UNIT - I

Definition
Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation and video delivered to
us by computer or other electronic means.

Why Multimedia ?
Benefits of Multimedia
Some authors claim that humans get their information in the following way:
• more than 80 % by sight - of which 20 % is remembered
• 11 % by hearing - of which 30 % is remembered
• 3.5 % by smell
• 1.5 % by touch and taste.
... where 50 % of what is both seen and heard is remembered
... further 80 % of what is seen, heard and done, is remembered
That is, multiple, media, and interactive should be a good thing

Classification of Multimedia.

Multimedia is the media that uses multiple forms of information content and information
processing (e.g. text, audio, graphics, animation, video, interactivity) to inform or entertain
the user. Multimedia also refers to the use of electronic media to store and experience
multimedia content. Multimedia is similar to traditional mixed media in fine art, but with a
broader scope. The term “rich media” is synonymous for interactive multimedia.

Multimedia elements
• Text
• Graphics
• Audio
• Video
• Animation
TEXT
 A broad term for something that contains words to express something.
 Text is the most basic element of multimedia.
 A good choice of words could help convey the intended message to the users
(keywords).
 Used in contents, menus, navigational buttons

AUDIO
 Produced by vibration, as perceived by the sense of hearing.
 In multimedia, audio could come in the form of speech, sound effects and also music
score.

GRAPHICS
 Any two-dimensional figure or illustration
 Could be produced manually (by drawing, painting, carving, etc.) or by computer
graphics technology.
 Used in multimedia to show more clearly what a particular information is all about
(diagrams, picture).

ANIMATION
 The illusion of motion created by the consecutive display of images of static elements.
 In multimedia, animation is used to further enhance / enriched the experience of the
user to further understand the information conveyed to them.

VIDEO
 Is the technology of capturing, recording, processing, transmitting, and reconstructing
moving pictures.
 Video is more towards photo realistic image sequence or live recording as in
comparison to animation.

TYPES OF MULTIMEDIA
LINEAR
 It is not interactive.
 The user has no control over the content that is being showed to them.
 Ex Watching Cinema, TV

NON-LINEAR
 It is interactive Users have control over the content that is being showed to them.
 Users are given navigational control.
 Ex Games

A) INTERACTIVE MEDIA
When the user is given the option of controlling the elements

B) HYPERMEDIA
A combination of hypertext, graphics, audio, video, (linked elements) and interactivity
culminating in a complete, non-linear computer-based experience.

Advantages of Multimedia Technology

 Provides an alternative medium of instruction over traditional teaching methods
 Increases learning effectiveness through providing a different perspective on learning
and possibly on the topics being taught
 Is more appealing over traditional, lecture-based learning methods
 Offers significant potential in improving personal communications, education and
training efforts through a more interactive experience
 Is easy to use
 Provides high-quality video images & audio which leads to more in depth learning
 In the case of education, frees the teacher from routine tasks

Disadvantages of Multimedia Technology

 Expensive. These kinds of technology will not always be accessible to those who are
in the lower brackets of income, therefore not making everyone a direct benefactor of
Multimedia Technology.
 Not always easy to configure
 Requires special hardware. Again, relative to multimedia technology being more
expensive than its less technological counterparts, special hardware is needed to
utilize this technology. Audio requires a sound system, while visual media requires a
visual medium such as a TV or a projector. All this is not always equally accessible to
people from all walks of life.
 Not always compatible. Multimedia technology has its limits like any other medium
that may be used in education or any other endeavor. Sometimes, multimedia
technology cannot deliver a message which is better when delivered firsthand by, let's
say, a person knowledgeable on the subject.

Application of Multimedia
Multimedia finds its application in various areas including, but not limited to, advertisements,
art, education, entertainment, engineering, medicine, mathematics, business, scientific
research and spatial, temporal applications.
A few application areas of multimedia are listed below:

Creative Industries
Creative industries use multimedia for a variety of purposes ranging from fine arts, to
entertainment, to commercial art, to journalism, to media and software services provided for
any of the industries listed below.

Commercial
Much of the electronic old and new media utilized by commercial artists is multimedia.
Industrial, business to business, and interoffice communications are often developed by
creative services firms for advanced multimedia presentations beyond simple slide shows to
sell ideas or liven-up training. Commercial multimedia developers may be hired to design for
governmental services and nonprofit services applications as well.

Entertainment and Fine Arts

In addition, multimedia is heavily used in the entertainment industry, especially to develop
special effects in movies and animations. Multimedia games are a popular pastime and are
software programs available in CD-ROMs Some video games also use multimedia features.
Multimedia applications that allow users to actively participate instead of just sitting by as
passive recipients of information are called Interactive Multimedia.

Education
In Education, multimedia is used to produce computer-based training courses (popularly
called CBTs) and reference books like encyclopedia and almanacs. A CBT lets the user go
through a series of presentations, text about a particular topic, and associated illustrations in
various information formats. Edutainment is an informal term used to describe combining
education with entertainment, especially multimedia entertainment.

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.

Industry
In the Industrial sector, multimedia is used as a way to help present information to
shareholders, superiors and coworkers. Multimedia is also helpful for providing employee
training, advertising and selling products all over the world via virtually unlimited web-based
technologies.

Mathematical & Scientific Research

In Mathematical and Scientific Research, multimedia is mainly used for modeling and
simulation. For example, a scientist can look at a molecular model of a particular substance
and manipulate it to arrive at a new substance.

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.
Multimedia in Public Places
In hotels, railway stations, shopping malls, museums, and grocery stores, multimedia will
become available at stand-alone terminals or kiosks to provide information and help. Such
installation reduce demand on traditional information

Stages of Multimedia Development

A Multimedia application is developed in stages as all other software are being developed. In
multimedia application development a few stages have to complete before other stages being,
and some stages may be skipped or combined with other stages. Following are the four basic
stages of multimedia project development :

1. Planning and Costing : This stage of multimedia application is the first stage which begins
with an idea or need. This idea can be further refined by outlining its messages and
objectives. Before starting to develop the multimedia project, it is necessary to plan what
writing skills, graphic art, music, video and other multimedia expertise will be required.

It is also necessary to estimate the time needed to prepare all elements of multimedia and
prepare a budget accordingly. After preparing a budget, a prototype or proof of concept can
be developed.

2. Designing and Producing : The next stage is to execute each of the planned tasks and
create a finished product.

3. Testing : Testing a project ensure the product to be free from bugs. Apart from bug
elimination another aspect of testing is to ensure that the multimedia application meets the
objectives of the project. It is also necessary to test whether the multimedia project works
properly on the intended deliver platforms and they meet the needs of the clients.

4. Delivering : The final stage of the multimedia application development is to pack the
project and deliver the completed project to the end user. This stage has several steps such as
implementation, maintenance, shipping and marketing the product.

Multimedia Hardware
CDROM

History of the CD-ROM

The CD-ROM format was first developed by Denon in 1982. Denon expanded on the CDDA
(compact disc digital audio) format to create the CD-ROM format, allowing it to store any
data and not just audio.

In 1984, Denon and Sony introduced the CD-ROM format to the public at a Japanese
computer show. The first CD-ROM disc introduced to the public had a storage capacity of
553 MB. Today, a standard CD-ROM disc can store up to 700 MB of data, or 80 minutes
worth of audio. Non-standard CD-ROM discs also exist which can store up to 900 MB of
data, or 99 minutes of audio.

Compact Disc-Read-Only Memory, a type of optical disk capable of storing large amounts of
data -- up to 1GB, although the most common size is 650MB (megabytes). A single CD-
ROM has the storage capacity of 700 floppy disks, enough memory to store about 300,000
text pages.

CD-ROMs are stamped by the vendor, and once stamped, they cannot be erased and filled
with new data. To read a CD, you need a CD-ROM player. All CD-ROMs conform to a
standard size and format, so you can load any type of CD-ROM into any CD-ROM player. In
addition, CD-ROM players are capable of playing audio CDs, which share the same
technology.

CD-ROMs are particularly well-suited to information that requires large storage capacity.
This includes large software applications that support color, graphics, sound, and especially
video.

Types
PhotoCD is a standard developed by Kodak for storing photographic images as digital data on
a CD-ROM. With appropriate software, you can view the images on a computer, manipulate
them, or send them to a printer. Information can be added to a PhotoCD at a later date; this is
known as multi-session capability.

CD recordable (CD-R) drives allow writing onto a special "gold" CD which can then be read
by any CD-ROM drive. Data can only be written once, although using multi-session new data
can be appended to a disc.

CD-RW (rewritable) drives can be erased and rewritten with new data. They use special discs
which can be read by most recent CD-ROM drives (but not older ones or most audio CD
players).

DVD-ROM expands the storage of a CD to as much as 17 gigabytes. They are commonly

used as a medium for distributing full length motion pictures encoded using the MPEG-2
format. The MPEG video decoding is performed using specialized decoder software and/or
hardware. DVD-RAM is a writable version of DVD.

Working of CDROM
The recessed area on a CD or DVD where data is stored. CDs and DVDs store data in lands
and pits. The lands represent 1 and the pits represent 0 in binary computing. The bits are read
by the disc drive that uses a laser beam to distinguish between the lands and pits based on the
amount of scattering or deflection that occurs when the beam of light hits the surface of the
disc.

How CDROM works

So what's going on in your CD player when the disc spins around?

Artwork showing how a CD player uses a laser beam to read bumps from a compact disc and
turn them back into audible sounds.

Inside your CD player, there is a miniature laser beam (called a semiconductor diode laser)
and a small photoelectric cell (an electronic light detector). When you press play, an electric
motor (not shown in this diagram) makes the disc rotate at high speed (up to 500rpm). The
laser beam switches on and scans along a track, with the photocell, from the center of the CD
to the outside (in the opposite way to an LP record).

The laser (red) flashes up onto the shiny (under) side of the CD, bouncing off the pattern of
pits (bumps) and lands (flat areas) on the disc. The lands reflect the laser light straight back,
while the pits scatter the light.

Every time the light reflects back, the photocell (blue) detects it, realizes it's seen a land, and
sends a burst of electric current to an electronic circuit (green) that generates the number one.
When the light fails to reflect back, the photocell realizes there is no land there and doesn't
register anything, so the electronic circuit generates the number zero.

Thus the scanning laser and electronic circuit gradually recreates the pattern of zeros and
ones (binary digits) that were originally stored on the disc in the factory.

A loudspeaker transforms the electric currents into sounds you can hear (by changing their
electrical energy into sound energy).

DVD

DVD is an optical disc technology with a 4.7 gigabyte storage capacity on a single-sided,
one-layered disk, which is enough for a 133-minute movie. DVDs can be single- or double-
sided, and can have two layers on each side; a double-sided, two-layered DVD will hold up to
17 gigabytes of video, audio, or other information. This compares to 650 megabytes (.65
gigabyte) of storage for a CD-ROM disk.

DVD uses the MPEG-2 file and compression standard. MPEG-2 images have four times the
resolution of MPEG-1 images and can be delivered at 60 interlaced fields per second where
two fields constitute one image frame. (MPEG-1 can deliver 30 noninterlaced frames per
second.) Audio quality on DVD is comparable to that of current audio compact discs.

Formats:
 DVD-Video is the format designed for full-length movies that work with your
television set.
 DVD-ROM is the type of drive and disc for use on computers. The DVD drive will
usually also play regular CD-ROM discs and DVD-Video disks.
 DVD-RAM is the writeable version.
 DVD-Audio is a CD-replacement format.
 There are a number of recordable DVD formats, including DVD-R for General, DVD-
R for Authoring, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD+R.
 DVD was originally said to stand for digital video disc, and later for digital versatile
disc. The current official stance of the DVD Forum is that the format should just be
referred to as DVD.
Software for Multimedia

Basic tool set for building multimedia project can be divided into FIVE (5) 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

Text
A computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting,
and possibly printing) of any sort of print able material.

Other word processing applications include:

 MicrosoftOfficeWord
 WordPerfect
 OpenOffice.orgWriter
 AbiWord
 Kword
 LyX

Graphic Package
A program that allows you to create graphic figures and other things.

 Graphic Packages Applications include:

 Photoshop
 Illustrator
 PaintShopPro
 MSpaint

Audio Software
A program used to edit and modify audio clips.

Audio Software Packages examples include:

 Audacity
 WavePadSound Editor
  GoldWave
 Power Sound Editor
 Wavosaur

Video Software packages examples include:

 Adobe Systems
 Premiere Elements(Mac OS X, Windows)
 iMovie(Mac OS X)
 Sony Vegas Movie Studio(Windows)
 Windows Movie Maker(Windows)
 Clesh(Java on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux)

Animation softwares include:

2D Animation Software:

 ToonBoom Studio 4
 Animationish
 Flip Boom
 Flash
 After Effects
 CreaToon
 ToonBoom Digital Pro

3D animation software:

 3D Studio Max
 Maya
 Lightwave
 Blender
 Anim8tor
 Swift 3D