Multimedia Systems

Lecture 2
Multimedia production stages

 A multimedia project is a classic software project which is

developed using multimedia technology with the specific aim of
distributing information in an entertaining and compelling
manner.

 Multimedia projects require creativity, artistic as well as

programming skills. While developing the multimedia
application, the professionals have to choose the hardware and
software equipment and components a variety of software tools
are available.
Multimedia production stages

 Following are the basic stages of multimedia project

development.
• Project conceptualization
• Planning and Costing
• Design and Production
• Testing
• Delivery
Multimedia production stages

 Project conceptualization:
 Every project begins with a concept. A multimedia
project concept is actually the definition of the project.
 To define the project, it is required for the development
team and the clients to do the various meetings and
discussions to identify the actual problem.
 It may be the upgradation of the existing one or the
entirely new one. It must satisfy the existing
requirements of the customer.
Multimedia production stages
• Planning and Costing:
 In this stage, the analysis of the idea is done which is to be
translated into a multimedia project. 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 skills 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 of the concept can be developed.
Multimedia production stages
• Design and Production:
 Once the project is taken up for development, the laborious
project development cycle starts. Under this stage, the various sub-
stages are to be carried out.
• Data gathering
• Navigation map structure design
• Media content design
• Interface designing
• Storyboarding
• Integration (multimedia authoring)
Multimedia production stages

• Testing:
 In every project, the Testing stage ensures that 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 planned delivery platforms and meets the needs of the
clients.
Multimedia production stages

• Delivery:
 The final stage of the multimedia application development is to
pack the project and deliver the complete project to the end-user.
This stage has several steps such as:
• Implementation,
• Maintenance,
• Shipping and marketing
Graphics and Images Representation

 Images are commonly used to capture and represent a static visual

snapshot of the world around us. The world, however, is not
static, but continuously changes in time.
 To record this change, we need to capture the time evolution of
changing images (video) and sound (audio).
 Graphical illustrations and animation help to visually convey the
changing information.
 The digital media forms need to be represented and stored so that
they can be viewed, exchanged, edited, and transmitted in a
standard manner.
Graphics and Images Representation

 Images are a media type displayed as visual information. They can be drawings,
paintings or photographs.
 An image on a screen is made up of dots called pixels.
 A pixel is the smallest part of the screen that can be controlled by the computer or other
device.
 The total number of pixels on a screen is called its resolution. (ie New iPad has Retina
display, 2048 x 1536 resolution).
Graphics and Images Representation

 An image can be represented in two different ways. Either a

Bitmap or a Vector.
 Typical file formats for a bitmap can be: JPEG, GIF, PNG and
BMP.
 Vector images can be SVG, WMF and EMF.
Bitmap Image
 Bitmap images treat each dot in an image separately. These dots or
pixels can be different colors with each color being represented as a
binary number.
 Bitmaps produce good quality images where shading and detail are
needed.
 Bitmap images are often compressed to reduce their file size
for storage.
 Some of these compression formats will not alter the image
quality. This is called lossless compression however others
will remove some parts of the image. This is known as lossy
compression.
Bitmap Image
 To calculate the uncompressed storage needed for a bitmap you will
need to calculate the total number of pixels and multiply by the
color or bit depth.
 Color depth refers to the maximum number of colors an image can
contain.
 Color depth is determined by the bit depth of an image (the number of
binary bits that define the shade or color of each pixel in a bitmap).

 For example, a pixel with a bit depth of 1 can have two values: black
and white.
 The greater the bit depth, the more colors an image can contain, and the
more accurate the color representation is.
 For example, an 8-bit GIF image can contain up to 256 colors, but a
24-bit JPEG image can contain approximately 16 million colors.
Bitmap Image
 Example:
If an image is 1200 by 800 pixels, the total number of pixels will
be 960,000.
If the bit depth is 24 then each pixel needs 3 bytes of storage
therefore the total file size will be
960,000 X 3 =2,880,000.
The size of this image in kilobytes will be 2,880,000 divided by
1024 = 2812.5 kB.
Divide this by 1024 to convert to megabytes. The image would
require 2.74MB of storage.
Vector Images
 Vector images or graphics are made up of objects such as straight
lines, curves or shapes.
 Each portion of the image is represented mathematically.
 Each object is defined by its characteristics such as positions,
width of the lines and patterns.
 The total size of the data required to represent a vector image is
usually less than that of an equivalent Bitmap image.
 Vector images can be resized to any required resolution without
loosing clarity.
Digital Representation of Images

 All images are represented digitally as pixels.

 An image is defined by image width, height, and pixel depth.
 The image width gives the number of pixels that span the image
horizontally and the image height gives the number of lines in the
image.
 Each pixel is further represented by a number of bits, which is
commonly called the pixel depth.
 The pixel depth is the same for all pixels of a given image.
Digital Representation of Images
 The number of bits used per pixel in an image depends on the color space
representation (gray or color) and is typically separated into channels.
 The total number of bits per pixel is, thus, the sum of the number of bits
used in each channel.
 For instance, in grayscale images, the gray-level value is encoded on 8 bits
for each pixel.(use a single value per pixel that it is called intensity or
brightness.)
 In color images, each R, G, B channel may be represented by 8 bits each,
or 24 bits for a pixel.
 An additional fourth channel called the alpha channel is used. it is
represented by an additional 8 bits, bringing the total bit depth of each pixel to
32 bits.
 The size of the image can, thus, vary depending on the representations
used.
Digital Representation of Images

 For example, a color image has a width of 640 and height of 480.
 If the R, G, B color channels are represented by 8 bits each, the
size of color image 640 x 480 x 3 x 8 = 7.37 Mbits (921.6
Kbytes).
 If this were a gray image, its size would be:
640 x 480 x 8= 2.45 Mbits (307.2 Kbytes).
Digital Representation of Images
 Sometimes, an additional channel, called the alpha channel (or
channel, or matte), is also used.
 In such cases, gray-level images have two channels (one gray
channel and one alpha channel)
 whereas color images have four channels (one for R, one for G,
one for B, and one for alpha).
 The alpha channel is used to composite the pixels of the
foreground with the background image, producing the final image
on the far right.
Digital Representation of Images
 Images that are captured using digital devices, such as cameras and
scanners, are normally colored.
 However, when these color or continuous tone images are printed,
printing technologies often prefer to print halftone images where the
number of colors used is minimized to lower printing costs.
 The halftone printing process creates ranges of grays or colors by using
variable-sized dots.
 The resolution of halftone images is measured in terms of the frequency
of the halftone dots, typically in dots per inch, instead of pixels.
 The dots control how much ink is deposited at a specific location while
printing on paper.
Digital Representation of Images

 The alpha channel typically has the same bit depth as all the other
channels, for example, 8 bits for the alpha channel, resulting in each pixel
having 32 bits (8 bits for R, G, B and 8 bits for alpha).
 The 8-bit alpha channel value for each pixel associates the degree of
importance of each pixel in a compositing operation.
 A value of 0 indicates that the pixel will not be composited, a high
value of 255 (for 8-bit alpha values) indicates that the pixel will be
entirely composited, while an intermediary value indicates a percentage
used in the composition.
 Intermediary values are normally required for pixels at the boundary of
the content being composited so that it blends into the background
image without aliasing effects.