UNIT-II

CCS352: MULTIMEDIA AND ANIMATION

LECTURE NOTES
UNIT II MULTIMEDIA FILE FORMATS AND STANDARDS 6
File formats – Text, Image file formats, Graphic and animation file formats, Digital audio and Video file formats, Color in
image and video, Color Models. Multimedia data and file formats for the web.

File Formats for multimedia

The following is an outline of current file formats used for the production and delivery of multimedia data.
Text Formats
 RTF Rich
Text Format is the primary file format introduced in 1987 by Microsoft with the specification of their published products
and for cross-platform documents interchange.
 Plain text
Plain text files can be opened, read, and edited with most text editors. commonly used are Notepad (Windows), Gedit or
nano (Unix, Linux), TextEdit (Mac OS and so on. Other computer programs are also capable of reading and importing
plain text. Plain text is the original and popular way of conveying an e-mail.
Image Formats

 TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)

This format is common in desktop publishing world (high quality output), and is supported by almost all software
packages. Recent versions of TIFF allows image compression, and the format is comfortable for moving large files
between computers.
 BMP (Bitmap)
Initially this format is in use with Windows 3.1. It is quite large and uncompressed and hence BMP is used for the high-
resolution or large images.
 DIB (Device Independent Bitmap)
This format which is similar to BMP, allows the files to be displayed on a variety of devices.
 GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
GIF is a compressed image format. Most of the computer color images and backgrounds are GIF files. This file format is
best suitable for graphics that uses only limited colors, and it is the most popular format used for online color photos. 13-
bit Color look up table is used by the GIF format to identify its color values. This format is supported widely.
 JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
JPEG was designed to attain maximum image compression. It uses lossy compression technique, where a compression
method is referred that loses some of the data required for the image reconstruction. It works good with photographs,
naturalistic artwork, and similar material but functions less on lettering, live drawings or simple cartoons.
 TGA (Tagra)
It is the first popular format for high-resolution images. TGA is supported by Most of the video-capture boards.
  PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
An extensible file format for the less-loss, portable and well-compressed storage of raster images. PNG acts as a
replacement for GIF and also replaces multiple common uses of TIFF. PNG works well with online viewing applications
like Worldwide Web. so it is fully streamable with a best display option.
Digital Audio File Formats
Besides the variety of audio file formats available, the most common formats are wave files (.WAV) and MPEG Layer-3
files (.MP3), WMA and RA.

 WAV (Waveform Audio File Format)

It is the most popular audio file format in Windows for storing uncompressed sound files. To attain the reduced file size it
can also be converted to other file formats like MP3.
 MP3 (MPEG Layer-3 Format)
MPEG Layer-3 format is the most popular format for storing and downloading music. The MP3 files are roughly
compressed to one-tenth the size of an equivalent WAV file.
 OGG A free, open-source container format that is designed for obtaining better streaming and evolving at high-
end quality digital multimedia. It can be compared to MP3 files in terms of quality.
 AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)
A standard audio file format used by Apple which is like a WAV file for the Mac.
 WMA (Windows Media Audio)
It is a popular windows media audio format owned by Microsoft and designed with Digital rights management (DRM)
abilities for copyright protection.
 RA (Real Audio Format)
Real Audio format is designed for streaming audio over the Internet. The digital audio resources are usually stored as a
computer file in computer’s hard drive or CD/DVD.
Digital Video File Formats

 AVI (Audio/Video Interleave)

AVI is the video file format for Windows. Here sound and picture elements are stored in alternate interleaved chunks in
the file.
 MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)
MPEG is a standard for generating digital video and audio compression under the International Standards Organization
(ISO) by a group of people. The group has developed MPEG-1, the standard on which Video CDs and MP3 are based,
MPEG-2, the standard that supports products such as Digital Television set-top boxes and DVDs, MPEG-4, the standard
for multimedia and mobile web.MPEG-7, the standard for the search of audio and visual content. Research on MPEG-21
“Multimedia Framework” has started in 2000. Simply MPEG is the standard for digital video and audio compression.

Color in Image and Video

Color is a vital component of multimedia. Management of color is both a subjective and a technical exercise. Picking the
right colors and combinations of colors for your project can involve many tries until you feel the result is right.

Understanding Natural Light and Color

The letters of the mnemonic ROY G. BIV, learned by many of us to remember the colors of the rainbow, are the
ascending frequencies of the visible light spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Ultraviolet light,
on the other hand, is beyond the higher end of the visible spectrum and can be damaging to humans.
The color white is a noisy mixture of all the color frequencies in the visible spectrum. The cornea of the eye acts as a lens
to focus light rays onto the retina. The light rays stimulate many thousands of specialized nerves called rods and cones
that cover the surface of the retina. The eye can differentiate among millions of colors, or hues, consisting of a
combination of red, green, and blue.
Additive Color: In the additive color model, a color is created by combining colored light sources in three primary colors:
red, green, and blue (RGB). This is the process used for a TV or computer monitor
Subtractive Color: In the subtractive color method, a new color is created by combining colored media such as paints or
ink that absorb (or subtract) some parts of the color spectrum of light and reflect the others to the eye. Subtractive color is
the process used to create color in printing. The printed page is made up of tiny halftone dots of three primary colors,
cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY).

Basics of Color

Light and Spectra

 Visible light is an electromagnetic wave in the 400 nm - 700 nm range.
Most light we see is not one wavelength, it's a combination of many wavelengths.

 The profile above is called a spectral power distribution or spectrum.

The Human Retina
 The eye is basically just a camera
Each neuron is either a rod or a cone. Rods are not sensitive to color.
Cones and Perception
 Cones come in 3 types: red, green and blue. Each responds differently to various frequencies of light. The
following figure shows the spectral sensitivity functions of the cones and the luminous-efficiency function of the
human eye.
  The color signal to the brain comes from the response of the 3 cones to the spectra being observed. That is,
the signal consists of 3 numbers:

where E is the light (spectral power distribution) and S are the spectral sensitivity functions.
 A color can be specified as the sum of three colors. So colors form a 3 dimensional vector space.
 The following figure shows the amounts of three primaries needed to match all the wavelengths of the
visible spectrum.

 The negative value indicates that some colors cannot be exactly produced by adding up the primaries.
CIE Chromaticity Diagram
 Q: Does a set of primaries exist that span the space with only positive coefficients?
 A: Yes, but no pure colors.
In 1931, the CIE (Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage, or International Commission on Illumination)
defined three standard primaries (X, Y, Z). The Y primary was intentionally chosen to be identical to the
luminous-efficiency function of human eyes.

 The above figure shows the amounts of X, Y, Z needed to exactly reproduce any visible color.

 All visible colors are in a "horseshoe" shaped cone in the X-Y-Z space. Consider the plane X+Y+Z=1 and project
it onto the X-Y plane, we get the CIE chromaticity diagram as below.

 The edges represent the "pure" colors (sine waves at the appropriate frequency)
 White (a blackbody radiating at 6447 kelvin) is at the "dot"
 When added, any two colors (points on the CIE diagram) produce a point on the line between them.
 Q: how can we find a color's complement on the CIE diagram?
L*a*b (Lab) Color Model

 A refined CIE model, named CIE L*a*b in 1976

 Luminance: L
Chrominance: a -- ranges from green to red, b -- ranges from blue to yellow
 Used by Photoshop

Color Models

A color image is a 2-D array of (R,G,B) integer triplets. These triplets encode how much the corresponding phosphor
should be excited in devices such as a monitor.

RGB Color Model for CRT Displays

 CRT displays have three phosphors (RGB) which produce a combination of wavelengths when excited with
electrons.

CMY Color Model

 Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow (CMY) are complementary colors of RGB. They can be used as
Subtractive Primaries.
 CMY model is mostly used in printing devices where the color pigments on the paper absorb certain colors
(e.g., no red light reflected from cyan ink).
 The RGB and CMY Cubes
Conversion between RGB and CMY:
-- e.g., convert White from (1, 1, 1) in RGB to (0, 0, 0) in CMY.

 Sometimes, an alternative CMYK model (K stands for Black) is used in color printing (e.g., to produce
darker black than simply mixing CMY).
o K := min (C, M, Y), C := C - K, M := M - K, Y := Y - K.
Comparison of Three Color Gamuts

 The gamut of colors is all colors that can be reproduced using the three primaries
 The Lab gamut covers all colors in visible spectrum
 The RGB gamut is smaller, hence certain visible colors (e.g. pure yellow, pure cyan) cannot be seen on monitors
 The CMYK gamut is the smallest (but not a straight subset of the RGB gamut)
3.3.3. Color Models in Video

 YIQ and YUV are the two commonly used color models in video
YUV Color Model
 Initially, for PAL analog video, it is now also used in CCIR 601 standard for digital video
 Y (luminance) is the CIE Y primary.
Y = 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B
 Chrominance is defined as the difference between a color and a reference white at the same luminance. It can
be represented by U and V -- the color differences.
U=B-Y
V=R-Y
o If b/w image, then U = V = 0. --> No chrominance!
o ** In actual PAL implementation:
U = 0.492 (B - Y)
V = 0.877 (R - Y)
 Sample YUV Decomposition:

Y U V
 Eye is most sensitive to Y. In PAL, 5.5 MHz is allocated to Y, 1.8 MHz each to U and V.
YCbCr Color Model
 The YCbCr model is closely related to the YUV, it is a scaled and shifted
YUV. Cb = (B - Y) / 1.772 + 0.5
Cr = (R - Y) / 1.402 + 0.5
 The chrominance values in YCbCr are always in the range of 0 to 1.
 YCbCr is used in JPEG and MPEG.
YIQ Color Model
 YIQ is used in NTSC color TV broadcasting, it is downward compatible with B/W TV where only Y is used.
 Although U and V nicely define the color differences, they do not align with the desired human perceptual
color sensitivities. In NTSC, I and Q are used instead.
I is the orange-blue axis, Q is the purple-green axis.
I and Q axes are scaled and rotated R - Y and B - Y (by 33 degrees clockwise).
I = 0.877(R - Y) cos 33 - 0.492(B - Y) sin 33
Q = 0.877(R - Y) sin 33 + 0.492(B - Y) cos 33
Namely,
I = 0.736(R - Y) - 0.268(B - Y) = 0.596R - 0.275G - 0.321B
Q = 0.478(R - Y) + 0.413(B - Y) = 0.212R - 0.523G +
0.311B
 The YIQ transform:

 Eye is most sensitive to Y, next to I, next to Q.

In NTSC broadcast TV, 4.2 MHz is allocated to Y, 1.5 MHz to I, and 0.55 MHz to Q. For VCR, Y is cut down to
3.2 MHz and I to 0.63 MHz.

Multimedia Data and File Formats for the Web

Multimedia data on the web encompasses a wide range of content types, including text, images, audio, video, and
interactive elements. Various file formats are used to store and transmit these types of multimedia data efficiently. Here's
an overview of common multimedia file formats used on the web:

1. **Text:**
- **HTML (Hypertext Markup Language):** The standard markup language for creating web pages.

2. **Images:**
- **JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group):** Widely used for photographic images due to its compression efficiency.
- **PNG (Portable Network Graphics):** Suitable for images with transparency and lossless compression.
- **GIF (Graphics Interchange Format):** Supports animations and simple transparency.

3. **Audio:**
- **MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer III):** A popular compressed audio format.
- **AAC (Advanced Audio Codec):** Offers better quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.
- **OGG (Ogg Vorbis):** A free, open-source, and lossy audio compression format.

4. **Video:**
- **MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14):** A versatile video format that supports various codecs.
- **WebM:** An open and royalty-free format designed for the web, supporting VP8 or VP9 video codecs.
- **Ogg Theora:** An open-source and royalty-free video compression format.

5. **Interactive Elements:**
- **JavaScript (JS):** A programming language often used to create interactive web elements.
- **CSS (Cascading Style Sheets):** Used to control the presentation and layout of web pages.
6. **Vector Graphics:**
- **SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics):** XML-based vector image format that is scalable without loss of quality.

7. **3D Graphics:**
- **GLTF (Graphics Library Transmission Format):** An open standard for efficient transmission and loading of 3D
scenes and models.

8. **Document Formats:**
- **PDF (Portable Document Format):** Used for representing documents in a manner independent of application
software, hardware, and operating systems.
- **DOCX (Office Open XML):** Microsoft Word document format.

9. **Font Formats:**
- **WOFF (Web Open Font Format):** A font format developed specifically for the web.
- **TTF/OTF (TrueType/OpenType Font):** Standard font formats that can be used on the web.

It's important to note that the choice of file format depends on the specific requirements of the content, including factors
like quality, file size, and browser compatibility. Additionally, emerging technologies may introduce new file formats or
improvements to existing ones over time.

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