Multimedia Database

Multimedia database is the collection of interrelated multimedia data that includes text,
graphics (sketches, drawings), images, animations, video, audio etc and have vast amounts of
multisource multimedia data.
 Requirements of a MDBMS

Multimedia objects are different from traditional text or numerical documents in the way that
multimedia objects usually require a large amount of memory and disk storage.

Also the operations applied to multimedia objects are different (e.g., displaying a picture or
playing a video clip, which is different from displaying a text paragraph).

A multimedia database management system should be

able to provide the following basic functions:
• Handles image, voice, and other multimedia data types
• Handles a large number of multimedia objects
• Provides a high-performance and cost-effective storage management
scheme
• Supports database functions, such as insert, delete, search and update
Multimedia Database
• The Multimedia objects are binary large objects (BLOBs) mostly.
• It is common that a smallm video clip occupies more than 100
MB of disk storage. On a video server, it is possible that
hundreds of video clips are stored.
• Due to the huge amount of storage required, a MDBMS needs a
sophisticated storage management mechanism, which should
also be cost-effective.
• The storage management scheme needs to support fundamental
database operations as well.
 Contents of the Multimedia Database

The multimedia database stored the multimedia data and information related to it. This is
given in detail as follows −

Media data :
• This is the multimedia data that is stored in the database such as images, videos, audios, animation etc.

Media format data

• The Media format data contains the formatting information related to the media data such as sampling rate,
frame rate, encoding scheme etc.

Media keyword data

• This contains the keyword data related to the media in the database. For an image the keyword data can be date
and time of the image, description of the image etc.

Media feature data

• Th Media feature data describes the features of the media data. For an image, feature data can be colours of
the image, textures in the image etc.
Challenges of Multimedia Database
• Multimedia databases contains data in a large type of formats such
as .txt(text), .jpg(images), .swf(videos), .mp3(audio) etc. It is difficult
to convert one type of data format to another.
• The multimedia database requires a large size of data storage as
the multimedia data is quite large and needs to be stored
successfully in the database.
• It takes a lot of time to process multimedia data so multimedia
database is slow.
Areas where multimedia database is applied are :

Documents and record management : Industries and businesses that keep detailed records
and variety of documents. Example: Insurance claim record.
Knowledge dissemination : Multimedia database is a very effective tool for knowledge
dissemination in terms of providing several resources. Example: Electronic books.

Education and training : Computer-aided learning materials can be designed using

multimedia sources which are nowadays very popular sources of learning. Example: Digital
libraries.

Marketing, advertising, retailing, entertainment and travel. Example: a virtual tour of

cities.
Real-time control and monitoring : Coupled with active database technology,
multimedia presentation of information can be very effective means for monitoring and
controlling complex tasks Example: Manufacturing operation control.