1.

Question One
a. Identify and write on the 3 major features that distinguish a multimedia systems from
other computer systems.3 Marks
Answer:
 its ability to process multimedia data.
 It should have features that can process audio, video, graphics and animation.
 Where these data would need to be transmitted, it should have enough
memory and support adequate bandwidth / data compression features to
minimize delays.
b. Write a brief note on the audio data presentation formats of the audio subsystem of a
typical Multimedia substation.4 Marks
 Audio data is typically presented in one of three forms:
 Analog waveform: audio is represented by an analog electrical signal
whose amplitude defines the loudness of the sound.
This form is used in microphone, cassette tapes, records, audio
amplifiers and speakers.
 digital waveforms: is represented using digital data. The digital audio
has more advantage over analog audio, such as less indifference to
noise and distortion. However, it involves larger processing and storage
capacities.
 Digital devices which use digital waveforms audio format are compact
disc, the digital audio tape (DAT) and the digital compact disc (DCD).
 Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) : refers to digital encoding of
musical information where the sound data is not stored, and only the
commands that describe how the music should be played are
generated. MIDI gives the highest data compression easy for editing,
and is widely accepted as a musical data standard. However, it requires
additional hardware (music synthesizer) to generate music.
c. The sampling rate of audio Compact Discs (CD) is 44100 Hz. Knowing that the human
hear can perceive sounds up to a limit of 20 000 Hz and according to the previous
theorem, justify thefact that the sampling rate of the CD is sufficient for high-fidelity
audio applications (in your answer, you will abstract the quantization stage).
 The sample rate of audio CD is 44100Hz, so the maximum frequency that can be
reproduced is 22050Hz.
 22050 Hz > 20000 Hz the maximum frequency that the human ear can hear is
sufficient for high-fidelity audio application.

 any frequencies higher than 22050 will cause aliasing here, we can use
anti-aliasing filter (Low-pass filter) to deal with it.
  According to the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, there is no need
to choose a sampling rate higher than 40 KHz since the human ear can
perceive sounds up to 20 KHz.

 However, oversampling may help to reduce aliasing during processing

(especially with effects implying a distortion of the signal since
distortion introduces harmonics that can extend higher than the Nyquist
frequency).

d. With the aid illustrations, discuss the subtractive color mixing model and mention
which multimedia device makes use of this principle.6 Marks
 Printers, render colors on paper and other substrates, so they must work with
reflected light.
 To do this, they employ the opposing subtractive primaries of cyan, magenta,
and yellow.
 In the visible spectrum, cyan is directly opposed to red; magenta is the opposite
of green; and yellow is the opposite of blue.
 When cyan, magenta, and yellow pigments are laid upon a white, reflective
substrate, each completely absorbs – or subtracts – its opposing counterpart
from the white light.
 Printing processes use cyan, magenta, and yellow inks to control the amount of
red, green, and blue light that is reflected from white paper.
 When two subtractive primaries overlap, an additive primary is produced.

e. Write on the relevance of the process of quantization in a lossy data compression

system?2 Marks
 This technique is applied on the decorrelated data
 in order to further reduce the number of symbols or coefficients
 by masking irrelevant parts and retaining only the significant details in
the data.
 The outcome of this, is a reduction in entropy of the data,
 and hence makes it further open to compression by allocating less
number of bits for data transmission or storage.

f. Expound on image processing?

 Image processing entails analyzing

 and manipulating
 an image in order to either improve its pictorial information for human
interpretation
 or render it more suitable for an independent machine perception.
 2. Question Two

a.Write short notes on the 3 main analog color-coding systems in multimedia technologies.

Phase Alternation Line (PAL)


It is a European standard

which uses a TV scan rate of 25 frames (50 half-frames) per seconds

and a frequency of 625 lines / frames.

Sequential Couleur Avec Memoire (SECAM)

It is French standard

similar to PAL, but it uses different internal / video audio frequencies

Besides France, SECAM is also used in Eastern Europe.

National Television System Committee (NTSC)

It is the USA standard which is very different from PAL and SECAM standards.

The frame rate in NTSC is 30 frames (60 half-frame per seconds and the

frequency is 525 lines per frame
 Other countries where this standard d is used are Canada, Japan and Korea
b. Briefly discuss the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.
 if the number of samples that we take is too low
 it is not going to be possible to reconstruct the original signal
 (we actually can reconstruct a signal but it is totally different from the original
signal. called aliasing .
 In order to be able to perfectly reconstruct a signal from samples, the sampling
rate of this signal must be at least twice the maximum frequency of this signal
 The Nyquist-Shannon theorem specifies the minimum required sampling rate to
be able to perfectly reconstruct a sampled signal
c. What is a signal encoder used for in multimedia applications?
 The conversion of an analog signal into digital form is carried out using an
electrical circuit known as a signal encoder
 An encoder is a device used to change a signal (such as a bitstream) or data into
a code.
d. If X(ω) is the Fourier transform of the signal x(n), then what is the Fourier transform of
the signal x(n-k)?

 Given
∞
F { x( n)}= X (ω)= ∑ x (n)e− jωn
n =−∞

∞ ∞
 F { x( n−k)}= ∑ − jωn
x ( n−k ) e =e − jωk
. ∑ x ( n−k ) e− jω(n−k)
n=−∞ n =−∞
-jωk
 => F{x(n-k)} = e . X(ω)
3. Question Three
a. Elucidate on the number of complex multiplications required to compute X(k)?2 Marks
 It is observed that the direct computation of F 1(k) requires (N/2)2 complex
multiplications
 The same applies to the computation of F 2(k). Furthermore, there are N/2
additional complex multiplications required to compute WNk.
 Hence it requires N(N+1)/2 complex multiplications to compute X(k).
b. Outline four (4) common image enhancement methods you know also identify the
objective such Chosen methods were designed to achieve.
 Histogram stretching
 (Contrast stretching) enhancing image contrast
 Histogram equalization
 The major challenge with histogram stretching is that they require user input.
Often times, a better approach to image enhancement is provided by histogram
equalization, which is an entirely automatic procedure.
 The principle here is to change the histogram to one which is uniform;
 that is one that every bar on the histogram is of the same height, meaning that,
each grey level in the image occurs with the same frequency.
 Edge Sharpening:
 Another approach to making edges in an image generally results in an image
more pleasing slightly sharper and crisper, to the human eye .
 Filters and Noise Removal in Images:

 Noise is often introduced during the analog-to-digital conversion process as a

side-effect of the physical conversion of patterns of light energy into electrical
patterns. Filters usually would have some effect on image processing tasks. To
be able to choose the most appropriate filter for image processing.

 Filtering operation selectively reduces or enhances low or high spatial frequency

in theobject image

c. MPEG defines a hierarchy of layer s within a video sequence. Starting from the top-
level mention all the layers in succession.
 Sequence
 Group of Pictures (GOP)
 Picture
 Slice ,
 Macroblocks
 Block

d. Based on your knowledge of multimedia technologies, identify and explain the image
in which the components of histogram are concentrated on the low side intensity
scale.
  Only in dark images, we notice that the components of histogram are
concentrated on the low side on intensity scale

4. Question Four
a. Suppose we have an image f(x, y) and a spatial filter h(x, y) for which convolution with
the image results in some form of degradation. Assuming that h(x,y) has asingle line of
ones, derive a model for Image Degradation.

 let us assume that h(x,y) has a single line of ones, the result of the convolution
will be a motion blur in the direction of the line. We represent this by the
equation:
g(x, y) = f(x,y) * h (x,y)
 for the resulting degraded image g(x,y) where the symbol * is used to represent
a spatial filtering.
 Furthermore, we must consider noise, which can be modeled as an additive
function to the convolution.
 Thus if we use n(x,y) to represent the random error which may occur, we will
thus have the degraded image expressed as:
g(x,y) = f(x,y) * h (x,y)+ n(x,y)
 We can perform the same operations in the frequency domain. To do this we
replace the convolution by multiplication,
 while addition remains as addition,
 because of the linearity characteristics of the Fourier transform.
 This resulting expression becomes:
G(i,j) =F(i, j)H(i, j) + N (i,j)
 This expression denotes general image degradation, where of course F, H, and N
are the Fourier transformation of f, h, and n respectively.

b. Explain the following kind of noises: Salt and pepper noise, Gaussian noise, Speckle
noise.6 Marks
 Salt and pepper noise: This is also referred to as impulse noise, short noise, or
binary noise
 The degradation caused by sharp, sudden disturbances in the image signal
 it appears in an image as a randomly scattered white or black (or both) pixels
over the image
 Gaussian noise: Gaussian noise is an ideal case of white noise
 It is caused by random fluctuation in the image signal.
 A very good example of this is by watching a television which is tuned to a
particular channel. Gaussian noise is white noise which is normally distributed
 If the image is represented as I, and the Gaussian noise by N, then we can model
a noisy image by simply adding the two represented by I+ N
 Speckle noise: As in the mathematical representation for Gaussian noise, it is
modeled by adding random values to an image
  On the other hand, speckle noise is modeled by random values multiplied by
pixel values
 hence it is also called multiplicative noise
 This is common with applications that involve radar devices

5. Question Five
a. Write short notes capturing the key features and examples of the three types of text
that are processed by a multimedia computer
 Unformatted text
 Unformatted text, also referred to as plain text consists of strings of fixed sized
characters from limited character set
 An example of a character set that is widely used in computing is ASCII which
stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange
 Normal alphabetic, numeric, punctuation and control characters are
represented by ASCII character set and constitute the unformatted text
 Formatted text
 This is also known as rich text
 It enables documents comprising of strings of characters of different size, styles,
and shape with tables, images and graphics to be inserted at some points within
a document
 Most word processing packages such as Microsoft Word (MS-WORD) has
features that allow a document to be created which consist of characters of
different styles and of variable size and shape, each of which can be plain, bold,
or italicized.
 Hypertex:
 This refers to documents that contain unformatted or for matted text as well as
links to other parts of the document, or other documents
 The user can move to any section of the document accessible by selecting the
link. The linked document may be on a single system or physically distributed
across different systems
 Hypertext that includes multimedia information such as sound, graphics, and
video, is sometimes referred to as hypermedia
b. Tola just bought a new house. She paints her living room sage green, a color which she
mixes herself. This is an example of which kind of color mixing, additive or subtractive?
 Subtractive color mixing.

c. In the additive color mixing illustration, a combination of the primary colors (red, green
and blue) results in what?
 White light

d. In subtractive color mixing, a combination of the primary colors (cyan, magenta, and
yellow) results inwhat?
 black color
 e. Using block diagrams, sketch the Schema used for Unsharp masking. 3 Marks

[Total = 12 marks]

6. Question Six

a. You are required to obtain the matric number from application forms for students
applying for a course in NOUN. Outline and explain the image processing procedures
you need to accomplish this task.

 Acquire the image:

 The first task in processing an image is to acquire it from source via an input
device.
 This can be done using either a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera or a
scanner. So the first process in the problem above would be to scan the
application forms.

 Preprocess the Image

 This is the step taken before the major image processing task. The problem here
is to perform some basic tasks in order to render the resulting image more
suitable for the job to follow

 This may entail enhancing the contrast, removing noise, or identifying regions
likely to contain the postcode from the scanned document.

 Segment the Image:

 Here is where we actually get the matric number; in other words we extract
from the image that part of it which contains just what we want.

 For example, the matric numbers from the preprocessed document.

  Represent and describe the Image:

 These terms refer to extracting the particular features which allow us to

differentiate between objects that make up the image.

 In the case of a matric number, we will be looking for curves, holes and corners
which allow us to distinguish the different digits which constitute a matric
number.

 Recognize and interpret the Image:

 This means assigning labels to objects based on their descriptors (from the
previous step), and assigning meanings to those labels. we identify particular
digits, and we interpret a string of the number of digits from the forms that
constitute the matric number.

b. Briefly define with examples, the two fundamental redundancy reduction principles
employed in still image compression.

 By spatial redundancy,
 we mean the similarity of neighboring pixels in an image. It can be reduced by
applying decorellation or transformation techniques such as predictive coding,
transform coding, sub band coding, etc.

 The statistical redundancy reduction is also known as entropy encoding.

 The essence is to further reduce, the redundancy in the decorrelated data by

using variable-length coding techniques such as Huffman Coding, Arithmetic
Coding, etc.