CS-784:

Multimedia Systems
Dereje Teferi (PhD)
dereje.teferi@aau.edu.et

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Course Outline
• Overview of Multimedia systems
• Sound/Audio
• Image and graphics
• Text and standardization
• Video and animation
• Data and file format standards
• Data compression
• Fundamentals of multimedia application
• Current trends in multimedia systems

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Reading materials
 Fred Halsall, Multimedia Communications:

Applications, Networks, Protocols, and Standards,

Addison Wesley, 2000.
 Jon Crowcroft, Mark Handley, Ian Wakeman:

Internetworking Multimedia, Taylor and Francis,1999.

 The Web

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Course Objective
To enable students to understand the concepts
of multimedia and be able to manipulate,
process and use multimedia information such
as audio, text, graphics, images, and video.
To understand the fundamental concepts,
theories and techniques of multimedia
coding,
representation
manipulation and
compression

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Programming Tools
Matlab
 Matlab (Matrix Laboratory) is a programming language mainly
developed for image and video processing as both are easily
represented as matrices. Ask the lab coordinator to load Matlab on
each machine
Visual C++ and OpenCV
 OpenCV (Open source Computer Vision) is a collection of library
files (Dlls) that can be easily integrated into Visual C++ for easily
accessing, manipulating and processing multimedia. It can be
downloaded (documentation from the web) from
www.sourceforge.net
Htk Toolkit
 Htk is a toolkit mainly used for audio processing and manipulation.
It can be freely downloaded from the htk website (documentation
from the web) and used.

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The Term “Multimedia”
Composed of 2 parts:
Multi (multus) : “numerous, multiple”

Media (medium): “middle, center” – agent for

something. Used for dissemination (distribute) and

representation of information.
In general, multimedia could be defined as the usage of

multiple agent (text, audio, video, images) for

disseminating and presenting information to audience
(target user)
The Term “Media”
Can be categorized based on a few criteria:

Perception media

Representation media

Presentation media

Storage media

Transmission media
Perception Media
“How do humans perceive information”

We perceive information from what we see and what

we hear
Visual media:

Text, graphics, images, video

Auditory media:

Music, sound and voice

 Representation Media
“How in information encoded in the computer”
Referring to how the information is represented
internally to the computer.
The encoding used is of essential importance.
Several options:
Text is encoded in ASCII
An audio data stream in PCM (Pulse Coded Modulation)
Image in JPEG format
Video in MPEG format
Presentation Media
“Which medium is used to output information from
the computer or input in the computer”
Refers to physical means used by systems to
reproduce information for humans, e.g: audio and
visual devices
Input:
Keyboards, cameras, microphone, Head Mounted Device
(for VR input)
Output:
Paper, monitors, loudspeakers
Storage Media
“Where is information stored”

Refer to various physical means for storing computer

data, such as magnetic tapes, magnetic disks, or

digital optical disks (CD-ROM, CD, DVD)
Transmission Media
“Which medium is used to transmit data”

Refers to the physical means – cable of various type

(coaxial cable, twisted pair, fiber optics), radio tower,

satellite – that allow the transmission of
telecommunication signals.
The difference between transmission media and

storage media is the capability of transferring data

continuously over networked computers.
We use our eyes to see text, image, and video
We use our ears to hear audio
Although the figures differ from human to human
and the current situation the subject is in at the
time, in general, we remember
20% of what we see
30% of what we hear
50% of what we see and hear and
80% of what we see, hear and do
That is why Multimedia can provide a value that
each media can not provide by itself
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The key factor for the development of
multimedia technology is
digitization and
Conversion from analog to digital
the fast growth of computer technology.
Faster computers (fast processors)
Bigger RAMs
Bigger hard disks as well as SSDs these days
Advanced technology in DVD and Flash memory

The internet
Faster on demand delivery to practically anywhere

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Text
Text is a vital element of multimedia presentations.

Words and symbols in any form, spoken or written,

are the most common system of communication.

They deliver the most widely understood meaning

to the greatest number of people— more accurately

and in detail
Text is a visual representation of language, as well as

a graphic element in its own right.

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Characters
A text consists of letters, digits, punctuations and
other symbols. These can be considered as abstract
characters.
Abstract characters in a particular language are
grouped into alphabets.
For example, The alphabet of English contains the
upper case letters A to Z, the lower case letters a to
z, the digits and a number of punctuations.
What about Amharic
 One of the oldest languages
 Syllaberic language
 The characters are the sounds

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Text digitization
To represent a text digitally, each character has to be
represented in terms of the numbers 0 and 1 (bits)
But 0 and 1 can only hold two numbers for us
Multiple bits called bytes/word (8/16/32/64 bits) can be
used

A 65 a 97
B 66 b 98
C 67 c 99
D 68 d 100
. . . .

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Standardization
A language is needed for two or more people to
communicate with each other and understand each
other
Similarly, for computers to communicate with each
other they need to speak the same language
Text is the most widely used means of
communication among computer systems.
Therefore, a common character set is essential.

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….standards
The earliest widely accepted character set is ASCII which stands
for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
The code range of ASCII is 7-bit, meaning that the code value can
be stored in 7 bits.
Therefore, at most 127 characters can be coded.
However, the character set of ASCII only comprises 95 printable
characters.
The values 0 to 31 and 127 are assigned to control characters.
Later, ISO adopted ASCII as an standard (ISO 646).
Then 8-bit ASCII code was introduced later as ISO 8859-1
Example table is shown in the next slide
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8-bit ASCII code sample
DEC OCT HEX BIN Symbol HTML Number HTML Name Description
0 000 00 00000000 NUL �   Null char
1 001 01 00000001 SOH    Start of Heading
2 002 02 00000010 STX    Start of Text
3 003 03 00000011 ETX    End of Text
4 004 04 00000100 EOT    End of Transmission
5 005 05 00000101 ENQ    Enquiry
6 006 06 00000110 ACK    Acknowledgment
7 007 07 00000111 BEL    Bell
8 010 08 00001000 BS    Back Space
9 011 09 00001001 HT 	   Horizontal Tab
10 012 0A 00001010 LF 
   Line Feed
11 013 0B 00001011 VT    Vertical Tab
12 014 0C 00001100 FF    Form Feed
13 015 0D 00001101 CR 
   Carriage Return
14 016 0E 00001110 SO    Shift Out / X-On
15 017 0F 00001111 SI    Shift In / X-Off
16 020 10 00010000 DLE    Data Line Escape
17 021 11 00010001 DC1    Device Control 1 (oft. XON)
18 022 12 00010010 DC2    Device Control 2
19 023 13 00010011 DC3    Device Control 3 (oft. XOFF)

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Continued…
64 100 40 01000000 @ @   At symbol
65 101 41 01000001 A A   Uppercase A
66 102 42 01000010 B B   Uppercase B
67 103 43 01000011 C C   Uppercase C
68 104 44 01000100 D D   Uppercase D
69 105 45 01000101 E E   Uppercase E
70 106 46 01000110 F F   Uppercase F
71 107 47 01000111 G G   Uppercase G
72 110 48 01001000 H H   Uppercase H
73 111 49 01001001 I I   Uppercase I
74 112 4A 01001010 J J   Uppercase J
75 113 4B 01001011 K K   Uppercase K
76 114 4C 01001100 L L   Uppercase L
77 115 4D 01001101 M M   Uppercase M
78 116 4E 01001110 N N   Uppercase N
79 117 4F 01001111 O O   Uppercase O
80 120 50 01010000 P P   Uppercase P
81 121 51 01010001 Q Q   Uppercase Q
82 122 52 01010010 R R   Uppercase R
83 123 53 01010011 S S   Uppercase S
84 124 54 01010100 T T   Uppercase T

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…continued
The study of how to display text is known as
typography.
It is concerned with the precise shape of
characters, their spacing, the layout of the lines,
paragraphs, etc

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Typefaces and fonts
To display text, we need to have a visual
representation of the characters stored as codes in the
computer.
A typeface is a family of graphic characters with a
coherent design and usually includes many sizes and
styles.
A font is a set of graphic characters with a specific
design in a specific size and style.
For example, the typeface used in this paragraph
is ‘Arial’. The font is ‘Arial 28pt’. Arial may contain
many fonts such as Arial Black, Arial narrow etc
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Classification of typeface
Serif means tick marks that you often see at the endings
of a stroke in some fonts such as:
Times new roman
Courier
Sans serif usually refers to those fonts that do not have
tick marks at the character endings. Sans means
without…Examples include
Arial
Helvetica
Serif typefaces may look beautiful but could be difficult
to read in some environments, such as on multimedia
images etc or for visually impaired people

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Example fonts and sizes
Arial 32: Multimedia systems
Times New Roman 28: Multimedia systems
Albertus extra bold 24: Multimedia systems
Algerian 28: Multimedia systems
Abyssinica 30: Multimedia systems
Apple chancery 30: Multimedia systems
Bauhaus 93 22: Multimedia systems

Vladmir script 40: Multimedia

systems
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Font measurement
When putting characters on to
a page, we need to know some
basic measurement of the types
we use.
Each character has a bounding
box. This is the rectangle
enclosing the entire character.
Each character has an origin. It
is usually place on the baseline.
The width of the character
determine where the origin of
the next character will be.
The distance between the
origin and the left side of the
bounding box is called left side
bearing.
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Bitmap and outline fonts
Font formats can be divided into two main categories:
bitmap fonts and outline fonts.
Bitmap fonts come in specific sizes and resolutions.
Because the font contain the bitmaps of the character
shapes. The result will be very poor if they are scaled
to different sizes.
Outline fonts contain the outline of the characters.
They can be scaled to a large range of different sizes
and still have reasonable look. They need a rasterizing
process to display on screen.

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Bitmap font Enlarged Bitmap font

Outline font
W

w Enlarged Outline font

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Font attributes
Five attributes are often used for specifying a font:
Family — fonts in the same family have similar design, and look
Times, Helvetica, Courier, Garamond, Univers
Shape — refers to the different appearance within a family.
normal (upright), italic, SMALL CAP
Weight — measures the darkness of the characters, or the thickness
of the strokes. The commonly used names are:
ultra light, extra light, light, semi light, medium, semi bold,
bold, extra bold etc.
Width — the amount of expansion or contraction with respect to
the normal or medium in the family.
Size — unit of measure is point.
1 inch = 72.27 point in printing industry.

tiny small, normal, large, larger, even larger. huge

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 Text compression
Assignment
What is compression? Define

How does text compression work? Choose a method

and explain how it works.

 Due date: May 13, 2021 by email
dereje.teferi@aau.edu.et

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Thank you

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