall development, implementation of the
project and day to day operations.
• Strong in both technical and management aspect of the
project.

Multimedia Designer
• Deals with visual aspects of the project, graphic design,
illustration, animation, interface design and image
processing.
• Maintain the flow of the information, clear and consistent
navigation.
Multimedia team

Audio/Video specialist
• Focus on the audio and video production - shooting,
capturing and editing video, digitizing and audio recording.

Multimedia programmer
• Responsible for integrating all the multimedia elements using
authoring system or programming language to create a
functioning and useful multimedia product.
Testing

• Unavoidable rule in any multimedia projects.

• Test or review the project or Web site to ensure it is
bug free, accurate, operationally and visually on
target, and achieving the objective or target.
• Every feature and function must be exercised,
every button or link must be clicked - will be
repeated again and again with different
hardware and under various conditions
• Two phases of testing
➢ Alpha testing
➢ Beta testing
Alpha testing
• Often performed only by users within the
organization developing the software as a form of
internal acceptance testing.
• The product is evaluated relatively in the early
stage of the development phase.
• The application may be missing part of the
content or functionality.
• The main interest is to review the concept, format,
user interface and the layout.
• The tester may be selected users or friends, most -
often the team member themselves - should be
able to provide positive criticism or feedback.
Beta testing
• The product is evaluated just before the final
release.
• It is a fully functioning product and should be
relative bug free.
• Main interest is to find bugs or content errors.
• The testing group should be represented by the
real users and should not include the people who
have been involved in the project.
• The feedbacks from these testers are very
important where the errors or problems reported
by the beta testers have to include the detail
description of the problem.
Delivering
• Final stage
• Know the medium you want to use.
• Web site: can just upload to the servers and adjust
some settings then it is ready.
• For more complex application where installation
into the user’s computer is needed. Installation
should be smooth, easy and fast.
• Documentation - need to provide a clear step-by-
step procedure for the users to follow.
• Troubleshooting guide - potential problem that
can occur and how to solve it.
• A file name README.TXT is good thing to include in
the CD distribution of your project.
Delivering medium
CD-ROM
• It is also an optical storage and considered the
most common form of packaging for multimedia
products.
• It started out as a read-only technology in which
user could store data once only and access it
many times.
• Recent technology led to a multi-session version
where user can add to the content of a CD and
even fully able to write to the systems.
Continued…
DVD
• It is the latest format for optical storage up to 17GB.
• At the moment, DVD is increasingly popular for
DVD-Video for its high quality audio and video.
 THE END.

THANK YOU!

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