introduction of Multimedia

Chap 1.
Introduction to Multimedia

Definition : Mutimedia is any combination of text, art,
sound, animation, and video delivered to you by computer
or other electronic or digitally manipulated means.

Interactive Multimedia : When you allow an end user or
viewer of a multimedia project to control what and when the
elements are delivered, it is called interactive multimedia.
Hypermedia : When you provide a structure of linked
elements through which the user can navigate, it is called
hypermedia.

Scope of Multimedia :
1. The technology of multimedia design utilizes various features
like animation, video, graphics, audio and sound to impress
the users.
2. Multimedia technology is used for 3D cinema applications and
mobile environments.
3. Animation is also being used in titling films, creating special
effects or in web entertainment programs. Thus scope of
animation is huge in context to market.
4. In the field of education multimedia is being used extensively
especially for online courses and trainings.
5. Multimedia is also used in advertising purposes.

6. Education and training
A great learning tool, the use of multimedia allows for
interactive learning at the users pace. Training sessions can be
transportable on DVD or CD ROM to allow for maximum
flexibility.
7. Sales and Marketing

The use of multimedia at kiosks at trade shows are used to
entertain and educate. Businesses design flexible and interactive
multimedia presentations to describe their products and services
for their sales force as well.

8. Displays and Kiosks
Multimedia can also be used in stores to entertain, educate,
engage and market to customers. Whether your customers are
standing in line waiting to check out, at a trade show or walking or
driving on the street, multimedia can be used to engage, motivate
and inspire your potential client to make a purchasing decision.
9. Websites
Want to add pizzazz to your website? Multimedia is the
way to go. With varying levels of interactivity, you can engage your
audience and increase the ‘stickiness’ of your site by including
interactive tests and quizzes, learning sequences, and engaging
mini-movies.

10. Entertainment
Animation, music, sound, graphics and lots of multimedia
programming are used to give life to these to huge industries.

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.
The basic five Elements of Multimedia
1. Text
2. Images
3. Audio
4. Animation
5. Video

Text
It may be an easy content type to forget when considering
multimedia systems, but text content is by far the most common
media type in computing applications.
Most multimedia systems use a combination of text and
other media to deliver functionality.
Text in multimedia systems can express specific
information, or it can act as reinforcement for information
contained in other media items.
For example, when Web pages include image
elements, they can also include a short amount of text for the
user's browser, Wikipedia is the best example.

Images
Digital image files appear in many multimedia
applications.
Interactive elements, such as buttons, often use custom
images created by the designers and developers involved in an
application.
Digital image files use a variety of formats and file
extensions. Among the most common are JPEGs and PNGs.
Both of these often appear on websites, as the formats
allow developers to minimize on file size while maximizing on
picture quality.
Graphic design software programs such as Photoshop and
Paint.NET allow developers to create complex visual effects with
digital images.

Images
BMP file format

PNG file format

TIFF file format

JPEG file format

Audio
Audio files play a major role in some multimedia systems.
Audio files appear as part of application content and also to aid
interaction.
When they appear within Web applications and sites,
audio files sometimes need to be deployed using plug-in media
players.
Audio formats include MP3, WMA, Wave, MIDI and
RealAudio.
When developers include audio within a website, they will
generally use a compressed format to minimize on download
times.
Web services can also stream audio, so that users can begin
playback before the entire file is downloaded.

Video
Digital video appears in many multimedia applications,
particularly on the Web.
As with audio, websites can stream digital video to increase
the speed and availability of playback.
Common digital video formats include Flash, MPEG, AVI,
WMV and QuickTime.
Most digital video requires use of browser plug-ins to play
within Web pages, but in many cases the user's browser will
already have the required resources installed.

Animation
Animated components are common within both Web and
desktop multimedia applications.
Animations can also include interactive effects, allowing
users to engage with the animation action using their mouse and
keyboard.
The most common tool for creating animations on the Web
is Adobe Flash, which also facilitates desktop applications.
Flash also uses Action Script code to achieve animated and
interactive effects.

Application of Multimedia :
1. Creative industries : use multimedia for a variety of purposes
ranging from fine arts, to entertainment, to commercial art, to
journalism, to media.
2. Commercial uses : Much of the electronic old and new media
used by commercial artists is multimedia. Exciting
presentations are used to grab and keep attention in
advertising.
3. Entertainment and fine arts : In addition, multimedia is
heavily used in the entertainment industry, especially to
develop special effects in movies and animations. Multimedia
games are a popular pastime and are software programs
available either as CD-ROMs or online. Some video games also
use multimedia features.

4. Education : multimedia is used to produce computer-based
training courses (popularly called CBTs) and reference books
like encyclopedia and almanacs. A CBT lets the user go
through a series of presentations, text about a particular topic,
and associated illustrations in various information formats.
Edutainment is the combination of education with
entertainment, especially multimedia entertainment.
5. Journalism : Newspaper companies all over are also trying to
embrace the new phenomenon by implementing its practices
in their work.

An almanac (also archaically spelled almanack and almanach) is
an annual publication that includes information such as
weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, tide tables, and
tabular information often arranged according to the calendar.
Astronomical data and various statistics are found in almanacs,
such as the times of the rising and setting of the sun and
moon, eclipses, hours of full tide, stated festivals of churches,
and so on.

6. Engineering : Software engineers may use multimedia in
Computer Simulations for anything from entertainment to
training such as industrial training.
7. Industry : In the Industrial sector, multimedia is used as a way
to help present information to shareholders, superiors and
coworkers. Multimedia is also helpful for providing employee
training, advertising and selling products all over the world via
virtually unlimited web-based technology.
8. Medicine : In Medicine, doctors can get trained by looking at
a virtual surgery or they can simulate how the human body is
affected by diseases spread by viruses and bacteria and then
develop techniques to prevent it.

Interactive means that the user or audience has
control over the program or presentation.

Multimedia applications that allow users to actively
participate instead of just sitting by as passive recipients of
information are called Interactive

Multimedia.

interactive multimedia, any computer-delivered electronic
system that allows the user to control, combine, and manipulate
different types of media, such as sound, video, computer graphics,
and animation.
Interactive multimedia integrate computer, memory storage,
digital (binary) data, telephone, television, and other information
technologies.
Their most common applications include training programs,
video games, and travel guides. Interactive multimedia shift the
user’s role from observer to participant and are considered the
next generation of electronic information systems.

Appropriate Uses of IM.
Games.
Education.
Training.
Corporate presentation.

e.g.
A personal computer (PC) system with conventional magneticdisk memory storage technically qualifies as a type of interactive
multimedia.

The most common multimedia machine consists of a PC with a
digital speaker unit and a CD-ROM (compact disc read-only
memory) drive, which optically retrieves data and instructions
from a CD-ROM.

1. Marketing Standpoint.
2. User Standpoint.

Marketing Standpoint :
Computer price
1992 – 1 mil - $2,500 or $1,000 upgrade
1996 – 24 mil - $1,500 or $300 upgrade
Multimedia titles
1992 – 5,000 - $100
1996 – 15,000 - $30
Hype - “killer applications”
Value added – enhances computer use

User Standpoint :
User control
No longer only lectures and/or printed materials
Any sequence of the material, any time, anywhere, any
modality
Individualization
 Address different learning styles and needs
 User decides how material is presented:
visual, audio, textual
 Adjusting level of difficulty

User Standpoint :
Action
Active processes: simulations, acting out a play, testing
knowledge and feedback
Examples
500 Nations, Grandma and Me , Magic School Bus

Advantages :
1.

The use of multimedia offers many advantages: 1.
Enhancement of Text Only Messages: Multimedia enhances
text only presentations by adding interesting sounds and
compelling visuals.

2. Improves over Traditional Audio-Video Presentations:

Audiences are more attentive to multimedia messages than
traditional presentations done with slides or overhead
transparencies.

2.

Gains and Holds Attention: People are more interested in
multimedia messages which combine the elements of text,
audio, graphics and video. Communication research has
shown that the combination of communication modes (aural
and visual) offers greater understanding and retention of
information.

Advantages :
4. Increases learning effectiveness.
5. Is more appealing over traditional, lecturebased learning methods.
6. Provides high-quality video images & audio.
7. Reduces training costs.
8. Offers system portability.
9. Creates knowledge connections

Disadvantages :
1. Expensive
2. Not always easy to configure
3. Requires special hardware
4. Not always compatible
5. Complex to create

Entertainment
Education

Corporate communications
Reference

Entertainment
• Games: action and graphics
• Action + storytelling

Education
• Accommodates different learning styles:

association vs. experimentation; auditory vs. visual

Corporate communications (marketing and
training)
Attract attention to a message

Product catalogs, published magazines, touchscreen kiosks, online shopping, …
Stockholder's meeting, conference speaker, employee orientation
and training, …

Reference
CD: encyclopedias, census data, directories, dictionaries

There are many different types of Multimedia Products, so many
that sometime you may not even realise that you are using one.
there are:
Educational Products :
Interactive CD-ROMs - Have been used in classrooms for a while. At

the beginning people could only access text, then soon came video
and sound. The ease that the programs advantage the students
with help them finish their own work quicker.

Multimedia Presentations - let people to creat slide shows with
helpful things in them like, animations, web links, animated text
and digital movies. In Classrooms and lectures at schools and
universities, Powerpoint are often used as a teaching aid.
Computer-based training - (CBT) uses multimedia to help
people learn about a subject, or to help teach other people in the
work place.
A person can learn how to operate machinery or learn a procedure
used in an office. An advantage of CBT over the types of training is
that, users can retrace their steps in a complex operation as many
times as they wish.

Entertainment Products:
Entertain often drives advances in computing and
multimedia is an example of this. Games have become one of the
most popular applications of multimedia.
Multimedia games - Games today are extremely interactive.
Gamers can control the camera angles and the direction and
speed of their character in the games as well . These games have
realistic sounds and effects, offer complex puzzles to solve, and
make the player feel very apart of the imaginary world.

Interactive DVD movies - DVDs dont only offer more
applications then when seen at the movies, they also let the
person watching interact with the plot, actors, by selection
actions on screen.
Interactive digital television - Now a days, shows on television
often include the watching audience more often then not make
the home entertainment systems more and more apart of you
daily life.

Information Products:
Information kiosks - Recently people have been replaced with
machines, like touch screen information kiosks instead of an
information desk.
Electronic books and magazines - are a lot more sufficient then
having a whole pile of magazines at home, you can have then all
on your touch screen book. Such and idea was brought up to see if
people rather reading a boom on paper or on their computer
screen.

Multimedia databases - are used to basically show media, the
person who designed a database can make it very easy to retrieve
information that you seek quickly by putting key works or buttons
that take you straight what you need.
A lot of school have started to use these as it will be a lot quicker
and easier for the schools to manage.
e.g. all text, audio, video etc. include in mutimedia page.
Other Multimedia Products. - Communication has become a
fairly important multimedia category lately with such things as
phones, ipod, and computers developing and being wanted more
and more rapidly.

Edutainment products - basically mix educations and
entertainment together, like educational games and such, these
have also become a large teaching aid, especially within primary
school.

Infotainment products - basically mix information and
entertainment together, like documentary and entertainment, by
maybe making it funny, or more enjoyable and interesting to
watch.

An interactive kiosk is any computer-like device deployed
in a public venue to give people self service access to products and
services.
Kiosks are typically placed in retail stores, airports,
libraries, company cafeterias, and other places where personal
computers are not available but self-service applications can
provide some benefit.

Unlike a typical PC, though, a kiosk typically performs only
a few specific tasks, is designed to be used by many different
people.

Who Uses Kiosks?
Kiosks are most often deployed in situations where a
problem can be solved by giving people access to self-service tools.

For example, imagine a large shipping company with
dozens of warehouses around the country, and hundreds of
employees working in each.
To find out about remaining vacation days, sick leave or
pension information, each of these employees would have to
contact a human resources representative, who would then have
to call up the employee’s file, and send the information back by
fax or phone.
This system is expensive, inefficient, and error-prone. A
simple solution would be to use interactive kiosks placed on the
warehouse floor to allow employees to look up answers to their
own questions.
Unlike additional support staff, kiosks provide immediate
access to information, are available 24 hours a day, and don’t get
paid overtime.

The Anatomy of a Kiosk :
Interactive kiosks come in many shapes and sizes, and are
often custom-built for a specific application.
A kiosk on a cosmetics counter displaying beauty tips
might come in a svelte, fashionable case.
Regardless of how they look, kiosks tend to have several
features in common. Most readily apparent is the cabinet, the
shell which houses the kiosk's innards. The cabinet holds a CPU,
display, and any peripherals that the kiosk might need to do its
job.

The CPU, or central processing unit, is the computer that
runs the kiosk application. In most cases, it is simply a regular
personal computer bought from a major manufacturer (e.g. Dell
or IBM), or made with off-the-shelf parts. It contains the
processor, RAM, hard disk, and other components found in the
average PC.
The display presents the kiosk application to the user.
Often, it is simply a computer monitor, television, or flat-panel
screen connected to the CPU. However, more exotic displays like
large-format plasma screens are becoming increasingly popular in
kiosk applications for consumer marketing and advertising.

Kiosks often contain additional peripheral devices to
provide increased functionality. For example, a library selfcheckout kiosk might have a barcode reader for scanning library
books and cards, while a movie ticket kiosk might have a printer
and credit card reader for making transactions and printing
tickets. In addition, special input devices like touch screens and
industrial trackballs are often used to make the kiosk as durable
and easy-to-use as possible.
A fully-assembled kiosk with cabinet, CPU, display and
peripherals is still little more than a glorified PC. Special software
is needed to turn such a system into a fully-qualified interactive
kiosk.

Multimedia is present in standalone terminals, or kiosks, in
airport terminals, hotels, mall, train stations, museums, grocery
stores, and more.
It provides us information and help about a particular
place. Interactive kiosks enables you to make a transaction
without talking a sales agent.
Multimedia is piped to wireless devices such as cell phones.
So that information available around the clock, even in the middle
of the night, when live help is off duty.
e.g. : a menu screen from a supermarket kiosk that provides
services ranging from meal planning to coupons.
a hotel kiosks list nearby restaurants, maps of the city,
airline schedules, and provide guest services such as automated
checkout.

Museum kiosks are not only used to guide patrons through
the exhibits, but when installed at each exhibit, provide great
added depth allowing visitors to browse through richly detailed
information specific to that display

Multimedia was introduced in the internet with the advent
of WWW. In face, the web is the multimedia part of the internet.
In the early stages of the internet, you can view
information in plain text.
The web enables multimedia to be delivered online.
Playing live internet games with multiple players around
the world has caught much attention.
Some e-learning systems use multimedia on the internet as
a method to deliver learning materials to students anywhere.
e.g. all types of websites.

Business application that are multimedia based include
presentations, training, marketing, advertising, product demos,
databases and networked communication.
Multimedia is getting much utilization in training
programs.
Voice mail and video conferencing are useful in business.
A multimedia presentation can make an audience come
alive. Most presentation software packages let you add audio and
video clips to the usual slide show of graphics and text material.

e.g.
Medical doctors and veterinarians can practice surgery
methods via simulation prior to actual surgery.
Mechanics learn to repair engines.
Salespeople learn about product lines and leave behind
software to train their customers.
Laptop computers and high-resolution projectors are
commonplace for multimedia presentations on the road.
Cell phones and personal digital assistants(PDAs) utilizing
blue-tooth and Wi-Fi communications technology make
communication and the pursuit of business more efficient.

Mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs or
handheld computers), smartphones, and mobile divices are not
exceptions to multimedia.
MMS (multimedia messages servives) is a store-andforward method of transmitting graphics, video clips, sound files,
and short text messages over wireless network.
It also supports email addressing, so the device can sendemails directly to communication between mobile phones.

Multimedia becomes interactive multimedia when you give
the user some control over what information is viewed and when
it is viewed.
Interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia when its
designer provides a structure of linked elements through which a
user can navigate and interact.
When words are indexed to other words, we have a
HYPERTEXT SYSTEM. Hypertext is what the WWW is all about.
When text is stored in a computer instead of on printed
pages, the computer’s powerful processing capabilities can be
applied to make the text more accessible and meaningful. The text
can then be called hypertext; because the word, sections and
thoughts are linked, the user can navigate through text in a
nonlinear way, quickly.

Using Hypertext……..
Special programs for information management and hypertext
have been designed to present electronic text, images and other
elements in a database fashion.
Commercial systems have been used for large and
complicated mixtures of text and images.
for example, a detailed repair manual for a Boeing 747
aircraft, a parts catalog for Pratt & Whitney jet turbine engines, an
instant reference to hazardous chemicals, and electronic reference
libraries used in legal and library environments.
Google’s search engine produces about 1220000000 hits in
less than a quarter of a second.

Hypermedia Structure….
Two buzzwords used often in hypertext systems are link and node.
Links are connections between the conceptual elements,
that is, the nodes that may consist of text, graphics, sounds, or
related information in the knowledge base.
Along with the use of HTML for the WWW, the term
anchor is used for the reference from one document to another
document, image, sound or file on the Web.
Links are the navigation pathways and menus nodes are
accessible topics, documents, messages, and content elements.
A link anchor is where you come from;
A link end is the destination node linked to the anchor.
Some hypertext systems provide unidirectional navigation
and offer no return pathway; others are bidirectional.

Hypermedia Structure….
The simplest way to navigate hypermedia structures is via buttons
that let you access linked information that is contained at the
nodes. When you have finished examining the information, you
return to your starting location.
Navigation becomes more complicated when you add
associative links that connect elements not directly in the
hierarchy or sequence.
These are the paths where users can begin to get lost if you
do not provide location markers.

Hypertext tools….
Two functions are common to most hypermedia text management
systems, and they are often provided as separate applications:
building (authoring) and reading.
The builder creates the links, identifies nodes and
generates the all important index of words.
The index methodology and the search algorithms used to
find and group words according to user search criteria are typically
proprietary.
Hypertext systems are currently used for electronic
publishing and reference works, technical documentation,
educational courseware, interactive kiosks, electronic catalogs,
text and image databases.

Hypermedia Application….
Wide variety of application areas:
– small size: memos, letters, hypertext fiction,
announcements, advertisements.
completely authored manually.

– large size: service manuals, technical
documentation, educational material, archives,
encyclopedia, libraries.
information content often stored in databases.
many links often generated automatically
(e.g. based on occurrence of words or terms).

Memo

hypertext fiction

Announcement

hypertext fiction

Service mannual

introduction of Multimedia

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