SWE 423: Multimedia Systems Chapter 1: Introduction

What constitutes Multimedia Multimedia involves several major industries – computing – telecommunications – publishing – consumer audio-video – electronics – television/movie/broadcasting

Brief History of Multimedia Systems YearEvents prior industrial Revolution Written Letters, Books, Poetry, Bulletin boards Late 1890sRadio was introduced Early 1900sMovie was introduced 1940sTelevision was introduced 1960sConcept of hypertext systems was developed Early 1980sPersonal computer was introduced 1980-presentSeveral digital audio, image, and video coding standards have been developed. 1983Internet is born, TCP/IP protocol was established. Audio CD was introduced. 1990Tim Berners-Lee proposed the WWW. HTML was developed presentSeveral Web browsers, hypertext languages were developed. Mid 1990sHigh Definition Television standard was established.

Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC) Built at the University of Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1945 by two professors –On the premise of replacing all computers! Women employed calculating the firing tables for the army's artillery guns Filled a  6 by 12 meter room, weighed 30 tons! A “Female Computer”: “I was astounded that it took all this equipment to multiply 5 by 1000”

To perform on ENIAC you had to rearrange a large number of patch cords and then locate three particular knobs on that vast wall of knobs and set them to 3, 1, and 4 Circumference = 3.14 * diameter

Multimedia is still at its infancy Cannot avoid fuzziness in scope, multiplicity of definitions and non- stabilized terminology.

MIT Media Lab in Boston One of the first and best known institutes that studied multimedia –Innovative applications –Personalized newspapers –Life-sized holograms –Telephones that chat with callers –...

Great Impact of Multimedia Integrating all media in the computer allows using the existing computer power to represent information interactively. This can, also, be transmitted over computer networks.

Interdisciplinary Aspects of Multimedia Telecommunication industry Consumer electronics industry TV and radio broadcasting sector “Publishing” industry

Multimedia Highlights Compression Graphics & Images Audio Computer Architecture AnimationVideo Basics Optical StorageQuality of Service DatabasesProgramming Media ServerOperating SystemsComunication Networks Systems Content Analysis DocumentsSecuritySemanticsSynchro nization Group Comm. Services DesignLearning User Interface Applications Usage