Chapter One: Introduction to

Multimedia
1.1. Overview
What is Multimedia?
When different people mention the term multimedia, they seem to have quite different
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 student :applications that use multiple modalities, including text,
images, drawings (graphics), animation, video, sound including speech, and interactivity.
• The Convergence: Graphics, visualization, HCI, computer vision, data compression,
graph theory, networking, database systems; all have important contributions to make
in Multimedia.
Multimedia
Multi : many; much; multiple
Media : An intervening substance through which something
is transmitted or carried on; A means of mass
communication such as a newspaper, magazine or TV
•Multimedia:
A combination of two or more categories of information
having different transport signal characteristics; Image,
audio, video and graphics are usually the examples of media;
• “Multimedia concerns the representation of mixed
modes of information –text, image, audio and video
data –as digital signals”
• “Multimedia Communications concerns the
technology required to manipulate, transmit, and
control these audiovisual signals across a
communications channel”
• “A system capable of handling at least one type of
continuous media in digital form as well as static
media.”
Two broad classes of Media Types:
• Static, time-independent discrete media: Text, graphics, images.
Information in these media consist exclusively of a sequence of
individual elements without a time component.
• Dynamic, time-dependent continuous media: Sound, video.
Information is expressed as not only of its individual value, but also
by the time of its occurrence.

Note:
These notions of time-dependent, discrete and continuous media do
not have any connection to the internal representation. They only
relate to the impression of the viewer of listener.
 Multimedia System
• A multimedia system deals with the generation, manipulation,
storage, presentation, and communication of multimedia
information.
– A system that involves with the:
– Generation: -production/authoring tools
– Representation: -compression and formats
– Storage: -file system design
– Transmission: -networking issues
– Search and Retrieval: -database management
– Delivery: -server design, streaming
of Multimedia Information
• 1.2 Multimedia Applications
Information, communication and entertainment
– Learning and Education
– Documentation and presentation
– Video conferencing
– Remote diagnosis
– Video-on-demand
– Supervision and Control
– Interactive TV
– Home shopping
– Game/Entertainment
– Digital video editing and production systems
• 1.3 Multimedia Authoring Tools
• The categories of multimedia authoring tools:
– Music Sequencing and Notation
– Digital Audio processing
– Graphics and Image Editing
– Video Editing
– Animation
– Multimedia Authoring
• 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 MCI commands (for
animation and video) into music tracks (MCI is a ubiquitous component of
the Windows API.)
•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.
• Digital Audio processing
•Digital Audio tools deal with accessing and editing the actual
sampled sounds that make up audio:
–Cool Edit: a very powerful and popular digital audio toolkit;
emulates a professional audio studio -multitrack productions
and sound file editing including digital signal processing effects.
–Sound Forge: a sophisticated PC-based program for editing
audio WAV files.
–Pro Tools: a high-end integrated audio production and editing
environment -MIDI creation and manipulation; powerful audio
mixing, recording, and editing software.
• Graphics and Image Editing
•Adobe Illustrator: a powerful publishing tool from Adobe. Uses
vector graphics; graphics can be exported to 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.
• 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, super-
impositions and virtual clips.
–A large library of built-in transitions, filters and motions for clips
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.
• 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.
•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.