Multimedia

• what is multimedia.
• It also supplies an overview of multimedia
software tools, such as video editors and
digital audio programs

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 multimedia

• applications that use multiple modalities,

including text, images, drawings (graphics),
animation, video, sound including speech, and
interactivity.

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Multimedia and Computer Science

• Graphics, HCI (human-computer

interaction), visualization, computer
vision, data compression, graph theory,
networking, database systems --- all have
important contributions to make in
multimedia at the present time.

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• Multimedia involves multiple modalities
of text, audio, images, drawings,
animation, and video.
• Examples of how these modalities are put
to use:
1. Video teleconferencing.
2. Distributed lectures for higher education.
3. Tele-medicine.
4. Co-operative work environments.

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5. Searching in (very) large video and image
databases for target visual objects.
6. " Augmented" reality: placing real-
appearing computer graphics and video
objects into scenes.
7. Including audio cues for where video-
conference participants are located.
8. Building searchable features into new
video, and enabling very high- to very
low-bit-rate use of new, scalable
multimedia products.

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9. Making multimedia components editable.
10. Building "inverse-Hollywood"
applications that can recreate the process
by which a video was made.
11. Using voice-recognition to build an
interactive environment, say a kitchen-
wall web browser.

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 History of Multimedia:
1. Newspaper: perhaps the first mass communication
medium, uses text, graphics, and images.
2. Motion pictures: conceived of in 1830's in
order to observe motion too rapid for
perception by the human eye.
3. Wireless radio transmission: Guglielmo
Marconi, at Pontecchio, Italy, in 1895.
4. Television: the new medium for the 20th
century, established video as a commonly
available medium and has since changed
the world of mass communications.
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 History of Multimedia:
5. The connection between computers and
ideas about multimedia covers what is
actually only a short period:
• 1945 - Vannevar Bush wrote a landmark
article describing what amounts to a
hypermedia system called Memex.
• 1960 -Ted Nelson coined the term
hypertext.

• 2000 - WWW size was estimated at over 1

billion pages.
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 Hypermedia and Multimedia
A hypertext system: meant to be read nonlinearly,
by following links that point to other parts of the
document, or to other documents
HyperMedia: not constrained to be text-based,
can include other media, e.g., graphics, images,
and especially the continuous media | sound and
video.
The World Wide Web (WWW) | the best example of a
hypermedia application.
Multimedia means that computer information can
be represented through audio, graphics, images,
video, and animation in addition to traditional
media.

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 Overview of Multimedia Software
Tools
• software tools available for carrying out tasks in
multimedia are:
1. Music Sequencing and Notation
2. Digital Audio
3. Graphics and Image Editing
4. Video Editing
5. Animation
6. Multimedia Authoring

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1.Music Sequencing and Notation
Cakewalk: now called Pro Audio.
- The term sequencer comes from older devices that stored
sequences of notes ("events", in MIDI [Musical
Instrument Digital Interface]).
- It is also possible to insert WAV files and Windows MCI
commands (for animation and video) into music tracks (MCI is
a ubiquitous component of the Windows API.)
Cubase: another sequencing/editing program, with
capabilities similar to those of Cakewalk. It includes some
digital audio editing tools.
Macromedia Soundedit: mature program for creating
audio for multimedia projects and the web that
integrates well with other Macromedia products such as
Flash and Director.
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 2.Digital Audio
tools deal with accessing and editing the actual sampled
sounds that make up audio:
- Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit) is a powerful, popular
digital audio toolkit that emulate a professional audio
studio, including multitrack productions and sound file
editing, along with digital signal processing effects.
- Sound Forge Like Audition, Sound Forge is a sophisticated
PC-based program for editing WAV files.
Pro Tools: a high-end integrated audio production and
editing environment . It offers MIDI creation and
manipulation; powerful audio mixing, recording, and
editing software.

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 3. Graphics and Image Editing
• Adobe Illustrator: a powerful publishing tool from Adobe.
Uses vector graphics; graphics can be exported to Web.
• Adobe Photoshop: the standard in a graphics, image
processing and manipulation tool.
– Allows layers of images, graphics, and text that can be separately
manipulated for maximum flexibility.
– Filter factory permits creation of sophisticated lighting-effects
filters
• Macromedia Fireworks: software for making graphics
specifically for the web.
• Macromedia Freehand: a text and web graphics editing tool
that supports many bitmap formats such as GIF, PNG, and JPEG.

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 4. Video Editing
Adobe Premiere: an intuitive, simple video editing tool for
nonlinear editing, i.e., putting video clips into any order:
- Video and audio are arranged in "tracks".
- Provides a large number of video and audio tracks, super-
impositions and virtual clips.
- A large library of built-in transitions, filters and motions for
clips => effective multimedia productions with little effort.

Adobe After Effects: a powerful video editing tool that

enables users to add and change existing movies. Can
add many effects: lighting, shadows, motion blurring;
layers.

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 4. Video Editing
• Final Cut Pro: a video editing tool by Apple; Macintosh
only.
• CyberLink PowerDirector: PowerDirector produced by
CyberLink Corp.
– is by far the most popular nonlinear video editing software.
– It provides a rich selection of audio and video features and special
effects
– easy to use.
– It supports all modern video formats (AVCHD 2.0, 4K Ultra HD, and 3D
video)
– It supports 64-bit video processing
– it is not as “programmable” as Premiere.

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 5. Animation
Multimedia APIs:
- Java3D: API used by Java to construct and render 3D
graphics, similar to the way in which the Java Media
Framework is used for handling media files.
1. Provides a basic set of object primitives (cube,
splines, etc.) for building scenes.
2. It is an abstraction layer built on top of OpenGL
or DirectX (the user can select which).

DirectX : Windows API that supports video, images, audio

and 3-D animation
OpenGL: the highly portable, most popular 3-D API.

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 5. Animation
Animation Software (Rendering Tools):

- 3D Studio Max: rendering tool that includes a number of very

high-end professional tools for character animation, game
development, and visual effects production.
Softimage XSI: a powerful modeling, animation, and
rendering package used for animation and special effects in
films and games.
Maya: competing product to Softimage; as well, it is a
complete modeling package.
RenderMan: rendering package created by Pixar.

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 5. Animation
• GIF Animation Packages :

- simpler approach to animation, allows very quick

development of effective small animations for the web.

- GIFs can contain several images, and looping through them

creates a simple animation.

- Linux also provides some simple animation tools, such as

animate.

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 6. Multimedia Authoring
Tools that provide the capability for creating a complete
multimedia presentation, including interactive user control, are
called authoring programs.

- Macromedia Flash: allows users to create interactive

movies by using the score metaphor, i.e., a timeline arranged
in parallel event sequences.

- Macromedia Director: uses a movie metaphor to create

interactive presentations. It is very powerful and includes a
built in scripting language, Lingo, that allows creation of
complex interactive movies.

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 6. Multimedia Authoring
- Authorware: a mature, well-supported authoring product
based on the Iconic/Flow-control metaphor.

- Quest: similar to Authorware in many ways, uses a type of

flowcharting metaphor. However, the flowchart nodes can
encapsulate information in a more abstract way (called frames)
than simply subroutine levels.

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