Multimedia Technology

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Introduction to Multimedia

Introduction to Multimedia

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1. Describe Multimedia.
2. List the elements of Multimedia.
3. Enumerate the different applications of Multimedia.
4. Determine the various Multimedia software tools.

Introduction
Multimedia is nothing new. The nature of human communication has always
involved “multimedia”. We hear, speak, write, draw, make gestures, play
music, and act out our thoughts and feelings to one another. We have enjoyed
multimedia presentations since our childhood through film, televisions,
videotape and videodisc. These have all involved analog media. What makes
recent developments in multimedia new and exciting is that we can now deal
with these various media in a digital format.
The digital format allows manipulation, sharing, and merging of data in ways
that analog cannot. For example, writers can incorporate digital images into a
word processing document. They can record and edit sounds to link with
images or text, permitting the data types to serve multiple purposes with a
minimum of reworking. Users can program the computer to seek files
randomly, to store these different files digitally, just as any computer file.
They can edit this information, eliminating unnecessary parts, transforming
them, or adding alternative data or special effects – all without expensive
post-production.

What is Multimedia?
The term multimedia has been coined
from two terms: multiple and media.
Hence multimedia means usage of
multiple media to communicate. In
other words, multimedia is a
combination of text, graphic art, sound,
animation, and video elements
delivered to you by computer or other
electronic means. Figure 1 Multimedia/Digital Media

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Three Major types of Multimedia
 Interactive media, when you allow the end user to control what and
when the elements are delivered.
 Hypermedia, when you provide a structure of linked elements
through which the user can navigate.
 Linear multimedia, when users can sit back and watch it just as they
do a movie or television, starting at a beginning and running through
to an end.

Why Use Multimedia?

Multimedia offers powerful means of communication.
Multimedia is good for:
 Showing what things look like, how they move and how they change.
 Keeping an audience's interest.
 Establishing personal contact.
 Establishing the identity and academic credibility of a speaker.
 Communicating the speaker's enthusiasm for the subject.

Where to Use Multimedia?

Multimedia finds its application in various areas including, but not limited to,
advertisements, art, education, entertainment, engineering, medicine,
mathematics, business, and scientific research.
Let us discuss some of the usage of multimedia in various fields:

Multimedia in Business
Business applications for multimedia include presentations, training,
marketing, advertising, product demonstrations, databases, catalogs, and
network communications.

Figure 2 Presentations / Video-

conferencing

Figure 3 Advertising / Marketing

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Introduction to Multimedia

Multimedia in Education
Schools are perhaps the neediest destination for multimedia. Multimedia will
provoke radical changes in the teaching process in the coming decades,
particularly as smart students discover they can go beyond the limits of
traditional teaching methods. Indeed, in some instances, teachers may
become guides and mentors along a learning path instead of the primary
providers of information and understanding – the students, not the teachers,
become the core of the teaching and learning process. This is a sensitive
subject among educators, so educational software is often positioned as
“enrichening” the learning process, not as a potential substitute for
traditional teacher-based methods.

Figure 4.Training and Learning

In education multimedia is useful for:

 Recorded or broadcast lectures.
 Bringing in an expert speaker from a distant location.
 Demonstrating processes that learners may not otherwise have the
opportunity to see (such as a rare surgical technique).
 Demonstrating techniques that learners will have to try themselves
later (such as setting up laboratory equipment).
 Recording students' performances to enable feedback and promote
reflection bringing the real world into the classroom.
For research they are useful for:
 Dissemination of results through: recorded or broadcast conference
presentations and discussions.
 Demonstrating new techniques to colleagues.
 Publicizing and promoting research outcomes to related professionals
and to the general public.
 For capturing data - such as focus groups, interviews, behavioral
observations.

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Multimedia in Entertainment
Multimedia is heavily used in the entertainment industry to develop special
effects in animations and movies. Movies like Ice Age, Jurassic Park, and
Avatar will always be remembered for their special effects and animations.

Figure 5 Multimedia Entertainment Specialist

Multimedia at Home
Eventually, most multimedia projects will reach the home via television sets
or monitors with built-in interactive user inputs – either on old-fashioned
color TVs or on new high-definition sets.
Today, home consumers of multimedia either own a computer with an
attached CD-ROM drive or a set-top player that hooks up to the television.
Many homes already boast Nintendo, Sega, or Atari game machines
connected to TV. Multimedia games are very popular among children and a
variety of these games are available on CD or online. With availability of
gaming software programs, virtual gaming has become a reality today.

Figure 6 Home Multimedia

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Introduction to Multimedia

Multimedia in Public Places

In hotels, train stations, shopping malls, museums, and grocery stores,
multimedia will become available at stand-alone terminals or kiosks to
provide information and help. Such installations reduce demand on
traditional information booths and personnel, add value, and they can work
around the clock, even in the middle of the night, when live help is off-duty.

Figure 7 Kiosk information systems

Virtual Reality
In multimedia, where technology and creative invention converge you’ll find
virtual reality, or VR. Goggles, helmets, special gloves, and bizarre human
interfaces attempt to place you “inside” a life-like experience.
VR requires terrific computing horsepower to be realistic. In VR, your
cyberspace is made up of many thousands geometric objects plotted in multi-
dimensional space: the more objects and the more points that describe the
objects, the higher the resolution and the more realistic your view.
VR is an extension of multimedia – it uses the basic multimedia elements of
imagery, sound, and animation. Because it requires instrumented feedback
from a wired-up person, VR is perhaps interactive multimedia at its fullest
extension.

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 Figure 8 Virtual reality technologies

Elements of
Multimedia

Figure 9 Elements of multimedia

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
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Introduction to Multimedia

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 to include as an alternative, in
case the digital image item is not available.

Images
Digital image files appear in many multimedia applications. Digital
photographs can display application content or can alternatively form part of
a user interface. Information communicated through images is easier to
remember and understand.
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.

Audio
Audio files and streams play a major role in some multimedia systems. Audio
enhances multimedia applications with music, sound effects, and speech.

Video
Video has the ability to convey more information, more accurately than text,
graphics, or still pictures alone. It is also a more engaging and exciting way to
communicate. Video in a digital format becomes even more powerful because
we can capture it, edit it, and play it back on existing computer systems and
integrate it into a wide variety of applications.

Animation
Any static presentation becomes lively by adding a video or animation.
Let us first differentiate between animation and video.
Video refers to the sequence of natural scenes captured using analog or
digital video capturing device. Animation is a visual change over time. The
digital images are played one after the other to create a moving effect. We
can say that animation is created from drawn pictures and video is created
using real time visuals.

Overview of Multimedia Software Tools

a) Music Sequencing and Notation
Cakewalk, Cubase, Soundedit

b) Digital Audio
Cool Edit, Sound Forge, Pro Tools, Audacity

c) Graphics and Image Editing

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 Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Freehand

d) Video Editing
Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, Final cut Pro

e) Animation
Java 4D, DirectX, OpenGL, 3D Studio Max, Softimage XSI, Maya

f) Multimedia Authoring
Adoble Flash, Adobe Director, Authorware, Quest

Activities and Exercises

Answer the following questions:
1.) Why is it that audio/sound is considered as one of the most critical
element of a multimedia application?
2.) How multimedia affects the business world?
3.) Search for latest Multimedia applications local and international and
explain the use of this technology and its contribution to community.

Glossary
End user – the viewer of a multimedia project.
Virtual gaming – players in different locations can play a game together
sitting on their own computers.
Cyberspace - the online world of computer networks and the Internet.

References
Norman Desmarais, 1994. Multimedia on the PC A guide for Information
Professionals, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Tay Vaughan, 2011. Multimedia: Making It Work, 8th Ed.: The McGraw-Hill
Companies
Rahul, 2014. Multimedia and its Uses/Applications.
http://studentstudyhub.com/multimedia-uses-applications/
Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol, UK.
Using Video, Audio and Multimedia for Education and Research.
http://www.young-
train.net/multimedia/tutorials/video_audio_multimedia/page_04.ht
m
5 Components of Multimedia. Sue Smith. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/5-
components-multimedia-28279.html
http://www.paragonmultimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/lync-
meetingpro.png
http://letslearnaboutimd208.blogspot.com/2013/03/multimedia.html
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cyberspace