Multimedia

A Fourth Year Course

For
CS and IT Students
 Multimedia

Chapter 1 Intro.: Multimedia Systems & Components

Chapter 2 Text: Fonts – Hypertext – Arithmetic Coding

Chapter 3 Audio: Digital Audio – Audio Coding – Editing

Chapter 4 Image: Digital Cameras – Image Compression – Editing

Chapter 5,6 Video: Digital Video - Video Coding – Video Editing

Chapter 7 Media Delivery: Multimedia & Networks – QoS

Text in Multimedia 3/20

Why Text?
 Why would designers like text?
 The most inexpensive media to develop.
 Least overhead in storage/transmission.
 But text creation requires skill:
 Good writing and effective use of fonts.
 Text can be combined with other media in a powerful
and meaningful way to present information and
express moods.
Text in Multimedia 4/20

Fonts
 A typeface is a family of graphic characters
including many type sizes and styles
 Times, Courier and Arial are typefaces, each of which
include many sizes & styles
 A font is a collection of characters of a single size &
style, belong to a typeface family
 Typical font styles are boldface, italic, bold italic, and
underlined
 Times is a typeface; Times 12-point italic is a font
 In computer use, however, people say font when
typeface would be more accurate
 Text in Multimedia 5/20

Fonts
There are several characteristics which may distinguish fonts:
Weight: The weight of a particular font is the thickness of the character outlines
relative to their height.
Slope: the font style is usually connected to the angle.
Width: Some typefaces include fonts that vary the width of the characters
(stretch).
Optical size: refers to the variant fonts by the applications those are typically
used for.
Metrics: Font metrics refers to metadata consisting of numeric values relating to
size and space in the font overall. Font-wide metrics include cap height, x-
height, ascender height, descender depth, and the font bounding box.
 Text in Multimedia 6/20

Parts of graphic characters

Serif is decoration at end of letter strokes
Times Romans is serif font; Arial is sans serif

Font sizes are expressed in terms of points,

where one point is .0138 or 1/72 inch, and
size is the distance from top of ascenders to the bottom of descenders
 Text in Multimedia 7/20

Postscript
 PostScript (PS) is a dynamically typed Concatinative programming
language created in 1982. PostScript is best known for its use as a page
description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas.
 PostScript is vector-based: describes characters in terms of mathematical
constructs (e.g., Bezier curves).

Facilitates scaling, drawing characters at various sizes and in various

resolutions.

The rich font system used the PS graphics primitives to draw glyphs as
line art, which could then be rendered at any resolution.
 Text in Multimedia 8/20

TrueType

 TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple

Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used
in PostScript.
 The primary strength of TrueType was originally that it offered font
developers a high degree of control over precisely how their fonts are
displayed.
 The outlines of the characters (or glyphs) in TrueType fonts are made of
straight line segments and quadratic Bezier curves.
 Text in Multimedia 9/20

Anti-aliasing

 Both PostScript and

TrueType fonts allow text to
be drawn on any size without
jaggies. (jagged edges on the
outlines of a character).

 Anti-aliasing exploits color

by blending (dithering)
colors along the edges of
letter.
 Text in Multimedia 10/20

Selecting Fonts

 The selection of fonts should be made based on:

1. Readability: The text should be easy to read.

2. Focus: Important information must stand out.

To ensure readability and focus, you have to keep some

points in your mind.

 Text in Multimedia 11/20

Working With Text

 Avoid decorative (serif) fonts for small sizes
 Be consistent: standardize on a few fonts
 Possible exception: attention-grabbing headlines
 Surround headlines with plenty of white space
 Use different colors and backgrounds
 Use ample leading (space between lines)
 Avoid scrolling text (contiguity principle)
 Keep lines short (recommends 3”)
 Help user transition from line to line
 End lines with end of sentence or phrase
 Convert non-standard fonts to graphics
 Text in Multimedia 12/20

Working With Text (cont.)

There are two ways to accommodate large amount of text:
When possible, use other ways to communicate the message. (For
example, show an animation)
Consider using a small amount of text and allowing the user to obtain
more information as desired, using one of the following techniques :
 Hyper linking
 Pop-up Message
 Scroll box
 Drop down boxes
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=MELKuexR3sQ
 Text in Multimedia 14/20

Using text over the Internet

There are nine considerations for writing hypertext:
1. Chunking
2. Interrelationships
3. Simplicity In Navigation
4. Screen Design
5. Low Cognitive Load
6. Maintain Multiple Perspectives
7. Consistency Of Document Names
8. Master Reference List
9. Early Reviews