Multimedia Systems

Code: OEC-CS701B

Unit 1: Introduction

Multimedia is an interactive media and provides multiple ways to represent information to the user in a powerful
manner. It provides an interaction between users and digital information. It is a medium of communication.
Some of the sectors where multimedias is used extensively are education, training, reference material, business
presentations, advertising and documentaries.

Definition of Multimedia

By definition Multimedia is a representation of information in an attractive and interactive manner with the use
of a combination of text, audio, video, graphics and animation. In other words we can say that Multimedia is a
computerized method of presenting information combining textual data, audio, visuals (video), graphics and
animations. For examples: E-Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Video Conferencing, and Multimedia Message Service
(MMS).

Multimedia as name suggests is the combination of Multi and Media that is many types of media
(hardware/software) used for communication of information.

Components of Multimedia

Following are the common components of multimedia:

i. Text

All multimedia productions contain some amount of text.

ii. Graphics

Graphics make the multimedia application attractive. In many cases people do not like reading large amount of
textual matter on the screen. Therefore, graphics are used more often than text to explain a concept, present
background information etc. There are two types of Graphics −

a. Bitmap Images

Bitmap images are real images that can be captured from devices such as digital cameras or scanners. Generally
bitmap images are not editable. Bitmap images require a large amount of memory.

b. Vector Graphics

Vector graphics are drawn on the computer and only require a small amount of memory. These graphics are
editable.

iii. Audio

A multimedia application may require the use of speech, music and sound effects. These are called audio or
sound element of multimedia. Audio are of analog and digital types. Analog audio or sound refers to the original
sound signal. Computer stores the sound in digital form. Therefore, the sound used in multimedia application is
digital audio.

iv. Video

The term video refers to the moving picture, accompanied by sound such as a picture in television. Video
element of multimedia application gives a lot of information in small duration of time. Digital video is useful in
multimedia application for showing real life objects. Video have highest performance demand on the computer
memory and on the bandwidth if placed on the internet.

v. Animation

Animation is a process of making a static image look like it is moving. An animation is just a continuous series
of still images that are displayed in a sequence. The animation can be used effectively for attracting attention.
Animation also makes a presentation light and attractive.

Applications of Multimedia

Following are the common areas of applications of multimedia.

Multimedia in Business

Multimedia can be used in many applications in a business. The multimedia network should support the
following facilities −

 Voice Mail
 Electronic Mail
 Multimedia based FAX
 Office Needs
 Employee Training
 Sales and Other types of Group Presentation
 Records Management

Multimedia in Marketing and Advertising

By using multimedia marketing of new products can be greatly enhanced. Multimedia boost communication on
an affordable cost opened the way for the marketing and advertising personnel. Presentation that have flying
banners, video transitions, animations, and sound effects are some of the elements used in composing a
multimedia based advertisement to appeal to the consumer in a way never used before and promote the sale of
the products.

Multimedia in Education

Many computer games with focus on education are now available. Consider an example of an educational game
which plays various rhymes for kids. The child can paint the pictures, increase reduce size of various objects etc
apart from just playing the rhymes. Several other multimedia packages are available in the market which
provide a lot of detailed information and playing capabilities to kids.

Multimedia in Bank

Bank is another public place where multimedia is finding more and more application in recent times. People go
to bank to open saving/current accounts, deposit funds, withdraw money, know various financial schemes of the
bank, obtain loans etc. Every bank has a lot of information which it wants to impart to in customers. For this
purpose, it can use multimedia in many ways. Bank also displays information about its various schemes on a PC
 monitor placed in the rest area for customers. Today on-line and internet banking have become very popular.
These use multimedia extensively.

Multimedia in Hospital

Multimedia best use in hospitals is for real time monitoring of conditions of patients in critical illness or
accident. The conditions are displayed continuously on a computer screen and can alert the doctor/nurse on duty
if any changes are observed on the screen. In hospitals multimedia can also be used to diagnose an illness with
CD-ROMs/ Cassettes/ DVDs full of multimedia based information about various diseases and their treatment.
Some hospitals extensively use multimedia presentations in training their junior staff of doctors and nurses.
Multimedia displays are now extensively used during critical surgeries.

Multimedia Pedagogues

Pedagogues are useful teaching aids only if they stimulate and motivate the students. The audio-visual support
to a pedagogue can actually help in doing so. A multimedia tutor can provide multiple numbers of challenges to
the student to stimulate his interest in a topic. The instruction provided by pedagogue have moved beyond
providing only button level control to intelligent simulations, dynamic creation of links, composition and
collaboration and system testing of the user interactions.

Communication Technology and Multimedia Services

The advancement of high computing abilities, communication ways and relevant standards has started the
beginning of an era where you will be provided with multimedia facilities at home. These services may include
–

 Basic Television Services

 Interactive entertainment
 Digital Audio
 Video on demand
 Home shopping
 Financial Transactions
 Interactive multiplayer or single player games
 Digital multimedia libraries
 E-Newspapers, e-magazines

Text

In multimedia presentations text can be combined with other media in a powerful way to present information
and express moods. Text can be of various types.
 Plain Text It consisting of fixed size characters having essentially the same type of appearance.
 Formatted Text Where appearance can be changed using font parameters.
 Hyperlink This can serve to link different electronic documents and enable the user to jump from one to the
other in a non-linear way.

Text can be compressed to generate smaller size file without any loss, using compression algorithm. Text can be
stored into a number of file formats each requiring its own specific application to open and modify the contents.
 RTF The Rich Text Format (often abbreviated RTF) is a document file format developed by
Microsoft in 1987 for cross-platform document (including text and graphics) interchange. Most word
processors are able to read and write RTF documents. RTF file is useful format for basic formatted
text documents such as instructions manuals, resumes, letters, and modest information documents.
These document support bold, italic, underline text formatting. Left, right, center justification is also
supported. Font specification and document margins are also supported.
 HTML HTML, stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for
web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for
text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc. as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows
images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It is written in the
form of HTML elements consisting of "tags" surrounded by angle brackets within the web page
content.
Hypertext is a text which contains links to other texts.
HyperMedia is not constrained to be text-based. It can include other media, e.g., graphics, images,
and especially continuous media – sound and video.
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a clear example of a hypermedia application. PowerPoint, Adobe
Acrobat (or other PDF software) Adobe Flash

Audio
Sound is a physical phenomenon produced by the vibration of matter and transmitted as waves. It
involves three systems:
 the source which emits sound;
 the medium through which the sound propagates;
 the detector which receives and interprets the sound.

Sound waves can be characterised by the following attributes:

Period, Frequency, Amplitude, Bandwidth, Pitch, Loudness, Dynamic

Period is the interval at which a periodic signal repeats regularly.

Pitch is a perception of sound by human beings It measures how 'high' is the sound as it is perceived
by a listener.
Frequency measures a physical property of a wave. It is the reciprocal value of period f = 1/T.
Musical instruments are tuned to produce a set of fixed pitches.
Amplitude is the measure of sound levels. For a digital sound, amplitude is the sample value.
Dynamic range means the change in sound levels.
Bandwidth is the range of frequencies a device can produce or a human can hear.
Computer Representation of Sound

Sound waves are continuous while computers are good at handling discrete numbers. In order to store a sound
wave in a computer, samples of the wave are taken. This process is known as digitisation. This method of
digitising sound is known as pulse code modulation (PСМ).

Audio File Formats

The most commonly used digital sound format in Windows systems is.wav files.

Sound is stored in.wav as digital samples known as Pulse Code Modulation(PCМ).

Each.wav file has a header containing information of the file.

 Type of format
 size of the data
 number of channels
 samples per second
 bytes per sample

Digitization of Sound

Digitization is a process of converting the analog signals to a digital signal. There are three steps of
digitization of sound.

Sampling Quantization Encoding

There is usually no compression in. wav file. Other format may use different compression technique to
reduce file size.
. vox use Adaptive Delta Pulse Code Modulation (ADPCМ).

.mp3 MPEG-1 layer 3 audio.

Computer Music – MIDI

Sound waves, whether occurred natural or man-made, are often very complex, i.e., they consist of many
frequencies. Digital sound is relatively straight forward to record complex sound. However, it is quite
difficult to generate (or synthesize) complex sound.

There is a better way to generate high quality music. This is known as MIDI – Musical Instrument Digital
Interface. It specifies the hardware connection between equipment’s as well as the format in which the data
are transferred between the equipment’s.

Common MIDI devices include electronic music synthesisers, modules, and MIDI devices in common
sound cards.

MIDI Audio

The MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a connectivity standard that musicians use to hook
together musical instruments (such as keyboards and synthesizers) and computer equipment. Using MIDI, a
musician can easily create and edit digital music tracks. The MIDI system records the notes played, the
length of the notes, the dynamics (volume alterations), the tempo, the instrument being played, and
hundreds of other parameters, called control changes. Because MIDI records each note digitally, editing a
track of MIDI music is much easier and more accurate than editing a track of audio. The musician can
change the notes, dynamics, tempo, and even the instrument being played with the click of button. Also,
MIDI files are basically text documents, so they take up very little disk space. The only catch is that you
need MIDI-compatible hardware or software to record and playback MIDI files. MIDI provides a protocol
for passing detailed descriptions of musical scores, such as the notes, sequences of notes, and what the
instrument will play these notes. A MIDI file is very small, often as small as 10 KB for a 1-minute playback
(a .wav file of the same duration requires 5 to 10 MB of disk space). This is because it doesn’t contain
audio waves like audio file formats do, but instructions on how to recreate the music. Another advantage of
the file containing instructions is that it is quite easy to change the performance by changing, adding or
removing one or more of the instructions – like note, pitch, tempo, and so on – thus creating a completely
new performance. This is the main reason for the file to be extremely popular in creating, learning, and
playing music. MIDI actually consists of three distinctly different parts – the physical connector, the
message format, and the storage format. The physical connector connects and transports data between
devices; the message format (considered to be the most important part of MIDI) controls the stored data and
the connected devices; and the storage format stores all the data and information. Today, MIDI is seen more
of a way to accomplish music, rather than a format or a protocol. This is why phrases like “composing in
MIDI” and “creating MIDI” are quite commonly used by musicians. MIDI files may be converted to MP3,
WAV, WMA, FLAC, OGG, AAC, MPC on any Windows platform using Total Audio Converter.

Advantages of MIDI
  Since they are small, MIDI files embedded in web pages load and play promptly.
 Length of a MIDI file can be changed without affecting the pitch of the music or degrading audio
quality
 MIDI files will be 200 to 1000 times smaller than CD-quality digital audio files. Therefore, MIDI
files are much smaller than digitized audio.
 MIDI files do not take up as much as RAM, disk space, and CPU resources.
 A single MIDI link can carry up to sixteen channels of information, each of which can be routed
to a separate device.

MIDI Hardware

An electronic musical instrument or a computer which has MIDI interface should has one or more MIDI
ports. The MIDI ports on musical instruments are usually labelled with:

IN - for receiving MIDI data;

OUT- for outputting MIDI data that are generated by the instrument;

THRU - for passing MIDI data to the next instrument.

MIDI devices can be daisy-chained together.

Digital Audio Quality

The quality and size of digital audio depends on:

 The sampling rate

 The sample size
 The number of channels
 The time span of the recording

Audio File Formats

An audio file's format determines what files a PC can open and play, and how much space the file occupies
on a disk. File formats include:

 MP3
 WAV
 MIDI

MP3 Format
MP3 is a standard format for music files sent over the Internet. MP3s:
 Use one of three MPEG standards for audio compression
 Can compress an audio file to about 1/12 of the space it occupies on a CD with no significant loss of
sound quality

WAV Format

WAV is a standard for sound files on Windows and Macintosh PCs. WAVs:

 Do not compress audio as much as MP3s

 Are generally used for sound effects and other small files

MIDI
 MIDI files contain no sound. They contain only performance data.
Advantages of MIDI Files
MIDI files are tiny, often 10K or less. They download from a web page in no time and fit easily on a
floppy disk. MIDI files are ideal any time you want music to start playing immediately.

Lossy Compression and Lossless Compression

Lossy compression restores the large file to its original form with some level of loss in data which can be

considered negligible, while lossless compression restores the compressed file to its original form without any

loss of data.

Lossy Compression:

The lossy compression method filters and discards unnecessary and redundant data to lower the quantity

compressed and then executed on a computer. Lossy compression works by removing any excessive or

redundant data from most multimedia files. A JPEG image, for example, can be shrunk by up to 80% of its

original size without sacrificing visual quality. This can be accomplished by lowering the pixel count,

brightness, and color density. Similarly, background audio sounds are removed from MP3 and MPEG without

affecting the end-user experience much.

Lossless Compression

With lossless compression the file data is restored and rebuilt in its original form after decompression, enabling

the image to take up less space without any discernible loss in picture quality. No data is lost and as the process

can be reversed, it’s also known as reversible compression.

Difference between Lossy Compression and Lossless Compression

Key Lossy Compression Lossless Compression

By using lossy compression, you can get

Data Even unnoticeable bytes are retained with
rid of bytes that are regarded as
Elimination lossless compression.
unnoticeable.

After lossy compression, a file cannot be After lossless compression, a file can be
Restoration
restored to its original form. restored to its original form.
 Key Lossy Compression Lossless Compression

Quality suffers as a result of lossy

No quality degradation happens in lossless
Quality compression. It leads to some level of
compression.
data loss.

Lossy compression reduces the size of a Lossless compression reduces the size but
Size
file to a large extent. less as compared to lossy compression.

Transform coding, Discrete Cosine Run length encoding, Lempel-Ziv-Welch,

Algorithm
Transform, Discrete Wavelet transform, Huffman Coding, Arithmetic encoding,
used
fractal compression, etc. etc.

Lossless compression is used to compress

Lossy compression is used to compress
Uses files containing text, program codes, and
audio, video and images.
other such critical data.

The data holding capacity of the lossy Lossless compression has low data
Capacity compression approach is quite holding capacity as compared to lossy
significant. compression.

Images: JPEG Images: RAW, BMP, PNG

Video: MPEG, AVC, HEVC General: ZIP

File types
Audio: MP3, AAC Audio: WAV, FLAC