Lecture 6 Computer Principles

University of Technology
Computer Engineering Department
Computer Principles

Asst.Lect. Zinah Jaafer Mohammed Ameen

Lecture 6
Multimedia

Lecture Layout:

• Introduction to Multimedia
• Hypertext and Hypermedia
• Multimedia Applications
• Multimedia Systems
• Components of Multimedia System
• A brief look at Multimedia Input and Format

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 Introduction to Multimedia
Multimedia means that computer information can be represented through
audio, video, and animation in addition to traditional media (i.e., text,
graphics/drawings, and images). Multimedia is the field concerned with
the computer controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, still and
moving images (Video), animation, audio, and any other media where
every type of information can be represented, stored, transmitted and
processed digitally.
 Hypertext and Hypermedia
Hypertext is a text which contains links to other texts. The term was
invented by Ted Nelson around 1965.

Traversal through pages of hypertext is therefore usually non-linear (as

indicated below).

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This has implications in layout and organization of material and depends

a lot on the application at hand.
Hypermedia is not constrained to be text-based. It can include other
media, e.g., graphics, images, and especially the continuous media –
sound and video.

Example Hypermedia Applications:

• The World Wide Web (WWW) is the best example of a
hypermedia application.
• Power point
• Adobe Acrobat

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 Multimedia Applications
Examples of Multimedia Applications include:
• World Wide Web
• Interactive TV
• Computer Games
• Digital video editing and production systems
• Multimedia Database systems
• Video conferencing
• Home shopping
 Multimedia Systems
A Multimedia System is a system capable of processing multimedia data
and applications. A Multimedia System is characterized by the
processing, storage, generation, manipulation and rendition of
Multimedia information.
Characteristics of a Multimedia System
A Multimedia system has four basic characteristics:
 Multimedia systems must be computer controlled.
 Multimedia systems are integrated.
 The information they handle must be represented digitally.
 The interface to the final presentation of media is usually
interactive.
Challenges for Multimedia Systems
Supporting multimedia applications over a computer network renders the
application to be distributed. Multimedia systems may have a variety of
media at the same instant unlike the normal applications. There is a
temporal relationship between many forms of media (e.g. Video and
Audio). There are two forms of problems might occur which are:

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• Sequencing within the media: playing frames in correct order/time

frame in video.
• Synchronization: inter-media scheduling (e.g. Video and Audio).
Lip synchronization is clearly important for humans to watch
playback of video and audio and even animation and audio.
The key issues multimedia systems need to deal with are:
 How to represent and store temporal information.
 How to strictly maintain the temporal relationships on
playback/retrieval.
 What processes are involved above.
 Data has to be represented digitally: Analog to Digital Conversion
such as Sampling etc.
 Large Data Requires: high bandwidth and high storage, therefore
Data compression is usually mandatory.

For the previous challenges, the following features are desirable for a
Multimedia System:
1- Very High Processing Power: needed to deal with large data
processing and real time delivery of media.

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2- Multimedia Capable File System: needed to deliver real-time

media e.g. Video/Audio Streaming.
3- Special Hardware/Software needed: e.g. RAID technology.
4- Data Representations: File Formats that support multimedia
should be easy to handle yet allow for compression/decompression
in real-time.
5- Efficient and High I/O: input and output to the file subsystem
needs to be efficient and fast. Needs to allow for real-time
recording e.g. Direct to Disk recording systems.
6- Special Operating System: to allow access to file system and
process data efficiently and quickly. Needs to support direct
transfers to disk, real-time scheduling, fast interrupt processing, I/O
streaming etc.
7- Storage and Memory: large storage and large memory units
(several GB or more) are needed. Large Caches also required and
high speed buses for efficient management.
8- Network Support: Client-server systems common as distributed
systems common.
9- Software Tools: user friendly tools needed to handle media,
design and develop applications, deliver media.
 Components of a Multimedia System
 Capture devices: Video Camera, Video Recorder, Audio
Microphone, Keyboards, mouse, graphics tablets, and 3D input
devices.
 Storage Devices: Hard disks, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROM, etc.
 Communication Networks: Local Networks, Intranets, Internet,
Multimedia or other special high speed networks.
 Computer Systems: Multimedia Desktop machines, Workstations,
MPEG/VIDEO/DSP Hardware.
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 Display Devices: CD-quality speakers, HDTV monitors, Colored

printers etc.
 A Brief Look at Multimedia Data Input and Format
 Text and Static Data
• Source: keyboard, speech input, optical character recognition, data
stored on disk.
• Data is entered character by character and Stored:
– Storage of text is 1 byte per character (text or format character).
– For other forms of data may store format as text (with
formatting) others may use other binary encoding.
• Format: Raw text or formatted text e.g HTML, Word or a program
language source (C, Pascal, etc. HTML format sequence, Sequence
of C program statements.
• Size not significant with respect to other Multimedia data.
 Graphics
• Graphics are usually editable image (unlike Images).
• Input: Graphics are usually generated by a graphics editor program.
• Graphics input devices: keyboard (for text and cursor control),
mouse and graphics tablet.
• Format: constructed by the composition of primitive objects such
as lines, polygons, circles, curves and arcs.
• Do not take up a very high storage
 Images
• Still pictures which (uncompressed) are represented as a bitmap (a
grid of pixels).
• Input: digitally scanned photographs/pictures or direct from a
digital camera. It may also be generated by programs “similar” to
graphics or animation programs.

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• Stored at 1 bit per pixel (Black and White), 8 Bits per pixel (Grey
Scale, Color Map) or 24 Bits per pixel (True Color)
• Size: a 512x512 Grey scale image takes up 0.23 Mb, a 512x512 24
bit image takes 0.75 Mb with no compression.
• Compression is commonly applied.
 Audio
• Audio signals are continuous analog signals.
• Input: microphones and then digitized and stored.
• CD Quality Audio requires 16-bit sampling at 44.1 KHz even
higher audiophile rates (e.g. 24-bit, 96 KHz).
• 1 Minute of Stereo CD quality (uncompressed) audio requires 10
Mb.
• Usually compressed (E.g. MP3, AAC, etc).
 Video
• Refers to recording, manipulating, and displaying moving images,
especially in a format that can be presented on a television.
• Input: Analog Video is usually captured by a video camera and
then digitized.
• There are a variety of video (analog and digital) formats
• Raw video can be regarded as being a series of single images.
There are typically 25, 30 or 50 frames per second. A larger frame
size gives better quality and a larger file. To determine how many
pixels each frame is you simply multiply the width in pixels by the
height in pixels to get the total number of pixels. A typical
640x480 TV frame (not HD) is 307200 pixels or about 0.3 MB. If
you would save one such file in an uncompressed image format,
like BMP, you would get a file at least 300kb large. If we want to
show our video in color we need to use three color channels to

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represent the one pixel. Today we almost always use one byte per
color channel, and although we use different color spaces we most
often need three color channels. To get the raw uncompressed size
of the video frame you then need to multiply the number of pixels
in the video frame by 3 to get the number of bytes each video
frame will take. You now have the size of the uncompressed video
frame, in our example 0.9 Megabyte.
• The size of one second video footage would then require
25*0.9=22.5 Mb. A normal movie running one and a half hour
would require 90*60*22.5 = 121500 MB = 118 GB or about 26
single layer DVDs. The obvious conclusion is that when you work
with videos you require a lot of free disk space and you need take
make it smaller with compression when you have finished creating
a video.
• A 512 ×512 size of monochrome video images take 25×0.25 =
6.25Mb for a minute to store uncompressed. Typical PAL digital
video (720×576 pixels per color frame) 1.2 ×25 = 30Mb for a
minute to store uncompressed. High Definition DVD (1440×1080
= 1.5 Megapixels per frame) 4.5×25 = 112.5Mb for a minute to
store uncompressed. (There are higher possible frame rates).
• Digital video clearly needs to be compressed for most times. JPEG,
Motion JPEG and MPEG are three well-used acronyms used to
describe different types of image compression format.