Introduction to Computer Science بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم MULTIMEDIA LEVEL -9 Introduction to Computer Science King Khalid University Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Higher Education College of Science and Arts, Mohayel Aseer

Chapter 1 Introduction to Multimedia What is Multimedia? Multimedia can have a many definitions these include: Multimedia means that computer information can be represented through audio, video, and animation in addition to traditional media (i.e., text, graphics/drawings, images). General Definition A good general working definition for this module is: Multimedia is the field concerned with the computer controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, still and moving images (Video), animation, audio, and any other media where every type of information can be represented, stored, transmitted and processed digitally.

HISTORY OF MULTIMEDIA 1960 – Ted Nelson coined the term hypertext. 1967 – Nicholas Negroponte formed the Architecture Machine Group. 1968 – Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the On‐Line System (NLS), another very early hypertext program. 1969 – Nelson and van Dam at Brown University created an early hypertext editor called FRESS. 1976 – The MIT Architecture Machine Group proposed a project entitled Multiple Media —resulted in the Aspen Movie Map, the first hypermedia videodisk, in 1978. 1985 – Negroponte and Wiesner co‐founded the MIT Media Lab. 1989 – Tim Berners‐Lee proposed the World Wide Web

HISTORY OF MULTIMEDIA (Continued) 1990 – Kristina Hooper Woolsey headed the Apple Multimedia Lab. 1991 – MPEG‐1 was approved as an international standard for digital video — led to the newer standards, MPEG‐2, MPEG‐4, and further MPEGs in the 1990s. 1991 – The introduction of PDAs in 1991 began a new period in the use of computers in multimedia. 1992 – JPEG was accepted as the international standard for digital image compression — led to the new JPEG2000 standard. 1992 – The first MBone audio multicast on the Net was made. 1993 – The University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications produced NCSA Mosaic — the first full‐fledged browser. 1994 -- Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen created the Netscape program. 1995 – The JAVA language was created for platform independent application development. 1996 – DVD video was introduced; high quality full‐length movies were distributed on a single disk. 1998 – XML 1.0 was announced as a W3C Recommendation. 1998 – Hand‐held MP3 devices first made inroads into consumerist tastes in the fall of 1998, with the introduction of devices holding 32MB of flash memory. 2000 – WWW size was estimated at over 1 billion pages.

Multimedia Application Definition A Multimedia Application is an application which uses a collection of multiple media sources e.g. text, graphics, images, sound/audio, animation and/or video. What is HyperText and HyperMedia? Hypertext is a text which contains links to other texts. The term was invented by Ted Nelson around 1965.

HyperText Navigation Traversal through pages of hypertext is therefore usually non-linear (as indicated below). This has implications in layout and organisation of material and depends a lot on the application at hand.

Hypermedia HyperMedia is not constrained to be text-based. It can include other media, e.g., graphics, images, and especially the continuous media sound and video.

Example Hypermedia Applications? The World Wide Web (WWW) is the best example of a hypermedia application. Powerpoint Adobe Acrobat Many Others?

Multimedia Applications Examples of Multimedia Applications include: World Wide Web Multimedia Authoring, e.g. Adobe/Macromedia Director Hypermedia courseware Video-on-demand Interactive TV Computer Games Virtual reality Digital video editing and production systems Multimedia Database systems

Multimedia Systems A Multimedia System is a system capable of processing multimedia data and applications.A Multimedia System is characterised by the processing, storage, generation, manipulation and rendition of Multimedia information. Characteristics of a Multimedia System A Multimedia system has four basic characteristics: Multimedia systems must be computer controlled. Multimedia systems are integrated. The information they handle must be represented digitally. The interface to the final presentation of media is usually interactive.

Key Issues for Multimedia Systems The key issues multimedia systems need to deal with here are: How to represent and store temporal information. How to strictly maintain the temporal relationships on playback/retrieval What process are involved in the above. Data has to represented digitally — Analog–Digital Conversion, Sampling etc. Large Data Requirements — bandwidth, storage, Data compression is usually mandatory

Desirable Features for a Multimedia System Given the above challenges the following feature a desirable (if not a prerequisite) for a Multimedia System: Very High Processing Power — needed to deal with large data processing and real time delivery of media. Special hardware commonplace. Multimedia Capable File System —needed to deliver real-time media — e.g. Video/Audio Streaming. Special Hardware/Software needed – e.g. RAID technology. Data Representations — File Formats that support multimedia should be easy to handle yet allow for compression/decompression in real-time.

Components of a Multimedia System Now let us consider the Components (Hardware and Software) required for a multimedia system: Capture devices — Video Camera, Video Recorder, Audio Microphone, Keyboards, mice, graphics tablets, 3D input devices, tactile sensors, VR devices. Digitising Hardware Storage Devices — Hard disks, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROM, etc Communication Networks — Local Networks, Intranets, Internet, Multimedia or other special high speed networks. Computer Systems — Multimedia Desktop machines, Workstations, MPEG/VIDEO/DSP Hardware Display Devices — CD-quality speakers, HDTV,SVGA, Hi-Res monitors, Colour printers etc.

Exercise (A) Define the following. 1) Multimedia 2) Hypertext 3) Hypermedia (B) Write short answers for the following? What can be the general definition of multimedia? What is the application definition of multimedia? Give the examples of Hypermedia Applications. List any five multimedia applications. List any three key issues multimedia system needs to deal with. Write down the desirable features in multimedia systems. (C) Write the detailed answers for the following. Explain Multimedia systems and it characteristics. Briefly explain the challenges before multimedia systems. What are the components of a multimedia systems?