Chapter One

Introduction to multimedia system

1.0. Introduction
Now a day, you experience multimedia application in your day to day
life situations; especially multimedia applications are common in TV
market advertising programs.
1.1. What is multimedia?
Definition of Multimedia Based on the word "Multimedia"
● Composed of 3 parts:
 Multi (multus) : “numerous, multiple, more than one”
 Medium (singular): middle, intermediary, mean
 Media (plural): means for conveying information, “middle,
center” – agent for something. Used for dissemination
(distribute) and representation of information. Or which
something transmitted or carried on.
 Media in the press, newspaper, radio and TV context - mass media
 Media in communications: cables, satellite, network – transmission
media
 Media in computer storage: floppy, CD, DVD, HD, USB – storage
media
 Media in HCI context: text, image, audio, video, CG – interaction
media

In general, multimedia could be defined as the usage of multiple

agents (text, audio, video, images) for disseminating and presenting
information to audience (target user)
Before we go on, it is important to define multimedia. Let us define
it from two perspectives:
1.2. In terms of what multimedia is all about:-

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It refers to the storage, transmission, presentation and perception of
different information types (data types) such as text, graphics, audio and
video where:
A. Storage Media
“Where is information stored” Refer to various physical means for
storing computer data, such as magnetic tapes, magnetic disks, or
digital optical disks (CD-ROM, CD, DVD).
B. Transmission Media

“Which medium is used to transmit data” Refers to the physical means –

cable of various type (coaxial cable, twisted pair, fiber optics), radio
tower, satellite – that allow the transmission of telecommunication
signals. The difference between transmission media and storage media is
the capability of transferring data continuously over networked
computers.

C. Presentation Media
“Which medium is used to output information from the computer or
input in the computer”
Refers to physical means used by systems to reproduce information
for humans, e.g: audio and visual devices
 Input:
a. Keyboards, cameras, microphone, Head Mounted Device (for VR
input)
 Output:
b. Paper, monitors, loudspeakers
D. Perception Media

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 “How do humans perceive information”We perceive information
from what we see and what we hear
Visual media:
a. Text, graphics, images, video
Auditory media:
b. Music, sound and voice
E. Representation Media
“How in information encoded in the computer” Referring to how the
information is represented internally to the computer.
The encoding used is of essential importance.
Several options:
a. Text is encoded in ASCII
b. An audio data stream in PCM (Pulse Coded Modulation)
c. Image in JPEG format
d. Video in MPEG format

So that Multimedia refers to multiple sources of information. It is a system

which integrates all types of data such as text, image, audio, video and
animation.

1.3. General and working definition

1. Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation and video
delivered to you by computer or other electronic means.
2. Multimedia is the presentation of a (usually interactive) computer
application, incorporating media elements such as text graphics,
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 video, animation, and sound, on a computer.
3. Multimedia is the field concerned with the computer controlled
integration of text, graphics, drawings, still and moving images
(video), animation, and any other media where every type of
information can be represented, stored, transmitted, and processed
digitally.

1.4. What is Multimedia Application?

It is an application which uses a collection of multiple media sources e.g.

text, graphics, images, sound/audio, animation and/or video. For example if
the computer you are using display teaching materials that is capable of
flashing text and beeping when there is a problem, it is already a
multimedia product which combines text and sound. The more capable
your computer is at handling sound, video and graphics the better your
multimedia packages will look.

1.5. History of Multimedia

A brief history of the use of multimedia to communicate ideas might begin
with newspapers,
which were perhaps the first
mass communication medium, using text, graphics, and images.
Motion pictures were originally conceived of in the 1830s to observe motion too rapidfor perception by th
e human eye, Thoma
Alva Edison commissioned the invention of amotion picture camera in 1887. Silent feature films appeared
from 1910 to 1927; the silentera effectively ended with the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927,
In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi sent his first wireless radio transmission at Pontecchio, Italy.A few years later (
1901), he detected radio waves beamed across the Atlantic. Initiallyinvented for telegraph, radio is no
w a major medium for audio broadcasting. In 1909,Marconi shared the Nobel Prize for physics, (Reg
inald A. Fessenden, of Quebec, beat
Marconi to human voice transmission by several years, but not all inventors receive due
credit. Nevertheless,
Fessenden was paid $2.5 million in 1928 for his purloined patents.)

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Television was the new medium for the twentieth century. It established video as a
commonly available medium
and has since changed the world of mass communication.The cormection between computers and ideas abo
ut multimedia
covers what is actually only a short period:

1945 As part of MIT's postwar deliberations on what to do with all those scientists em¬
ployed on the war effort, Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) wrote a landmark article [2j
describing what amounts to a hypermedia system, called "Memex." Memex was
meant to be a universally useful and personalized memory device that even included
the concept of associative links — it really is the forerunner of the World Wide Web.
After World War 11, 6,000 scientists who had been hard at work on the war effort
suddenly found themselves with time to consider other issues, and the Memex idea
was one fruit of that new freedom.
1960s Ted Nelson started the Xanadu project and coined the term "hypertext." Xanadu
was the first attempt at a hypertext system — Nelson called it a "magic place of
literary memory."
1967 Nicholas Negroponte formed the Architecture Machine Group at MIT,
1968 Douglas Engelbart, greatly influenced by Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think,"
demonstrated the "On-Line System" (NLS), another early hypertext program. En-
gelbart's group at Stanford Research Institute aimed at "augmentation, not automa¬
tion," to enhance human abilities through computer technology. NLS consisted of
such critical ideas as an outline editor for idea development, hypertext links, tele¬
conferencing, word processing, and e-mail, and made use of the mouse pointing
device, windowing software, and help systems [3],
1969 Nelson and van Dam at Brown University created an early hypertext editor called
PRESS" [4]. The present-day Intermedia project by the Institute for Research in
Information and Scholarship (IRIS) at Brown is the descendant of that early system.
1976 The MIT Architecture Machine Group proposed a project entitled "Multiple Media."
This resulted in the Aspen Movie Map, the first hypermedia videodisc, in 1978.
1985
Negroponte and Wiesner cofounded the MIT Media Lab, a leading research institution investigating di
gital
video and multimedia.
1989 Tim Beniers-Lee proposed the World Wide Web to the European Council for Nuclear
Research (CERNJ.
1990 Kristina Hooper Woolsey headed the Apple Multimedia Lab, with a staff of 100.
Education was a chief goal
1991 MPEG-1 was approved as an international standard for digital video. Its further
development led to newer standards, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and further MPEGs, in the
1990s.
1991 The introduction of PDAs in 1991 began a new period in the use of computers in
general and multimedia in particular. This development continued in 1996 with the
marketing of the first PDA with no keyboard.
1992 JPEG was accepted as the international standard for digital image compression. Its
further development has now led to the new JPEG2000 standard,
1992 The first MBone audio multicast on the Net was made.

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 1993 The University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications pro¬
duced NCSA Mosaic, the first full-fledged browser, launching a new era in Internet
information access.
1994 Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen created the Netscape program.
1995 The JAVA language was created for platform-independent application development.
1996 DVD video was introduced; high-quality, full-length movies were distributed on a
single disk. The DVD format promised to transform the music, gaming and computer
industries.
1998 XML 1.0 was announced as a W3C Recommendation.
1998 Handheld MP3 devices first made inroads into consumer tastes in the fall, with the
introduction of devices holding 32 MB of flash memory.
2000 World Wide Web (WWW) size was estimated at over 1 billion pages.
1.6. Multimedia and Hypermedia
Hypermedia can be considered as one of the multimedia applications.
1.7. What is Hypertext and Hypermedia?
Definition of Hypertext
Hypertext is a text which contains links to other texts. The term was
invented by Ted Nelson around 1965. Hypertext is therefore usually non-
linear (as indicated below).

Definition of HyperMedia
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. Hypermedia is a way of organizing multimedia information by
linking media elements. Apparently, Ted Nelson was also the first to use
this term.

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 The World Wide Web (WWW) is the best example of hypermedia
applications.
1.8. Multimedia and World Wide Web
Multimedia is closely tied to the World Wide Web (WWW). Without
networks, multimedia is limited to simply displaying images, videos,
and sounds on your local machine. The true power of multimedia is the
ability to deliver this rich content to a large audience.
1.9. Multimedia Building Blocks
I. Text: Text and symbols are very important for communication in any
medium. With the recent explosion of the Internet and World Wide
Web, text has become more the important than ever. Web is HTML
(Hypertext Markup language) originally designed to display simple
text documents on computer screens, with occasional graphic images
thrown in as illustrations.
II. Audio: Sound is perhaps the most element of multimedia. It can
provide the listening pleasure of music, the startling accent of special
effects or the ambience of a mood-setting background.
III. Images: Images whether represented analog or digital plays a vital
role in a multimedia. It is expressed in the form of still picture,
painting or a photograph taken through a digital camera.

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IV. Animation: Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images
of 2-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of
movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon
of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a
number of ways.
V. Video: Digital video has supplanted analog video as the method of
choice for making video for multimedia use. Video in multimedia are
used to portray real time moving pictures in a multimedia project.

1.10. Multimedia Systems

 It is a system capable of processing multimedia data. It is characterized
by the processing, storage, generation, manipulation and rendition of
multimedia information.
 The presentation of a computer application, usually interactive, that
incorporates media elements such as text, graphics, video, animation,
and sound on a computer. Multimedia melds the sensory power of
television with the data manipulation and interactive powers of
computer.
 A multimedia system is characterized by computer-controlled,
integrated production, manipulation, presentation, storage and
communication of independent information, which is encoded at least
through continuous (time-dependent) and a discrete (time-independent)
medium.
1.11. 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
1. Computer Controlled

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  Producing the content of the information–e.g.by using the authoring
tools, image editor, sound and video editor.
 Storing the information–providing large and shared capacity for
multimedia information.
 Transmitting the information–through the network.
 Presenting the information to the end user–make direct use of
computer peripheral such as display device (monitor) or sound
generator (speaker).
2. Integrated

 All multimedia components (audio, video, text, graphics )

used in the system must be somehow integrated.

 Every device, such as microphone and camera is

connected to and controlled by a single computer

 A single type of digital storage is used for all media type.

 Video sequences are shown on computer screen instead of

TV monitor.
3. Interactivity
 Level-1: Interactivity strictly on information delivery. Users select
the time at which the presentation starts, the order, the speed and the
form of the presentation itself.
 Level-2: Users can modify or enrich the content of the information,
and this modification is recorded.
 Level-3: Actual processing of users input and the computer generate
genuine result based on the users input.
4. Digitally Represented

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  Digitization: process involved in transforming an analog signal to
digital signal.

1.12. Challenges for Multimedia Systems

Supporting multimedia applications over a computer network renders the
application distributed. This will involve many special computing
techniques.
Multimedia systems may have to render a variety of media at the same
instant -- a distinction from normal applications. There is a temporal
relationship between many forms of media (e.g. Video and Audio. These 2
are forms of problems here
 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. Ever tried
watching an out of (lip) sync film for a long time?
The key issues multimedia systems need to deal with here are:
 How to represent and store temporal information.
 How to strictly maintain the temporal relationships on play
back/retrieval
 What processes are involved in the above?
Data has to represented digitally so many initial source of data needs to be
digitise -- translated from analog source to digital representation. The will
involve scanning (graphics, still images), sampling (audio/video) although
digital cameras now exist for direct scene to digital capture of images and
video.
The data is large several Mb easily for audio and video -- therefore storage,
transfer (bandwidth) and processing overheads are high. Data compression
techniques are very common.

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1.13. Desirable Features for a Multimedia System
Given the above challenges the following feature are desirable (if not a
prerequisite) for a Multimedia System:
Very High Processing Power
 Needed to deal with large data processing and real time delivery of
media. Special hardware commonplace.
Multimedia Capable File System
 Needed to deliver real-time media -- e.g. Video/Audio Streaming.
Special Hardware/Software needed e.g RAID technology.
Data Representations/File formats that support multimedia
 Data representations/file formats should be easy to handle yet allow
for compression/decompression in real-time.
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 as well as playback of data.
e.g. Direct to Disk recording systems.
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.
Storage and Memory
 Large storage units (of the order of 50 -100 Gb or more) and large
memory (50 -100 Mb or more). Large Caches also required and
frequently of Level 2 and 3 hierarchy for efficient management.
Network Support
 Client-server systems common as distributed systems.
Software Tools

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  User friendly tools needed to handle media, design and develop
applications, deliver media.
1.14. Application
 Digital video editing and production systems
 Home shopping
 Interactive movies and TV
 Multimedia Courseware
 Video conferencing
 Virtual reality (the creation of artificial environment that you can
explore, e.g. 3-D images etc)
 Distributed lectures for higher education
 Tele-Medicine
 Digital Libraries
 World wide web
 Online reference works e.g. encyclopedias, games etc
 Electronic News papers/Magazines
 Games
 Groupware (enabling groups of people to collaborate on projects
and share information)
 Multimedia Database systems.

1.15. Trends in Multimedia

Current big applications areas in Multimedia include:
 World Wide Web: Hypermedia systems -- embrace nearly all
multimedia technologies and application areas. Ever increasing
popularity.
 Multicast Bone
-- Multicast Backbone: Equivalent of conventional TV and Radio on
the Internet.
 Enabling Technologies
Developing at a rapid rate to support ever increasing need for
Multimedia. Carrier Switching, Protocol, Application,
Coding/Compression, Database, Processing, and System Integration
Technologies at the forefront of this.

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1.16. Components of a Multimedia System
Now let us consider the Components (Hardware and Software) required for
a multimedia system:

Software Components

a. 3-D and Animation Tools:

This software provide 3D clip art object such as people, furniture, building,
car, airplane, tree, etc. You can use these objects in your project easily.
A good 3D modeling tool should include the following features:
 Ability to drag and drop primitive shape into screen
 Ability to create objects from scratch
 Ability to add realistic effects such as transparency, shadowing, fog,
etc.
 Multiple window that allow user to view model in each dimension
 Color and texture mapping
Examples: 3Ds Max, Log Motion, Discrete

b. Text editing and word processing tools:

Word processors are used for writing letters, invoices, project content, etc.
They include features like: Spell check, table formatting, thesaurus,
templates (e.g. letters, resumes and other common documents). Example
Microsoft word, word perfect, notepad etc
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In word processors, we can actually embed multimedia elements such as
sound, image, and video.

c. Sound Editing Tools

They are used to edit sound ( music, speech, etc)
The user can see the representation of sound in fine increment, score or
wave form. User can cut, copy, and paste any portion of the sound to edit it.
You can also add other effects such as distort, echo, pitch, etc. Examples: -
sound forge

d. Multimedia authoring tools:

Multimedia authoring tools provide important framework that is needed for
organizing and editing objects included in the multimedia project (e.g
graphics, animation, sound, video, etc). They provide editing capability to
limited extent. Examples: Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Director and
Macromedia Authorware.

e. OCR software
This software convert printed document into electronically recognizable
ASCII character. It is used with scanners. Scanners convert printed
document into bitmap. Then these software break the bitmap into pieces
according to whether it contains text or graphics. This is done by examining
the texture and density of the bitmap and by detecting edges.
Text area ASCII text
Bitmap area bitmap image
To do the above, these software use probability and expert system.
Use:
 To include printed documents in our project without typing from
keyboard
 To include documents in their original format e.g signatures,
drawings, etc
Examples: Omni Pro, perceiver

f. Painting and Drawing Tools

To create graphics for web and other purposes, painting and editing tools
are crucial.

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Painting Tools: are also called image-editing tools. They are used to edit
images of different format. They help us to retouch and enhance
bitmap images. Some painting tools allow to edit vector based graphics
too.
Some of the activities of editing include:
 blurring the picture
 removing part of the picture
 add texts to picture
 merge two or more pictures together, etc
Examples: Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop

g. Drawing Tool
Used to create vector based graphics.
Drawing and painting tools should have the following features:
 Scalable dimension for restore, stretch, and distorting images/graphics
 customizable pen and brush shapes and sizes
 Multiple undo capabilities
 Capacity to import and export files in different formats
 Ability to create geometric shapes from circle, rectangle, line, etc.
 zooming for magnified image editing
 Support for third party plug-ins.
Examples: Macromedia Freehand, CorelDraw, Illustrator

h. Video Editing
Animation and digital video/movie are sequence of bitmapped graphic
frames rapidly played back. Some of the tools to edit video include: Adobe
Premier, Deskshare, Video editing magic, Videoshop
These applications display time references (relationship between time & the
video), frame counts, audio, transparency level, etc.

1.17. Hardware Components

Three groups of hardware for multimedia:
1) Memory and storage devices
2) Input and output devices
3) Network devices

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 1) Memory and Storage Devices
Multimedia products require high storage capacity than text-based data.
Huge drives are essential for the enormous files used in multimedia and
audiovisual creation.

I) RAM: is the primary requirement for multimedia system. Why?

Reasons:
 you have to store authoring software itself. E.g Flash takes 20MB of
memory, Photoshop 16-20MB, etc.
 digitized audio and video is stored in memory
 Animated files, etc.
To store this at the same time, you need large amount of memory

II) Storage Devices: large capacity storage devices are necessary to store
multimedia data.

Hard Disk: the capacity of hard disk should be high to store large data.

CD: is important for multimedia because they are used to deliver

multimedia data to users. A wide variety of data like:
 Music(sound, & video)
 Multimedia Games
 Educational materials
 Tutorials that include multimedia
 Utility graphics, etc

DVD: have high capacity than CDs. Similarly, they are also used to
distribute multimedia data to users. Some of the characteristics of DVD:
 High storage capacity4.7-17GB
 Use narrow tracks than CDs
 High data transfer rate4.6MB/sec

2) Input-Output Devices

I) interact with the system: to interact with multimedia system, we use

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either keyboard, mouse, track ball, or touch screen, etc.

Mouse: multimedia project is typically designed to be used with mouse as

an input pointing device. Other devices like track ball and touch screen
could be used in place of mouse. Track ball is similar with mouse in many
ways.

Wireless mouse: important when the presenter has to move around during
presentation

Touch Screen: we use fingers instead of mouse to interact with touch screen
computers.
There are three technologies used in touch screens:

i) Infrared light: such touch screens use invisible infrared light that are
projected across the surface of screen. A finger touching the screen
interrupts the beams generating electronic signal. Then it identifies the x-y
coordinate of the screen where the touch occurred and sends signals to the
operating system for processing.

ii) Texture-coated: such monitors are coated with texture material that is
sensitive towards pressure. When user presses the monitor, the texture
material on the monitor extracts the x-y coordinate of the location and send
signals to operating system

iii) Touch mate:

Use: touch screens are used to display/provide information in public areas
such as airport, museums, transport services areas, hotels etc

Advantage:
 user friendly
 easy to use even for non technical people
 easy to learn how to use

the purpose of these devices is to enter information

II) Information Entry Devices:
to be included in our multimedia project into our computer.

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OCR: they enable us to use OCR softwares convert printed document into
ASCII file.

Graphical Tablets/ Digitizer: both are used to convert points, lines, and
curves from sketch into digital format. They use a movable device called
stylus.

Scanners: enable us to convert printed images into digital format.

Two types of scanners: Flat bed and Portable scanner

Microphones: they are important because they enable us to record speech,

music, etc. The microphone is designed to pick up and amplify incoming
acoustic waves or harmonics precisely and correctly and convert them to
electrical signals. You have to purchase a superior, high-quality microphone
because your recordings will depend on its quality.

Digital Camera and Video Camera (VCR): are important to record and
include image and video in MMS respectively. Digital video cameras store
images as digital data, and they do not record on film. You can edit the
video taken using video camera and VCR using video editing tools.
Remark: video takes large memory space.

Output Devices
Depending on the content of the project, & how the information is
presented, you need different output devices. Some of the output hardwares
are:

Speaker: if your project includes speeches that are meant to convey

message to audience, or background music, using speaker is obligatory.

Projector: when to use projector:

 if you are presenting on meeting or group discussion,
 if you are presenting to large number of audience
Types of projector:
 LCD projector

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  CRT projector

Plotter/printer: when the situation arises to present using papers, you use
plotters and/or plotters. In such cases, print quality of the device should be
taken into consideration.
Impact printers: not good quality graphics/poor quality
Non-impact printers: good quality graphics

3) Network Devices
Why do we require network devices?
The following network devices are required for multimedia presentation:

i) Modem: which stands for modulator demodulator, is used to convert

digital signal into analog signal for communication of the data over
telephone line which can carry only analog signal. At the receiving end, it
does the reverse action i.e. converts analog to digital data.
Currently, the standard modem is called v.90 which has the speed of 56kbps
(kilo bits per second). Older standards include v.34 which has the speed of
28kbps.
Types: Internal and external modem
Data is transferred through modem in compressed format to save time and
cost.

ii) ISDN: stands for Integrated Services Digital Network. It is circuit

switched telephone network system, designed to allow digital transmission
of voice and data over ordinary telephone copper wires. This has the
advantage of better quality and higher speeds than available with analog
systems.
 It has higher transmission speed i.e faster data transfer rate.
 They use additional hardware hence they are more expensive.

iii) Cable modem: uses existing cables stretched for television broadcast
reception. The data transfer rate of such devices is very fast i.e. they provide
high bandwidth. They are primarily used to deliver broadband internet
access, taking advantage of unused bandwidth on a cable television
network.
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iv) DSL: provide digital data transmission over the telephone wires of local
telephone network. The speed of DSL is faster than using telephone line
with modem. How? They carry a digital signal over the unused frequency
spectrum (analog voice transmission uses limited range of spectrum)
available on the twisted pair cables running between the telephone
company's central office and the customer premises.
Summary
Multimedia Information Flow

Exercise
You are requiring setting up a Multimedia Systems. Identify the
components, and budget to set up the system.

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