KALASALINGAM UNIVERSITY

(KALASALINGAM ACADEMY OF RESEARCH & EDUCATION)

ACCREDITED BY NAAC WITH“A”GRADE
KRISHNANKOIL – 626126

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

MULTIMEDIA AND ITS APPLICATIONS

STUDY METRIALS

UNIT – 1

1) Definition:
Multimedia:

Multimedia is any combination of digitally manipulated text, photographs, graphic

art, sound, animation, and video elements. Multimedia elements are separately or
combined form used in computers to communicate ideas or to distribute information in a
compelling manner.

Advantages of Multimedia:

 Is easy to use.
 Enhancement of Text Only Messages
 Improves over Traditional Audio-Video Presentations
 Gains and Holds Attention
 Good for “computer-phobics”
 Multimedia is Entertaining as Well as Educational
 Cost-effective

Interactive multimedia:

Interactive multimedia allows two-way interaction with multimedia course

material, another computer, or another user with direct response to the input, as opposed
to one-way communication from TV, video, and other non-responsive media.

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Hypermedia:

Hypermedia, an extension of the term hypertext, is a nonlinear medium of

information that includes graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks.

Example: Internet

Multimedia Project:

The software vehicle, the messages, and the content presented on a computer,
television screen, PDA (personal digital assistant), or mobile phone together constitute a
multimedia project.

Ex: HTML web pages, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photoshop

2) Classification of Multimedia:

Any one or more of following media and/or a combination of these are generally
employed in all multimedia projects.

 Digital text
 Digital audio
 Digital image
 Digital video
 Digital graphics
 Digital animation

Digital Text:

Text plays an important role in many multimedia projects. Display design involves
the correct choice of font style, font color and font size. Designing text involves other
considering like anti-aliasing, special effects, drop shadows, cutouts and 3D text
animations.

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Digital Audio:

Under this category it includes digital music, recording, speeches, natural sounds
and musical instrumentation sound etc. The main aim and scope of this medium is
divided into two parts.

 To setup our multimedia audio system property

 To engage in various digital audio experiment.

Digital Image:

Digital images are made of picture elements called pixels. Typically, pixels are
organized in an ordered rectangular array. The size of an image is determined by the
dimensions of this pixel array. The image width is the number of columns, and the image
height is the number of rows in the array. Thus the pixel array is a matrix of M columns
x N rows.

 JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

 TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
 GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
 BMP file format (Windows bitmap)

Digital Video:

Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the

form of encoded digital data. Digitalized video contents are stored into VCD, DVD. The
file types are:

 MPG (Moving Picture Group)

 MPEG (Moving Picture Expert Group)
 WMV (Windows Media Video)
 ASF (Advanced System Format)

Digital Graphics:
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 The term 'graphics' used in this Unit refers to any type of visual representation
displayed on digital systems and screens (computers, phone, TV). Graphics fall into three
main categories:

 Images, (scanned/downloaded photos)

 Computer generated graphics, (logos, interface elements)
 Computer generated images (graphics that look lifelike)

Digital Animation:

Digital animation is the art of producing movements to the static objects. The
artificial movements of text or characters created in virtual environment using specialized
software packages. It is a time consuming and demands tremendous artistic vision and
capabilities on the part of the developer.

 2D animation
 3D animation

3) Multimedia Applications

Computer applications which combine different content forms (e.g. text, images,
graphics, sounds, video), which can be explored in an interactive and usually non-linear
way. There are two types of multimedia applications.

 Interactive applications
 Non interactive applications

Interactive Applications:

User inputs are needed to operate the multimedia projects.

 Games
 Training and tutorials
 Mobile games
 Multimedia websites

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Non-Interactive Applications:

A user input does not need to operate the multimedia projects.

 Presentation
 2D and 3D animation
 Video

Multimedia Applications in public domains:

Multimedia applications are more important in the following area:

 Multimedia in Entertainment
 Multimedia in Business
 Multimedia in Software
 Multimedia in Education and Training
 Multimedia on the Web

Multimedia in Entertainment

Multimedia in entertainment application aims at diverting users that is engaging

them in some or the other activity. The activities include listening to music, watching a
video, playing games, participating in an interactive story, meeting people at virtual
environment etc. Higher interactivity, mobility, content awareness is major roles played
by the multimedia application software. Multimedia is specially used in movie making
and animations. Multimedia games are a popular past time and software programmes are
also available in either CD-ROMs (or) on-line. Few video games are also uses
multimedia features. Multimedia application that allows users to actively participate is
called Interactive multimedia. Digital recording material may be just as durable and
instantly reproducible with perfect copies every time.

Multimedia in Business

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 Training, informational, promotional material, sales presentation point-of-sales
displays that allow for consumer integration and communication within and outside the
organization are all common applications of multimedia in the business world.
Multimedia presentation for many applications can be highly portable particularly in the
case of CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs and video tapes. The equipment required to produce
these presentations are relatively common place (or) otherwise easy to access. Existing
presentation uses Grab-keep-Attention in advertising. Business-to-Business and inter
office communication are often developed by creative service firms. For advance
multimedia presentation beyond symbols, slide shows to sell idea live-up training,
commercial multimedia developer may be hired to design Government services and non
professional services applications as well.

Multimedia in software

Software Engineers may use multimedia in computer from entertainment to

training such as military industrial training, designing digital games; it can be used as a
learning process. This multimedia software’s are created by professionals and software
engineers.

Multimedia in Education and Training

In education, multimedia is used to produce Computer Based Training and

providing reference books like Encyclopedia and Alma’s. Computer based training leads
the users go through the CD of the presentation text about particular and associated
information in various formats. The combination of education and entertainment gives us
edutainment [i.e., education with entertainment and entertainment with education.]. The
idea of Media Convergence is also becoming a major factor in the field of higher
education. Separate technologies have been defined such as voice, data and video that
shares resources and interact with each other synergistically creating new efficiencies.
Media convergence is rapidly changing the curriculum in Universities all over the world.
Along with all these things it is also changing the availability of jobs required skills,
savvy technological skills.

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E-learning

Electronic Learning has become a very good communication [interaction] media

between students and teachers. Several lines of research evolved the possibility for
learning and instructions are nearly endless. There are two categories which link the
students and teachers. One- those which can be used to convey the subject content, such
as print materials, video tapes and audio tapes, television computer based course ware,
CD-ROM etc. the other- those which permit communication between teacher and
students such as audio, video conferencing, tele-conferencing and internet.

Multimedia on the Web

In today’s world web plays a vital role in diversifying multimedia experience. It

has been a broadcast medium offering various online facilities like live TV, Pre-recorded
videos, photos, animations etc. During the coming years most multimedia applications
experience on the internet and occur on the WWW (World Wide Web). Programmes
contain HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) pages which are also available and
provided by XML (extended Mark-up Language). Along with it Java Script is also used.

Plug-in and Media Players are software programmes that allow us to experience
multimedia on the web. File formats requiring this software are known as MIME
(Multimedia Internet Mail Extension) types. To embed a media file, just copy the source
code and paste it into user’s webpage. It is as simple as easy.

Plug-ins is software programmes that work with web browser to display

multimedia. When web browser encounters a multimedia file it hands off the data to the
plug-in to play (or) display the file. Multimedia players are also software programmes
that can play audio and video files both ON and OFF the web. The concept of streaming
media is important to understand how media can be delivered on the web.

4) Multimedia Hardware

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 Multimedia hardware focuses on the ability to capture, store and present text,
pictures, audio and video. Computer is able to convert the data into digital format and
store the data into a file. This file can be edited and or applied into a multimedia
presentation product. Several components are involved in the multimedia projects such
as:
 Network hardware
 System hardware
 Storage hardware

Network Hardware:
Local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs) can connect the
members of a workgroup. In a LAN, workstations are usually located within a short
distance of one another, on the same floor of a building, for example. LANs allow direct
communication and sharing of peripheral resources such as file servers, printers,
scanners, and network routers.

WANs are communication systems spanning greater distances, typically set up

and managed by large corporations and institutions for their own use, or to share with
other users.

Ethernet is only a method for wiring up computers, so you still will need
client/server software to enable the computers to speak with each other and pass files
back and forth.

Internet service provider (ISP) helps to connect millions of computers and other
devices for deliver the multimedia content.

System Hardware:

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 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a standard for connecting devices to a computer.
These devices are automatically recognized (“plug-and play”) and installed without users
needing to install special cards or turn the computer off and on when making the
connection. USB technology has improved in performance since its introduction and has
become the connection method of choice for many peripheral devices, from cameras to
keyboards to scanners and printers. USB uses a single cable to connect as many as 127
USB peripherals to a single personal computer. Hubs can be used to “daisy chain” many
devices. USB connections are now common on video game consoles, cameras, GPS
locators, cell phones, televisions, MP3 players, PDAs, and portable memory devices.

Storage Hardware:
To estimate the memory requirements of a multimedia project — the space
required on a hard disk, thumb drive, RAM, ROM, CD, and DVD used while your
computer is running.

Hard disk can be provided a large-capacity of storage space, server-mounted on a

network. As multimedia has reached consumer desktops, makers of hard disks have built
smaller-profile, larger-capacity, faster, and less-expensive hard disks. As network and
Internet servers drive the demand for centralized data storage requiring terabytes (one
trillion bytes), hard disks are often configured into fail-proof redundant arrays offering
built-in protection against crashes.

Pen drives or thumb drives is a storage devices are about the size of a thin
cigarette lighter and can be integrated with USB to several GB of data. Consisting of a
small printed circuit board encased in a sturdy metal or plastic casing with a USB
connector covered with a cap, the flash drive is trendy as a status symbol, and convenient
to use. This same solid-state storage is used in digital cameras, cell phones, and audio
recording devices, and for solid state hard drives that are found in handheld devices.

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 Random-access memory (RAM) is a form of computer data storage that stores
data and machine code currently being used. A random-access memory device allows
data items to be read or written in almost the same amount of time irrespective of the
physical location of data inside the memory. 4GB of RAM for the multimedia computer
user (one who watches DVDs, watches streaming video, uses Photoshop, and does some
light multitasking).

Read-only memory (ROM) is not volatile. When you turn off the power to a
ROM chip, it will not forget, or lose its memory. ROM is typically used in computers to
hold the small BIOS program that initially boots up the computer.

Compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM) players have become an integral

part of the multimedia development workstation and are an important delivery vehicle for
mass-produced projects. A wide variety of developer utilities, graphic backgrounds, stock
photography and sounds, applications, games, reference texts, and educational software
can stored in the medium. A CD-RW (read and write) recorder can rewrite 700MB of
data.

Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) have capable to store gigabyte of data but also full-
motion video (MPEG2) and high-quality audio in surround sound, this is an excellent
medium for delivery of multimedia projects.

External Multimedia Equipments:

Add-on devices need for some multimedia projects, such as:
Scanner, Camera, Handy cam, color inkjet printer, microphones, and speakers.
Finding the Multimedia installed hardware:
 Go to start -> setting -> control panel -> sounds and devices -> Double click the
icon
 The multimedia options panel opens up in all the multimedia hardware devices
installed in the system.

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  The panel list out the hardware devices used for the multimedia projects.

5) Multimedia Software

Multimedia Software is a basic tool set for building multimedia projects contains
one or more authoring systems and various editing applications for text, images, sounds,
and motion video.

Ex: Adobe photoshop, Macromedia Flash

The tools used for creating and editing multimedia elements on both Windows and
Macintosh platforms do image processing and editing, drawing and illustration, 3-D and
CAD, OCR and text editing, sound recording and editing, video and moviemaking, and
various utilitarian housekeeping tasks.

Text Editing and Word Processing Tools

A word processor is usually the first software tool computer users learn. From
letters, invoices, and storyboards to project content, your word processor may also be
your most often used tool, as you design and build a multimedia project. The better
you’re keyboarding or typing skills, the easier and more efficient your multimedia day-
to-day life will be.

Typically, an office or workgroup will choose a single word processor to share

documents in a standard format. And most often, that word processor comes bundled in
an office suite that might include spreadsheet, database, e-mail, web browser, and
presentation applications.

OCR Software (Scanner)

OCR software turns bitmapped characters into electronically recognizable ASCII

text. A scanner is typically used to create the bitmap. Then the software breaks the
bitmap into chunks according to whether it contains text or graphics, by examining the
texture and density of areas of the bitmap and by detecting edges. The text areas of the

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image are then converted to ASCII characters using probability and expert system
algorithms. Most OCR applications claim about 99 percent accuracy when reading 8- to
36-point printed characters at 300 dpi and can reach processing speeds of about 150
characters per second. These programs do, however, have difficulty recognizing poor
copies of originals where the edges of characters have bled; these and poorly received
faxes in small print may yield more recognition errors than it is worthwhile to correct
after the attempted recognition.

Painting and Drawing Tools

Painting software, such as Photoshop, Fireworks, and Painter, is dedicated to

producing crafted bitmap images. Drawing software, such as CorelDraw, FreeHand,
Illustrator, Designer, and Canvas, is dedicated to producing vector-based line art easily
printed to paper at high resolution. Some software applications combine drawing and
painting capabilities, but many authoring systems can import only bitmapped images.

3-D Modeling and Animation Tools

3-D modeling software has increasingly entered the mainstream of graphic design
as its ease of use improves. 3-D is an abbreviation for “three dimensions.” While in a 2-D
graphics program, images are painted in the “x” (horizontal or width) and “y” (vertical or
height) axes, in 3-D depth is labeled as the “z” axis. Every program that layers objects on
the screen must know each object’s “z” axis. Web browsers, for example, place objects
on the screen using the CSS “z-index” attribute. Some software programs (such as Flash
CS4 and ToonBoom Studio) can simulate depth by automatically scaling images based
on a z-axis value to create a cartoonish or simulated 3-D effect. This differs from true 3-
D modeling and rendering, where objects can be rotated and viewed from any direction
or angle.

Each rendered 3-D image takes from a few seconds to a few hours to complete,
depending upon the complexity of the drawing and the number of drawn objects included
in it. If you are making a complex walkthrough or flyby, plan to set aside many hours of
rendering time on your computer.

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Image-Editing Tools

Image-editing applications are specialized and powerful tools for creating,

enhancing, and retouching existing bitmapped images. These applications also provide
many of the features and tools of painting and drawing programs and can be used to
create images from scratch as well as images digitized from scanners, video frame-
grabbers, digital cameras, clip art files, or original artwork files created with a painting or
drawing package.

Sound-Editing Tools

Sound-editing tools for both digitized and MIDI sound let you see music as well as
hear it. By drawing a representation of a sound in fine increments, whether a score or a
waveform, you can cut, copy, paste, and otherwise edit segments of it with great
precision—something impossible to do in real time.

Animation, Video, and Digital Movie Tools

Animations and digital video movies are sequences of bitmapped graphic scenes
(frames), rapidly played back. But animations can also be made within the authoring
system by rapidly changing the location of objects, or sprites, to generate an appearance
of motion. Most authoring tools adopt either a frame- or object-oriented approach to
animation, but rarely both.

To make movies from video, you may need special hardware to convert an analog
video signal to digital data. Macs and PCs with FireWire (IEEE 1394) or USB ports can
import digital video directly from digital camcorders. Moviemaking tools such as
Premiere, Final Cut Pro, VideoShop, and MediaStudio Pro let you edit and assemble
video clips captured from camera, tape, other digitized movie segments, animations,
scanned images, and from digitized audio or MIDI files.

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Authoring Tools

Multimedia authoring tools provide the frame work for organizing and editing the
elements of multimedia projects. Authoring software provides an integrated element for
combining the content and the functions of the project. It enables the developer to
combine text, graphics, audio, video and animation into an interactive presentation.

Features of Authoring Tools

 Basic features
 Editing and organizing features
 Programming features
 Interactivity features
 Performance timing and playback features
 Cross-platform and internet features

Types of Authoring Tools

There are 3 types of authoring tools and they are as follows:
1. Card and page based tools
2. Icon based- event driven tools
3. Time based tools

Card and page based tools:

This tool provides a simple and easily understandable metaphor for organizing
multimedia elements. It contains media objects such as buttons, text files and graphic
objects. It provides facilities for linking objects to pages (or) cards. The software required
is Hyper card and Linked card tool box.

Icon based- event driven tools:

Icons (or) object based tools are the simplest event driven authoring object. Its
provision of simple branching has the ability to go to another section of multimedia
production. Multimedia elements and interaction are organized in the flowchart. A flow

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chart can be build by dragging appropriate icons from a library and then dropping them in
the required field finally adding multimedia elements to it. The software required is Icon
Author and Author ware.

Time based tools:

Time based tools are best suited for a message with a beginning and an end so that
a message can be passed within a stipulated time period. Few time based tools facilitate
navigation and interactive control. It has the branching technique so that different loops
can be formed for different multimedia applications and time period can be set for these
individual applications. The software required is Adobe’s Directors.

6) CD-ROM:

CDROM have become an integrate part of the multimedia devolvement

workstation and are an important delivery vehicle for large project. A wide variety of
developer utility graphics background, stock photo graphics, games, text and software are
used this medium.

CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory) discs can be stored the data upto 80
minutes of full-screen video, images, or sound. The disc can also contain unique mixes of
images, sounds, text, video, and animations controlled by an authoring system to provide
unlimited user interaction.

The CD-ROM is a plastic disk of 4.6" diameter. It can hold 650/700 MB of data,
and it is very inexpensive to produce. Discs can be stamped out of polycarbonate plastic
as fast as cookies on a baker’s production line and just as cheaply. Virtually all personal
computers sold today include at least a CD-ROM player, and the software that drives
these computers is commonly delivered on a CD-ROM disc.

CD-ROM players have typically been very slow to access and transmit data (150
KBps, which is the speed required of consumer Audio CDs), but developments have led
to double-, triple-, quadruple speed, 24x, 48x, and 56x drives designed specifically for
computer (not Red Book Audio) use.

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 These write once, enhanced CDs make excellent high-capacity file archives and
are used extensively by multimedia developers for pre-mastering and testing CD-ROM
projects and titles. Because they have become very inexpensive, they are also used for
short-run distribution of finished multimedia projects and data backup.

Types of CD-ROM:

Drive type Name The drive can

CD-R Compact Disk Recordable Read CD-ROM and CD-R.
 Write once on special disks named CD R
CD-RW Compact Disk ReWritable Read CD-ROMs and CD-R. Write and re-
write on special disks (CD-RW).
7) DVD:

DVD technology was developed on top of CD technology. A DVD is also 12cm in

diameter with slightly higher thickness and weight. A DVD can hold around 4.7 GB of
data or roughly the data connected in 7 CD ROMs.
Single layered discs – A DVD with one reflective layer containing 4.7 GB of storage
space.
Double layered discs – A DVD has to be read from both directions such as top and
bottom

Types of DVD:

DVD-R Media: A write-once, recordable format. DVD-R drives can write DVD-R discs,
which can be written to only once, as opposed to a DVD-RW drive, which can write and
rewrite to RW media multiple times. The Authoring Use Drive (635nm Laser) was
introduced in 1998 by Pioneer, and the General Use Format (650nm Laser) was
authorized in 2000. DVD-R offers a write-once, read-many storage format akin to CD-R
and is used to master DVD-Video and DVD-ROM discs.

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DVD-RW Media: DVD Rewritable. A rewritable DVD format that is similar to
DVD+RW, but its capability to work as a random access device is not as good as that of
the +RW. DVD-RW has a read-write capacity of 4.7 GB.

DVD+R Media: Short for DVD + Recordable, a recordable DVD format similar to a
CD-R. A DVD+R can only record data once and then the data becomes permanent on the
disc. The disc cannot be recorded onto a second time. DVD+R and DVD+RW formats
are supported by Philips, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Ricoh, Yamaha and others.

DVD+RW Media: The DVD Plus RW Alliance is a group of companies that includes
Philips and Sony. They propose standards for recordable and rewritable DVDs.

DVD+R Dual Layer / Double Layer Media: Double Layer DVD+R media has an
amazing 8.5GB of storage capacity. This incredible capacity is enough for up to 4 hours
of DVD quality video, 16 hours of VHS quality video or over 120 hours of MP3 audio.
Compatible with all current DVD video players and DVD-ROM drives as well as new
DVD+R DL drives, the disc is ideal for virtually any business or household application.
Dual-layer DVD-R media offers genuine advantage over the current single layer 4.7GB
DVD. The new dual-layer recordable DVD-R disc allows users to read, write or view
almost twice the amount of data that is currently possible with the single layer. The
advanced technology means that material can be read or recorded on one layer without
affecting the other. There's no need to flip sides or change discs.

DVD-RAM Media: DVD Random Access Memory is a rewritable DVD disc endorsed
by Panasonic, Hitachi and Toshiba. It is a cartridge-based, and more recently, bare disc
technology for data recording and playback. DVD-RAM bare discs are fragile and do not
guarantee data integrity. The first DVD-RAM drives had a capacity of 2.6GB (single-
sided) or 5.2GB (double-sided). DVD-RAM Version 2 discs have double-sided 9.4GB
discs. DVD-RAM drives typically read DVD-Video, DVD-ROM and CD media. The
current installed base of DVD-ROM drives and DVD-Video players cannot read DVD-
RAM media.

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