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UNIT - I

Lesson 1 Introduction to Multimedia

Contents

1.0 Aims and Objectives

1.1 Introduction
1.2 Elements of Multimedia System
1.3 Categories of Multimedia.
1.4 Features of Multimedia
1.5 Applications of Multimedia System.
1.6 Convergence of Multimedia System.
1.7 Stages of Multimedia Application Development
1.8 Let us sum up.
1.9 Lesson-end activities
1.10 Model answers to “Check your progress”
1.11 References

1.0 Aims and Objectives

In this lesson we will learn the preliminary concepts of Multimedia. We will discuss the
various benefits and applications of multimedia. After going through this chapter the
reader will be able to :
i) define multimedia
ii) list the elements of multimedia
iii) enumerate the different applications of multimedia
iv) describe the different stages of multimedia software development

1.1 Introduction

Multimedia has become an inevitable part of any presentation. It has found a

variety of applications right from entertainment to education. The evolution of internet
has also increased the demand for multimedia content.

Definition

Multimedia is the media that uses multiple forms of information content and
information processing (e.g. text, audio, graphics, animation, video, interactivity) to
inform or entertain the user. Multimedia also refers to the use of electronic media to store
and experience multimedia content. Multimedia is similar to traditional mixed media in
fine art, but with a broader scope. The term "rich media" is synonymous for interactive
multimedia.

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1.2 Elements of Multimedia System

Multimedia means that computer information can be represented through audio,
graphics, image, video and animation in addition to traditional media(text and graphics).
Hypermedia can be considered as one type of particular multimedia application.

Multimedia is a combination of content forms:

Audio

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Video

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1.3 Categories of Multimedia

Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear and non-linear categories. Linear
active content progresses without any navigation control for the viewer such as a cinema
presentation. Non-linear content offers user interactivity to control progress as used with
a computer game or used in self-paced computer based training. Non-linear content is
also known as hypermedia content.

Multimedia presentations can be live or recorded. A recorded presentation may

allow interactivity via a navigation system. A live multimedia presentation may allow
interactivity via interaction with the presenter or performer.

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1.4 Features of Multimedia

Multimedia presentations may be viewed in person on stage, projected,
transmitted, or played locally with a media player. A broadcast may be a live or recorded
multimedia presentation. Broadcasts and recordings can be either analog or digital
electronic media technology. Digital online multimedia may be downloaded or streamed.
Streaming multimedia may be live or on-demand.

Multimedia games and simulations may be used in a physical environment with

special effects, with multiple users in an online network, or locally with an offline
computer, game system, or simulator.

Enhanced levels of interactivity are made possible by combining multiple forms

of media content But depending on what multimedia content you have it may vary
Online multimedia is increasingly becoming object-oriented and data-driven, enabling
applications with collaborative end-user innovation and personalization on multiple
forms of content over time. Examples of these range from multiple forms of content on
web sites like photo galleries with both images (pictures) and title (text) user-updated, to
simulations whose co-efficient, events, illustrations, animations or videos are modifiable,
allowing the multimedia "experience" to be altered without reprogramming.

1.5 Applications of Multimedia

Multimedia finds its application in various areas including, but not limited to,
advertisements, art, education, entertainment, engineering, medicine, mathematics,
business, scientific research and spatial, temporal applications.

A few application areas of multimedia are listed below:

Creative industries

Creative industries use multimedia for a variety of purposes ranging from

fine arts, to entertainment, to commercial art, to journalism, to media and software
services provided for any of the industries listed below. An individual multimedia
designer may cover the spectrum throughout their career. Request for their skills
range from technical, to analytical and to creative.

Commercial

Much of the electronic old and new media utilized by commercial artists is
multimedia. Exciting presentations are used to grab and keep attention in
advertising. Industrial, business to business, and interoffice communications are
often developed by creative services firms for advanced multimedia presentations
beyond simple slide shows to sell ideas or liven-up training. Commercial
multimedia developers may be hired to design for governmental services and
nonprofit services applications as well.

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Entertainment and Fine Arts

In addition, multimedia is heavily used in the entertainment industry,

especially to develop special effects in movies and animations. Multimedia games
are a popular pastime and are software programs available either as CD-ROMs or
online. Some video games also use multimedia features.

Multimedia applications that allow users to actively participate instead of just

sitting by as passive recipients of information are called Interactive Multimedia.

Education

In Education, multimedia is used to produce computer-based training

courses (popularly called CBTs) and reference books like encyclopaedia and
almanacs. A CBT lets the user go through a series of presentations, text about a
particular topic, and associated illustrations in various information formats.
Edutainment is an informal term used to describe combining education with
entertainment, especially multimedia entertainment.

Engineering

Software engineers may use multimedia in Computer Simulations for

anything from entertainment to training such as military or industrial training.
Multimedia for software interfaces are often done as collaboration between
creative professionals and software engineers.

Industry

In the Industrial sector, multimedia is used as a way to help present

information to shareholders, superiors and coworkers. Multimedia is also helpful
for providing employee training, advertising and selling products all over the
world via virtually unlimited web-based technologies.

Mathematical and Scientific Research

In Mathematical and Scientific Research, multimedia is mainly used for

modeling and simulation. For example, a scientist can look at a molecular model
of a particular substance and manipulate it to arrive at a new substance.
Representative research can be found in journals such as the Journal of
Multimedia.

Medicine

In Medicine, doctors can get trained by looking at a virtual surgery or they

can simulate how the human body is affected by diseases spread by viruses and
bacteria and then develop techniques to prevent it.

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Multimedia in Public Places

In hotels, railway stations, shopping malls, museums, and grocery stores,

multimedia will become available at stand-alone terminals or kiosks to provide
information and help. Such installation 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.

A menu screen from a supermarket kiosk that provide services ranging

from meal planning to coupons. Hotel kiosk list nearby restaurant, maps of the
city, airline schedules, and provide guest services such as automated checkout.
Printers are often attached so users can walk away with a printed copy of the
information. Museum kiosk are not only used to guide patrons through the
exhibits, but when installed at each exhibit, provide great added depth, allowing
visitors to browser though richly detailed information specific to that display.

Check Your Progress 1

List five applications of multimedia
Notes: a) Write your answers in the space given below.
b) Check your answers with the one given at the end of this lesson.
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1.6 Convergence of Multimedia (Virtual Reality)

At the convergence of technology and creative invention in multimedia is virtual

reality, or VR. Goggles, helmets, special gloves, and bizarre human interfaces attempt to
place you “inside” a lifelike experience. Take a step forward, and the view gets closer,
turn your head, and the view rotates. Reach out and grab an object; your hand moves in
front of you. Maybe the object explodes in a 90-decibel crescendo as you wrap your
fingers around it. Or it slips out from your grip, falls to the floor, and hurriedly escapes
through a mouse hole at the bottom of the wall.

VR requires terrific computing horsepower to be realistic. In VR, your cyberspace

is made up of many thousands of geometric objects plotted in three-dimensional space:
the more objects and the more points that describe the objects, the higher resolution and
the more realistic your view. As the user moves about, each motion or action requires the
computer to recalculate the position, angle size, and shape of all the objects that make up
your view, and many thousands of computations must occur as fast as 30 times per
second to seem smooth.

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On the World Wide Web, standards for transmitting virtual reality worlds or
“scenes” in VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) documents (with the file name
extension .wrl) have been developed.

Using high-speed dedicated computers, multi-million-dollar flight simulators built

by singer, RediFusion, and others have led the way in commercial application of
VR.Pilots of F-16s, Boeing 777s, and Rockwell space shuttles have made many dry runs
before doing the real thing. At the California Maritime academy and other merchant
marine officer training schools, computer-controlled simulators teach the intricate loading
and unloading of oil tankers and container ships.

Specialized public game arcades have been built recently to offer VR combat and
flying experiences for a price. From virtual World Entertainment in walnut Greek,
California, and Chicago, for example, BattleTech is a ten-minute interactive video
encounter with hostile robots. You compete against others, perhaps your friends, who
share coaches in the same containment Bay. The computer keeps score in a fast and
sweaty firefight. Similar “attractions” will bring VR to the public, particularly a youthful
public, with increasing presence during the 1990s.

The technology and methods for working with three-dimensional images and
for animating them are discussed. 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.

1.7 Stages of Multimedia Application Development

A Multimedia application is developed in stages as all other software are being
developed. In multimedia application development a few stages have to complete before
other stages being, and some stages may be skipped or combined with other stages.

Following are the four basic stages of multimedia project development :

1. Planning and Costing : This stage of multimedia application is the first stage
which begins with an idea or need. This idea can be further refined by outlining
its messages and objectives. Before starting to develop the multimedia project, it
is necessary to plan what writing skills, graphic art, music, video and other
multimedia expertise will be required.
It is also necessary to estimate the time needed to prepare all elements of
multimedia and prepare a budget accordingly. After preparing a budget, a
prototype or proof of concept can be developed.
2. Designing and Producing : The next stage is to execute each of the planned
tasks and create a finished product.
3. Testing : Testing a project ensure the product to be free from bugs. Apart from
bug elimination another aspect of testing is to ensure that the multimedia

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application meets the objectives of the project. It is also necessary to test whether
the multimedia project works properly on the intended deliver platforms and they
meet the needs of the clients.
4. Delivering : The final stage of the multimedia application development is to pack
the project and deliver the completed project to the end user. This stage has
several steps such as implementation, maintenance, shipping and marketing the
product.

1.8 Let us sum up

In this lesson we have discussed the following points

i) Multimedia is a woven combination of text, audio, video, images and
animation.
ii) Multimedia systems finds a wide variety of applications in different areas
such as education, entertainment etc.
iii) The categories of multimedia are linear and non-linear.
iv) The stages for multimedia application development are Planning and
costing, designing and producing, testing and delivery.

1.9 Lesson-end Activities

i) Create the credits for an imaginary multimedia production. Include several

outside organizations such as audio mixing, video production, text based
dialogues.
ii) Review two educational CD-ROMs and enumerate their features.

1.10 Model answers to “Check your progress”

1. Your answers may include the following

i) Education
ii) Entertainment
iii) Medicine
iv) Engineering
v) Industry
vi) Creative Industry
vii) Mathematical and scientific Industry
viii) Engineering
ix) Commercial

1.11 References
1. “Multimedia Making it work” By Tay Vaughan
2. “Multimedia in Practice – Technology and applications” By Jeffcoat

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Lesson 2 Text
Contents

2.0 Aims and Objectives

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Multimedia Building blocks
2.3 Text in multimedia
2.4 About fonts and typefaces
2.5 Computers and Text
2.6 Character set and alphabets
2.7 Font editing and design tools
2.8 Let us sum up
2.9 Lesson-end activities
2.10 Model answers to “Check your progress”
2.11 References

2.0 Aims and Objectives

In this lesson we will learn the different multimedia building blocks. Later we will
learn the significant features of text.
i) At the end of the lesson you will be able to
ii) List the different multimedia building blocks
iii) Enumerate the importance of text
iv) List the features of different font editing and designing tools

2.1 Introduction

All multimedia content consists of texts in some form. Even a menu text is
accompanied by a single action such as mouse click, keystroke or finger pressed in the
monitor (in case of a touch screen). The text in the multimedia is used to communicate
information to the user. Proper use of text and words in multimedia presentation will
help the content developer to communicate the idea and message to the user.

2.2 Multimedia Building Blocks

Any multimedia application consists any or all of the following components :

1. Text : Text and symbols are very important for communication in any medium.
With the recent explosion of the Internet and World Wide Web, text has become
more the important than ever. Web is HTML (Hyper text Markup language)
originally designed to display simple text documents on computer screens, with
occasional graphic images thrown in as illustrations.

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2. Audio : Sound is perhaps the most element of multimedia. It can provide the
listening pleasure of music, the startling accent of special effects or the ambience
of a mood-setting background.
3. Images : Images whether represented analog or digital plays a vital role in a
multimedia. It is expressed in the form of still picture, painting or a photograph
taken through a digital camera.
4. Animation : Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D
artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an
optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can
be created and demonstrated in a number of ways.
5. Video : Digital video has supplanted analog video as the method of choice for
making video for multimedia use. Video in multimedia are used to portray real
time moving pictures in a multimedia project.

2.3 Text in Multimedia

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.

Most academic related text such as journals, e-magazines are available in the Web
Browser readable form.

2.4 About Fonts and Faces

A typeface is family of graphic characters that usually includes many type sizes
and styles. A font is a collection of characters of a single size and style belonging to a
particular typeface family. Typical font styles are bold face and italic. Other style
attributes such as underlining and outlining of characters, may be added at the users
choice.

The size of a text is usually measured in points. One point is approximately 1/72
of an inch i.e. 0.0138. The size of a font does not exactly describe the height or width of
its characters. This is because the x-height (the height of lower case character x) of two
fonts may differ.

Typefaces of fonts can be described in many ways, but the most common
characterization of a typeface is serif and sans serif. The serif is the little decoration at
the end of a letter stroke. Times, Times New Roman, Bookman are some fonts which
comes under serif category. Arial, Optima, Verdana are some examples of sans serif
font. Serif fonts are generally used for body of the text for better readability and sans
serif fonts are generally used for headings. The following fonts shows a few categories
of serif and sans serif fonts.

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F F
(Serif Font) (Sans serif font)

Selecting Text fonts

It is a very difficult process to choose the fonts to be used in a multimedia

presentation. Following are a few guidelines which help to choose a font in a multimedia
presentation.

 As many number of type faces can be used in a single presentation, this concept
of using many fonts in a single page is called ransom-note topography.
 For small type, it is advisable to use the most legible font.
 In large size headlines, the kerning (spacing between the letters) can be adjusted
 In text blocks, the leading for the most pleasing line can be adjusted.
 Drop caps and initial caps can be used to accent the words.
 The different effects and colors of a font can be chosen in order to make the text
look in a distinct manner.
 Anti aliased can be used to make a text look gentle and blended.
 For special attention to the text the words can be wrapped onto a sphere or bent
like a wave.
 Meaningful words and phrases can be used for links and menu items.
 In case of text links(anchors) on web pages the messages can be accented.

The most important text in a web page such as menu can be put in the top 320 pixels.

Check Your Progress 1

List a few fonts available in your computer.
Notes: a) Write your answers in the space given below.
b) Check your answers with the one given at the end of this lesson.
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2.5 Computers and text:

Fonts :

Postscript fonts are a method of describing an image in terms of mathematical

constructs (Bezier curves), so it is used not only to describe the individual characters of a
font but also to describe illustrations and whole pages of text. Since postscript makes use
of mathematical formula, it can be easily scaled bigger or smaller.

Apple and Microsoft announced a joint effort to develop a better and faster
quadratic curves outline font methodology, called truetype In addition to printing
smooth characters on printers, TrueType would draw characters to a low resolution (72
dpi or 96 dpi) monitor.

2.6 Character set and alphabets:

ASCII Character set

The American standard code for information interchange (SCII) is the 7

bit character coding system most commonly used by computer systems in the
United states and abroad. ASCII assigns a number of value to 128 characters,
including both lower and uppercase letters, punctuation marks, Arabic numbers
and math symbols. 32 control characters are also included. These control
characters are used for device control messages, such as carriage return, line feed,
tab and form feed.

The Extended Character set

A byte which consists of 8 bits, is the most commonly used building block
for computer processing. ASCII uses only 7 bits to code is 128 characters; the 8th
bit of the byte is unused. This extra bit allows another 128 characters to be
encoded before the byte is used up, and computer systems today use these extra
128 values for an extended character set. The extended character set is commonly
filled with ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard characters,
including frequently used symbols.

Unicode

Unicode makes use of 16-bit architecture for multilingual text and

character encoding. Unicode uses about 65,000 characters from all known
languages and alphabets in the world.

Several languages share a set of symbols that have a historically related

derivation, the shared symbols of each language are unified into collections of

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symbols (Called scripts). A single script can work for tens or even hundreds of
languages.

Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Netscape, IBM, Xerox and Novell are participating
in the development of this standard and Microsoft and Apple have incorporated
Unicode into their operating system.

2.7 Font Editing and Design tools

There are several software that can be used to create customized font. These tools
help an multimedia developer to communicate his idea or the graphic feeling. Using
these software different typefaces can be created.

In some multimedia projects it may be required to create special characters. Using the
font editing tools it is possible to create a special symbols and use it in the entire text.

Following is the list of software that can be used for editing and creating fonts:

 Fontographer
 Fontmonger
 Cool 3D text

Special font editing tools can be used to make your own type so you can
communicate an idea or graphic feeling exactly. With these tools professional
typographers create distinct text and display faces.

1. Fontographer:
It is macromedia product, it is a specialized graphics editor for both
Macintosh and Windows platforms. You can use it to create postscript,
truetype and bitmapped fonts for Macintosh and Windows.
2. Making Pretty Text:
To make your text look pretty you need a toolbox full of fonts and special
graphics applications that can stretch, shade, color and anti-alias your
words into real artwork. Pretty text can be found in bitmapped drawings
where characters have been tweaked, manipulated and blended into a
graphic image.
3. Hypermedia and Hypertext:
Multimedia is the combination of text, graphic, and audio elements into a
single collection or presentation – becomes interactive multimedia when
you give the user some control over what information is viewed and when
it is viewed.

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When a hypermedia project includes large amounts of text or symbolic

content, this content can be indexed and its element then linked together to
afford rapid electronic retrieval of the associated information.
When text is stored in a computer instead of on printed pages the
computer’s powerful processing capabilities can be applied to make the
text more accessible and meaningful. This text can be called as hypertext.
4. Hypermedia Structures:
Two Buzzwords used often in hypertext are link and node. Links are
connections between the conceptual elements, that is, the nodes that ma
consists of text, graphics, sounds or related information in the knowledge
base.
5. Searching for words:
Following are typical methods for a word searching in hypermedia
systems: Categories, Word Relationships, Adjacency, Alternates,
Association, Negation, Truncation, Intermediate words, Frequency.

Check Your Progress 2

List a few font editing tools.
Notes: a) Write your answers in the space given below.
b) Check your answers with the one given at the end of this lesson.
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2.8 Let us sum up.

In this lesson we have learnt the following

i) The multimedia building blocks such as text, audio, video, images,
animation
ii) The importance of text in multimedia
iii) The difference between fonts and typefaces
iv) Character sets used in computers and their significance
v) The font editing software which can be used for creating new fonts and the
features of such software.

2.9 Lesson-end activities

Create a new document in a word processor. Type a line of text in the word
processor and copy it five times and change each line into a different font. Finally
change the size of each line to 10 pt, 12pt, 14pt etc. Now distinguish each font
family and the typeface used in each font.

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2.10 Model answers to “Check your progress”

1. Your answers may include the following

Arial
Times New Roman
Garamond
Script
Courier
Georgia
Book Antiqua
Century Gothic

2. Your answer may include the following

a) Fontmonger
b) Cool 3D text

2.11 References

1. "Multimedia:Concepts and Practice" By Stephen McGloughlin

2. ”Multimedia Computing, Communication and application” By Steinmetz and
Klara Nahrstedt.
3. “Multimedia Making it work” By Tay Vaughan
4. “Multimedia in Practice – Technology and applications” By Jeffcoat

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