An Overview

UNIT 1 AN OVERVIEW OF MULTIMEDIA of Multimedia

Structure Page No.

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Objectives
1.2 Multimedia: The Concept
1.3 Hardware for Multimedia Computer
1.3.1 The CPU
1.3.2 The Monitor
1.3.3 Input-Output Devices
1.3.4 CD-ROM
1.3.5 Sound Card
1.3.6 Laser Disc
1.4 Software for Multimedia
1.5 Components of Multimedia
1.5.1 Textual Information
1.5.2 Images
1.5.3 Animation
1.5.4 Digital Audio
1.5.5 Digital Video
1.6 Multimedia: Design, Production and Distribution
1.6.1 Planning/Design of Multimedia
1.6.2 Production of Multimedia
1.6.3 Distribution of Multimedia
1.7 Summary
1.8 Answers/Solutions

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Multimedia has become a popular technology in the ever-changing world of

computers. Since last few years, it seems to be much sought after and talked about not
only in the world of Information Technology, but also in various functional fields like
advertisement, corporate sector, cinema, fashion design and education to name a few.
More and more research work on this new technology of sound animation and text, is
making it better and better with, every passing day. It is one of the most realistic way
of working even for people having no knowledge of computers. It targets people from
almost all ages of life from a toddler to an aged one. In fact, it does not have any
lower or upper limit for its target audience.

1.1 OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to:

• define the basic concept of multimedia;

• appreciate multimedia as a new chapter in information technology;
• identify and describe various components of multimedia like, sound, animation
and graphics;
• discuss various hardware requirement for multimedia; and
• describe how images and sound works in multimedia.

5
Introduction
to Multimedia 1.2 MULTIMEDIA: THE CONCEPT

With the fast growing technology the computational speed and data communication
media are enhancing rapidly. Thus it is not surprising that many multimedia-related
applications are emerging. But what is Multimedia? How is it related to computer and
communication speed? Let us try to answer these questions.

The term multimedia is often associated with the information superhighway, or with
interactive TV that can produce videos (information on demand) or with hypermedia.
In fact, there is a lot of confusion about the definition of multimedia. However,
multimedia can be considered as text, graphics, images, video and audio in computer.
One of the key feature of multimedia is Interactively. It may, convey enriched
interactive information to its users.

Some people visualise multimedia as a combination of computer and TV, whereas,

another definition considers it as a new generation of computer application where
newer hardware and software architectures are needed.

About the above definitions no body is sure, whether multimedia is a computer itself
or a computer software product. In practical sense, it is the combination of both. The
fact remains that it has the best potential to be one of the most powerful form of
communicating ideas, searching for information and experiencing new concept of
common media ever developed.

The basic advantage of multimedia over the conventional form of media which uses
sound, graphics and text for example TV, audio etc. is the interactive feature of
multimedia. For example, a multimedia version of news bulletin would be the
situation where you can request the broadcaster the type of news you are interested in,
when you want to hear it, and with the press of a button or click of the mouse You can
hear the news.

Non-availability of a wide range of multimedia products in the market was one of the
strong reason that it remained a mystery to the general public. However, as the costs
have reduced and product functionality increasing, the multimedia is here to stay. It
may become part of our everyday life just like the PCs. For achieving these goals,
several important technologies are being developed to solve, the problems associated
with multimedia applications and interactive TV services to the home.

Some of these technologies are video servers, multimedia groupware, network

resource management, and hypermedia courseware etc. Some of the new products are
being equipped with real-time video-compression system. A newer broadband
systems based on MPEG (Moving Picture Expert Group) standard, will allow
transmission of several video signals using a single satellite transponder. Flow
communication terminals, also known as digital set-top boxes, are equipped with
computer capabilities offering features such as on-screen interactive program guides,
near movie on-demand capability, and personalised information channels. These home
communication terminals will soon feature robust graphics and full user interactivity
as well as MPEG-based video, all controlled and managed by an open architecture
operating system running on a set-top box.

But if you think a bit seriously, you can see one way or the other, multimedia has
started creeping into our day to day life in various forms, and information has started
becoming available; in the digital format. Please note, when the information is stored
in the digital format we get a lot of flexibility in handling it. It can be edited according
to specific requirement processed and produced in various style and taste.

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Multimedia is interactive, non-linear media in comparison to broadcast television. In An Overview
addition, it may provide a user with several meaningful paths. Thus, it is the of Multimedia
interaction between user and information that makes it a very powerful media for
activities that require the process of communicating information, such as education
and training, reference material, business presentations, manuals, multimedia
databases, geographic information system, advertising, documentaries and so on. The
basic component of multimedia can be used for:
• The text can be used for adding emphasis
• Graphics provides a visual impact. It is generally said that a picture is worth a
thousands words. Thus, graphics can be used for enhancing a presentation.
• Voice tries to enhance a presentation to the extent that a presentation moves on to
the form of persuasion. Many people wants to listen about a particular topic rather
than reading about it.
• The animation can be used effectively for attracting attention. Animation also
makes a presentation light, thus, can be used for presentation of several complex
subjects. It is also a tool which helps in focussing attention, for example, a chart if
drawn through animation may be focussed on to quickly.
• The video part of multimedia can be used as a powerful communicator providing
clear cut instructions.

Use of multimedia in various applications can be justified by the levels of user

friendliness, it provides (to its) user with its interactivity and customisation.
Multimedia is widely used now a days in various applications and business is one of
them. As the market competition is increasing with the introduction of better products
in the market everyday, it has become absolutely necessary to provide better service
and timely information to your client in a brief, precise and more understandable
manner in a short time. Multimedia provides various ways to maintain a competitive
edge for a company specially in training, market speculation and public relation.

The interactive feature of multimedia brings life to the business presentations, where
one call present various aspects of a business such as, marketing plan for a new
product. its impact in the market consumer reaction etc. simultaneously or even you
can combine all these to make the assessment of the consumer feedback on the
product launching. The information which is digitised in makes it more assessible as
compared to the conventional ways of presentation using video, chart etc., where you
can't edit or modify whatever is already video taped. Even if you do it, the cost
involved will be high. Now a days, business organisations have already started
creating powerful databases that can store and distribute digital media as easily as
text.

Another critical application of multimedia is educational sector. It enchaces the

quality of education. It provides new way for teacher to encourage one of the most
rare and important element of learning i.e., curiosity to know and explore. Topics can
be linked with other, related information. Linking is possible with graphics, text and
sound (may be a lecture session from the subject teacher and so on).

With a large screen projector and a multimedia playback system, teachers can use
multimedia as a way to enhance their standard lesson plan and stimulate questions. On
the other hand students will be able to further explore the topics using standard
multimedia platform. The assignments which require students to make their own
interpretation of facts, can be represented in the multimedia topics. There are several
applications possible in the area of education using multimedia. The use of
multimedia in education would go a long way. We will discuss more about its
applications in the next unit.

In a complete sense pictures, graphics, text and sound is the essence of multimedia
and it provides the user friendly environment with most flexible interactive facilities.

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Introduction
to Multimedia 1.3 HARDWARE FOR MULTIMEDIA COMPUTER

As discussed in the previous section a multimedia system consist of several media.

The computer manufacturer have brought the Multimedia Computer technology to the
forefront.

A typical multimedia computer usually include devices like CD-ROM player, sound
card such as Sound Blaster, Master Blaster and some times a microphone and a range
of multimedia software. And probably with either MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital
Interface) a standard interface can be in hardware or software which is used for
playing a digital instrument through PC interface on the card as an add on utility. Let
us look into the requirements of hardware for a multimedia PC. Figure 1 gives the
diagram of such requirements.

Figure 1: Requirements of Multimedia Computer

One cannot record video using such a system. For doing recording one require
additional equipments such as video camera. However, once various components of
multimedia are recorded in the required format, this machine can be used to put
various pieces together to form a multimedia information systems. The software tools
required for such production are discussed in the next unit. Many multimedia
machines however are equipped to record sound. Let us explore more about the
hardware related to multimedia technology

1.3.1 The CPU

The CPU which is recommended for a multimedia computer should be Pentium

processor on a PC or other advanced chips such as PowerPC etc. Apple Macintosh
and Silicon graphics have their own set of powerful processors for multimedia.
However, the CPU of multimedia computer should be at least 486 with math co-
processor attached otherwise the response time of multimedia will be poor. The co-
processor chip greatly reduces the load of the CPU. The powerful co-processor chip
added for supporting graphics is called graphics accelerator. The memory capacity for
such a machine should be 8 MB or above. A 16 MB memory enhances the
performance of a Multimedia machine by 50% over 8 MB machines.

1.3.2 The Monitor

The multimedia PC should be equipped with a monitor having Super Video Graphics
Arrays (SVGA) card. The basic advantage of having SVGA is that it has a better
resolution, thus, the display will be of better quality for the graphics and pictures. A
typical representation which may be used in multimedia can be 720x640 or 1200x680
etc.

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1.3.3 Input-Output Devices An Overview
of Multimedia
Keyboard and Mouse are two important components for any multimedia PC. Since
multimedia computers are accessed using a graphical user interface, therefore, mouse
is an essential input device for it. Here special mention is to be made about two
important input-output devices. These are the sound speakers which produces sound
output and microphones which are used for on-line recording of sound using various
multimedia software. In addition to this, multimedia also supports MIDI interface,
thus, a digital musical instrument can be connected to it on the socket provided for it.
This audio interface normally allows data transmission using DMA channels, that is, it
does not require the intervention of the CPU while transferring digital data to
memory.

Some of the newer machines are coming up with a TV board which is installed inside
the computer and allows connection of VCR/Video Camera/Cable connection. This
TV board can be operated with the help of software which are normally provided with
this board. Thus, you can watch TV programmes on the multimedia machine.
However, please note that this interface does not allow digital recording of video on to
your computer. This interface is meant only for the purpose of display. If you want to
capture these video frames a video capture board is to be added in the multimedia PC.

CD-ROM is a very important storage device which has become an essential

component of a multimedia computer because of its mass storage capacity and
portability. A CD-ROM drive is a common hardware component of a multimedia
computer. We will be providing more details on it in the next subsection. A scanner
can also be used along with a multimedia PC for scanning the pictures and putting
them in digitised form in the computer.

1.3.4 CD-ROM
Multimedia uses digitised audio and video which not only take huge amount of
storage space, but also required high speed storage media, which can send large
amount of data back and forth quickly to keep audio and video playing and recording
smoothly.

Because of this requirement most of multimedia packages uses hard disk drive which
offer high speed, high data throughput and plenty of storage devices like 1 GB or
more. Sometimes, two or more hard disk drive are used as an array to work together
so that they act like a single hard drive.

However using a disk array of two or more disk for multimedia storage, can no doubt
boost the processing speed for the multimedia element, but these are not durable in
nature. Magnetic optical disk media offer large amount of storage in a durable
package. CD-ROM is now widely used for multimedia storage as it has an amazing
amount of flexibility and potential as a multimedia storage and distribution medium.
One CD-ROM can hold up to one and half hour of digital audio or around 700 to 750
MB of computer data for that matter.

To install a CD-ROM drive, there must be a free drive bay and the computer system
also have a sound card installed or a square slot into which either a sound card or CD-
ROM drive can be placed. Before installation all the jumper settings should be
properly done according to the specification. Once the CD-ROM drive is fitted in the
drive bay with proper jumper settings, necessary software can be installed to make the
CD-ROM drive work.

As far as CD-ROM is concerned, the main feature of it is the huge storage space and
very high immunity from damage. It is easy to locate different pieces of data in CD-

9
Introduction ROMS, so that comparatively simple software can be used to guide the laser beam to
to Multimedia find what is required.

1.3.5 Sound Card

Sound output from a computer has been a feature of machines usually used for
sending warning error message or games. If better quality and capabilities for sound
output or inputs are required, then there must be a device which can be added to the
basic machine. This device is known as Sound Card which is added to the basic
machine by inserting it in free slot. The most common reason for adding a sound card
to a PC is to be able to use multimedia fully by recording and playing back the digital
audio. While selecting an add on sound card, quality of sound from the loudspeaker
has to be taken into consideration and the software provided with a sound card should
be adequate enough to suit your requirements for handling sound effects in
multimedia.

While installing a sound card one should keep in mind that it should not conflict with
any other external devices installed in the computer system. Installation of sound card
might require some default settings to be changed to make it compatible with the
computer system.

Once all the settings are done correctly, place the card in a free slot and check all the
connected cables to ensure that all connections are fitted properly. After this task is
over, run the designated installation software to install the sound card i.e. to make
necessary changes in the computer software settings.

The most common element of software is the install program which install drivers to
work with the sound card. In addition to adding drivers, the installation program
modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS so as to activate the sound card
when the computer is switched on.

1.3.6 Laser Disc

Like CD-ROM, a laser disc uses the same recording media. It can record and play
back high quality digital audio files. As compared to the CD-ROM, a laser disc can
play back four channels at a time (two digital and two analog channels) whereas CD-
ROM can play only two channel at a time. But the biggest difference between them is
that laser disc stores video in analog form.

The disadvantages of using a laser disc is like any other video source. The only plus
point being that you can access video from any location on the disk. The older
multimedia systems used to have a laser disc under computer control for playing
video, they used to have a separate TV screen in addition to a computer screen.

CD-ROM stores digital data on only one side of the disc, whereas the laser disc stores
an analog video signal on both sides of the disc

Check Your Progress 1

State True or False:

1) Interactive Video does not fit in the category

of Multimedia. True False

2) MPEG is a standard used for compression of

audio in multimedia. True False

10
 An Overview
3) Graphics accelerators in a 80386 chip is external to the of Multimedia
CPU, while in 80486 DX2 it is internal to the CPU. True False

4) CD-ROM is an optical storage device, which is portable, however,

have the capacity equivalent to a hard disk. True False

5) SVGA monitor is a digital display technology. True False

6) The minimum requirements for a digital multimedia display workstation are:

• 486 DX2 processor + graphics accelerator
• 8 or 16 MB RAM
• Keyboard, Mouse, CD-ROM drive
• 512 or 2 GB harddisk
• SVGA display
• 16 bit sound card (for stereo sound)

1.4 SOFTWARE FOR MULTIMEDIA

By now it must have been clear to you that movies, sound, text animation and
graphics are the integral part of a multimedia software. To produce these media
elements, there are various software available in the market. such as Paint Brush.
Photo Finish. Animator, Photo Shop. 3D Studio, Coral Draw. Sound Blaster. Master
Blaster etc. Software also available in the market to combine these independently
created media elements. Some of these software are IMAGINET, Apple Hyper Card,
Authoware Professional Icon author, Multimedia Director etc.

Software for Multimedia among various types also include software for creation of
graphics, animation etc. Designer, Corel Draw, Picture Publisher, Photo Magic,
Animator pro etc. are most commonly used programs.

Designer is one of the professional rating drawing and graphics package for windows
which is also available in OS/2 system. It is specially meant for graphic artists and
technical illustrators. It has a wide range of drawing tools and powerful text handling
features. Similarly Photo Publisher is a professional photo retouching or image editing
package designed to enable retouching and enhancing photos faster. It has powerful
masking and retouching tools and more than 30 special effects and filters. It has an
image browser, processor, scanner, printer calibration, a stitching tool and over 50
ready to use textures and images.

Similarly other multimedia related software also work on the same type of working
environment, but they have their own features to experiment upon.

Multimedia Extension in Windows

All these software do not have a standard platform. To provide all PC the same
standard to multimedia, Microsoft developed multimedia extension for Windows
operating environment. This feature add several multimedia capabilities to the
Windows operating system, including Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), a
standard format for multimedia data. including Bitmap, graphics, animation, digital
video and audio recording and playback facility for digital audio. It also include MIDI
(Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files and MCI (Media Control Interface) to
interface one's work with external devices such as CD-ROM, Sound card, laser disc

11
Introduction players etc. Most of the multimedia extension software for windows works in the
to Multimedia background. The utilities like MIDI mapper, sound recorder and media player are the
direct interface to the software the multimedia extension for windows.

Most standard window graphics are limited to 256 colours if it is not interfaced with
any external custom software and graphic card, All external device outside the
multimedia extension for windows are controlled by MCI for windows. The main
interface to MCI is the media player which in turns control any external devices such
as CD-ROM, Video Player, Laser Disc Player etc. Whereas sound recorder utility
provides facility to playback and record digital audio as ".WAV" files, directly into
the PC with the external sound device such as sound card. It has the function like start,
record, stop, play etc. Similarly MIDI mapper makes sure that events that are
specified in the MIDI file are sent to the correct MIDI instruments.

The video for windows is an external set of software works along with multimedia
extension for windows. It has the feature for digitised video recording, playback and
editing. The videocap utility of this software is used to capture the video and audio
clips using external hardware. The captured sequence can be viewed in a number of
different size and speed and also different colour palates can be created for individual
frame. Video for windows has four different types of editing features named as
VidEdit, PalEdit, WavEdit and BitEdit. As the name suggests VidEdit is used to cut
and paste captured video segments together, WavEdit is the feature which work with
the recorded digital audio and helps you to edit it. Where as PalEdit is the work with
the colour plates within the captured video to improve the colour, BitEdit helps clean
up the rough patches in the images. It also has the interface to the media control panel
to control digital video files.

1.5 COMPONENTS OF MULTIMEDIA

After discussing about the definition, hardware and basic software requirements for
multimedia, we still face a question: "What are the various components of multimedia
in computer and how to create them?" Let us try to answer this question in this
section.

1.5.1 Textual Information

All multimedia productions contain some amount of text, and even some might
contain a large amount of textual matter. The text can have various types of fonts and
type sizes to suit the professional presentation of the multimedia software. The
standard software interface which is now a days provided on multimedia is the
windows interface. This interface allow large amount of fonts to be stored in
multimedia.

1.5.2 Images
Another important and interesting components of multimedia is graphics. One of the
basic fact in multimedia production is that, people do not like reading large amount of
textual matter on the screen. Also, it is a myth about human nature that a subject is
better explained to them when represented in pictorial or graphical form, instead of
textual matter i.e. graphics are used more often than text to explain a concept, present
background information etc.

Unlike text which is represented in universal ASCII format, graphics does not have
any single agreed format. To start with these are two different ways in which graphs
or images can be described, Bitmap and Vectors.

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Bitmap Images An Overview
of Multimedia
A bitmap image assumes an image to consist of two dimensional squares which are
called the pixel or dots on the screen. The size and the quality of such a image
depends on the pixel density and number of colours it uses. For example, a standard
VGA screen uses 640x480 i.e. a total of 307200 dots or pixel to display an image. If
your image is in black and white, then only one digital bit is required to store this
information about the image for each dot (0 for black and 1 for white), and the
position to the dots can be taken as the order in which they are produced. As a byte
consists of 8 bits, one can store a black and white image of this type in
((640x480)/8)=38400 bytes = 37.5 KB, so imagine the storage place required to store
all the images involved in multimedia production. If you are using colours for the
images then the size of the bitmap images become larger depending upon the number
of colour used. A standard VGA which uses 16 colours needs 4 bit of storage to store
the information, so only two dots can be coded in a single byte. Hence ((640x480)/2)
= 153600 bytes of space is required to store a single image with 16 colours. Similarly
for a image with 256 colours (8 bit per dot), 32000 colours (16 bits per dot) or
16,000,000 colours (24 bit per dot) storage requirement will be very high. So a
standard image with 16 colours will be ideal solution for a low cost multimedia
package. These bit map files can be edited easily, however, require large memory
space for editing purposes.

As bitmap images are stored as large files and you require large amount of disk space
to deal with it. To avoid this constraint, the images can be compressed, which make
the use of the fact that many entries in a bitmap file has repeated information or
contain very little information. But there is no single standard compression method for
image files. There are various formats such as PCX, TIF, BMP, GIF etc., in which
images are stored.

The software packages which normally are used for creation of bitmap images are
called Painting programs. These program allows drawing of object using a paintbrush.
Free hand drawings can easily be produced using these packages. One such package is
the Paintbrush program available in Windows.

Vector Images

Other formats for storing images is vector or object oriented format. In this format, an
images is formed as a set of straight or curved lines instead of dots. A line can be
represented by a mathematical equation, whose number can be stored as a set of
binary codes. This form of coding is potentially more economical for disk storage
space. The drawback is that it requires software to produce the image which is time
consuming. CAD package use this type of images. A vector image file is always of the
same size no matter how large a image is. Thus, for display clarity this type of images
should be projected on better resolution display units.

There are several technology and sources available to produce images or graphics for
multimedia package. Image can be created by using a Paint program, by scanning
photographs using a scanner and by drawing artwork. You can generate 3D graphics
and animation using various sophisticated software. You can combine these images
using image manipulation programs which can combine many different types of
graphics files, to create new images.

1.5.3 Animation

Animation also plays vital part in the multimedia program. The dedicated hardware
and software built into the system increases the animation speed. An animation is just
a continuous series of still images that are displayed in a sequence. There are mainly

13
Introduction two types of animation used in multimedia, namely 2D and 3D animation. 2D
to Multimedia animation, also known as cel (pixel based) animation.. is the most common kind of
animation, where flat images are drawn one frame at a time. This process is very time
consuming but result obtained is spectacular in nature. Computer animation has
increased the efficiency, and enhanced the results of cel animation with introduction
of wide ranges of colour and speed. Many animation packages are now equipped with
tweening facility, that is, automatic creation of a series of graphics frames between
two previously created frames. Thus, many steps required for cel based animation can
be eliminated making it very simple to do. The animation packages also involve some
special effects. Morphing and Warping are two commonly used special effects.
Morphing takes two images and seamlessly changes one images to another. The
second image actually seems to grow out of the first one. Morphing can also be used
to show the pace of changes more clearly than photos. Warping is variation of the
morphing where one images is used to show various changes that take place. It uses
the key points of one images to create different effects, instead of mixing up two
images.

In 3-D animation mathematical model of 3-D object is created to realistically portray

with depth. Now it has become a common media element in film, video and
multimedia packages. A 3-D animation follow mainly three steps; modelling,
animation and rendering. Of these three first two are crucial and take long time to
finish. Modelling is the design phase where a 3-D object is created. In a 2-D
animation an object can move up (called Y axis) and sideways (called X axis). But in
the case of a 3-D model, a third axis is used; depth or the Z axis. Once an object is
created along these three axis, colour, shading and light source can be added to the
image to make it more realistic.

In the second phase, the 3-D images is moved along a motion path, which is defined
using key frames of the animation sequence. These key frames are used to create the
in-between frames in the sequence automatically.

And in the final stage, the entire sequence is rendered to create a 3-D animation.
Blending texture maps into the model to add realism causes one of the main slow
downs during rendering. A texture map is a wall paper for 3-D models, in which a
graphics image is wrapped over the surface of a model. When a 3-D animation
program renders an images, it mix up intimately all the colour, texture maps, light
source and surface attributes in each frame of the 3-D animation sequence. The
rendering process is computationally intensive step.

1.5.4 Digital Audio

The most common reason for using digital audio in computer is to be able to use
multimedia in its full potential. The most common requirement is to be able to input
sound such as a spoken commentary on an image or a document.

The sound is a repeated pattern of pressure in the air and a microphone converts a
sound wave into an electrical wave. The shape and frequency of the electrical wave is
identical to the shape and frequency of the sound wave and the clarity of what we hear
is entirely dependent on the shape and frequency of the sound wave. Sound can also
be recorded and reproduced using digital signals and the errors can be reduce
drastically in digital recording of the sound.
Audio has to be converted into digital form to produce digital audio in order to use it
in the multimedia. And the digital audio system will then reconvert the entire digitised
audio into analog form, which can be heard on the speaker. This two way
transformation of audio is known as analog-to-digital conversion and digital to analog
conversion respectively. But the storage space required for digital audio is huge,

14
somewhere around more than 1 MB for one minute of audio. The entire process of An Overview
digitisation is a simple process of converting analog or electrical signal of audio to of Multimedia
computer data file in the digital format. The microphone (which is normally used for
recording) converts the voice into electrical signal or analog audio signal. Then the
analog signal is passed into the audio input of a digital card or sound card. Once
inside, the signal is fed into the analog to digital converter, which convert the analog
audio signal to digital form and store it as computer data file. Playing back a digital
audio data file is just the reverse process of converting analog to digital. Once the
digital audio file is send to the sound card for playback the file is channelled through a
converter and the digitised version of the original file is converted into analog and put
into the speaker. As constant or frequent conversions can reduce the sound quality, it
is always advisable to keep all audio in digital format while working on a multimedia
program.

A Digital signal processor is always embedded in the sound card to provide additional
capabilities without affecting the CPU. A simple recording of digital sound can be
done and may be compressed if desired. A common digital sound file existing in
personal computers are known as .WAV files. The MIDI sound saves disk space as it
only stores the instructions about how to play a musical instruments. It prestores the
sound relating to the sound notes of various instruments and reproduces it when a
voice signal ask for it. Several software which are used for creation of digital sound
files (may be as WAV file) are media player for windows.

1.5.5 Digital Video

Digitised video is one of the many technologies used in the development of interactive
multimedia. It is one of the way to play back and record video in multimedia program.
It offers a wide range of flexibility as compared to standard video signal.

Unlike regular video, quality of image would not degrade from copy to copy as digital
video is made up of a digital code and not an electrical analog signal. However the
final output depends on how the video images are converted to digital form during the
development phase. Video signal comes from an external source such as TV or VCR
or camera to the video-digitiser-card inside the system. Some systems use a digitiser
card which has dual function for both audio and video conversion. The process of
converting analog video signal to digital format is called sampling. Using this process
the converter card in the system converts the analog video signals into digital data
streams so that these signals can be stored in the binary data structure format of 1s and
0s. The digital data file is then compressed to a considerable amount using some
compression program. During this process the digitiser fuses the digital video into a
digital movie format and saves all the sections of the compressed movie in the hard
disk. Once the conversion and compression process is complete, the file can be played
back on the computer screen. These digitised files can also be edited according to
requirement using various video editing software. However, you may find that the
video if used as full screen video may be jerky in certain machines. The main reason
for this is that to present a moving picture, we have to store and process enormous
amount of data. As we got to show 30 frames of continuous pictures per second
considering one frame itself requires lot of data a moving picture requires 30 times of
it per second. However. standards such as Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG)
have specified compression standards which have enabled a full screen video. MPEG
compression only records the key frames and tries to predict the remaining frames
from this key frame by comparing the changes of missing frames from key frames.
Another technology which is currently using these kind of compression is video
conferencing. ".AVI" files in windows basically contains interleaved data for
audio/video. This compressed data can be decompressed and passed through an digital
to analog converter to produce the video. These components of a multimedia system
are integrated after they have been stored digitally by using Authoring software which

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Introduction provide the necessary interactivity in the overall mix of information. These software
to Multimedia are discussed in unit 3.

1.6 MULTIMEDIA: DESIGN, PRODUCTION AND

DISTRIBUTION

All the development works are based on three basic principles; planning and design,
production and distribution of the final product, this is also true for multimedia
development.

Planning/Design Production Distribution

1.6.1 Planning/Design of Multimedia

During the initial design phase all the aspects of the related multimedia project is
carefully thought about and planned, well before the production start. Every key
element involved is discussed. There are various tools available to plan the project. A
flowchart is one of them. It is one of the commonly used tools to prepare a blue print
of the plan during the design phase. It shows how all the elements involved in the
project are related to each other, with adequate information about their controlling
features.

Like any other video program or movie, multimedia programs requires a script on the
subject involved. The script and flowchart works together to provide a printed version
of text, graphics and sound to be used in the production of the multimedia program.

1.6.2 Production of Multimedia

The process of creating the related media elements in a multimedia project including
graphics, sound, animation and digital video is called production. In multimedia all
these creation of media elements, can even be independent in terms of tools used to
produce them. For example, graphics elements are created independently using
various computer graphic package such as Paintbrush, 3D studio etc.

These are created and modified accordingly so as to work under various multimedia
platforms. All the video scenes of the project are digitised and edited into various
sequences and when the digitised video sequences has all the required scenes, titles
and transitions, they are compressed to playback in the required speed and pre-defined
sequence. The sound and music effects relevant to the project, and digitised scene
sequences are created using digital recording system and MIDI (Musical Instrument
Design Interface) equipment in a music studio, edited and recorded in the computer as
a digital audio file. All textual matter in project are edited and converted into ASCII
format and then modified later and placed at the appropriate location within the scene
sequences. One of the most important production task in a multimedia project is
regular checking of all the sequences.

Once, all the related media elements are created and digitised according to the
specifications, then comes the final stage of the production process i.e. joining or
combining these media elements which is also known as authoring. This process is
used to join all the independent media elements such as graphics, text, animation and
sound to produce an interactive framework. The testing and debugging of the entire
package is done at the stage before putting them into distribution media.

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The first step of authoring is to bring all the independent media elements used in the An Overview
multimedia project, as each of them are developed using various graphics, audio, of Multimedia
video and animation tools.

Once all graphics, text, animation and digital video are combined together, different
relationship and actions with each of the media element can be worked out by adding
interactive control. When multimedia program is executed, the interpreter part of the
authoring program takes all necessary commands and relationships that has been
defined for each media elements and convert them into binary code or machine code
that computer operating system can understand. The converted program is then
executed by the CPU of the computer system, which send out instructions to the
system to play the music or audio, display the text, video and animation.

1.6.3 Distribution of Multimedia

Once all the media elements are combined together using authoring software they are
bundled into a package and stored in various storage media for distribution. Creating
multimedia package for various platforms is one of the most crucial stage that
multimedia development procedure face today. There are many platforms available
for multimedia. each of which has their own advantages and disadvantages. To work
with full potential, multimedia packages need to be available in as many platform as
possible. The main storage media used to store multimedia package is the CD- ROM.

Check Your Progress 2

State True or False:

1) Windows extensions of Multimedia provide

a standard platform for multimedia programs. True False

2) Object linking and Embedding in Windows does

not allow to combine video or audio clips. True False

3) The file size for Bitmap images is smaller than

the file size for vector images. True False

4) Morphing and Warping are two special effects which

can be performed with bit mapped images only. True False

5) Digital Audio as well as digital video both are dependent

on the type of frame sampling. Based on this sampling
the quality of audio or video can be good or bad. True False

6) Multimedia production process involves not only the

production of individual components but also integration
of those components using an authoring tool. True False

1.7 SUMMARY

This unit has introduced you to a new concept in information technology; Multimedia,
slowly but steadily it has started to creep into our life in one or the other way. The
basic hardware components of multimedia were explained to you. In addition, you
were also explained various components of multimedia like graphics, sound,
animation, digital audio and video. We have also mentioned about their characteristics
and various storage formats they use. It also introduces you to various stages used for
multimedia development.
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Introduction
to Multimedia
1.8 ANSWERS/SOLUTIONS

Check Your Progress 1

1. False 2. False 3. True

4.True 5. False 6. True

Check Your Progress 2

1. True 2. False 3. False

4. False 5. True 6. True

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