Multimedia
Software
Multimedia
Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic,
sound, animation and video that is delivered by
computer.
When you allow the user to control what and
when these elements are delivered, it is interactive
multimedia.
Basic Tools
Text Editing
And
Word Processing
Tools
Word Processor
A word processor is usually the first software tool computer
users learn
An office suite that might include spreadsheet, database, e-
mail, web browser and presentation applications
Word processors such as Microsoft Word ,WordPerfect &
Open Office are powerful applications
Include spell checkers, table formatters, thesauruses,
prebuilt templates for letters, résumés, purchase orders, and
other common documents
We can embed sound, images and video
OCR Software
OCR software turns bitmapped characters into
electronically recognizable ASCII text.
A scanner is typically used to create the bitmap Then the
software breaks the bitmap into chunks according to
whether contains text or graphics.
Probability and expert system algorithms is used for
conversion
Most OCR applications claim about 99 percent accuracy
Recognize 8- to 36-point printed characters at 300 dpi &
process 150 characters per second
Painting
And
Drawing Tools
Painting, drawing tools, as well as 3-D modelers are the most
important items for mm development.
Painting software
Photoshop, Fireworks, and Painter
Drawing software
CorelDraw, FreeHand, Illustrator, Designer, and Canvas
Macromedia’s Flash
Both capability
Features of Drawing or Painting Tool
Pull-down menus, status bars, palette control, and dialog
boxes for quick selection
Multiple undo capabilities, to let you try again
A history function for redoing effects, drawings, and text
A screen capture facility
The ability to pour a color, pattern, or gradient into any
area
The ability to paint with patterns and clip art
Customizable pen , brush shapes and sizes
Support for scalable text fonts and drop shadows
Painting features like smoothing, anti-aliasing etc
Support for third-party special-effect plug-ins
Zooming, for magnified pixel editing
Good file importing and exporting capability for image
formats such as PIC, GIF, TGA, TIF, PNG, WMF, JPG,
PCX, EPS, PTN, and BMP
Scalable dimensions, so that you can resize, stretch, and
distort both large and small bitmaps
We can create geometric shapes, from squares to circles &
from curves to complex polygons
3-D Modeling
And
Animation Tools
3-D is an abbreviation for “three dimensions”
2-D has X-Y axes. 3-D has X-Y & Z axes
3-D is more realistic than 2-D
S/w available are AutoDesk’s Maya, Strata 3D, and
Avid’s SoftImage etc
Blender – A strong cross platform software
Google SketchUp – Limited capability (free tool)
Import feature to Quick time and MPEG
Features of a good 3-D editing Tools
Multiple windows that allow you to view your model in each
dimension, from the camera’s perspective, and in a rendered
preview
The ability to drag and drop primitive shapes into a scene
Color and texture mapping
The ability to add realistic effects such as transparency,
shadowing & fog
The ability to add spot, local, and global lights, to place them
anywhere & manipulate them for special lighting effects
Unlimited cameras with focal length control
The ability to draw spline-based paths for animation
Image - Editing
Tools
Image-editing applications are powerful tools used for
creating
Enhancing
Retouching existing bitmapped images.
Photoshop, Corel Draw, MS Paint, GIMP.. – Image
editing Tools
Support powerful plug-in modules available
from third-party developers that allow us to wrap,
twist, shadow, cut, diffuse and filter our image for
special visual effects.
Features of a Image Editing Tools
Multiple windows that provide views of more than one image
at a time
Conversion of major image-data types and industry-standard
file formats
Direct inputs of images from scanner and video sources
Employment of a virtual memory scheme that uses hard disk
space as RAM for images that require large amounts of
memory
Capable selection tools, such as rectangles, lassos, and magic
wands, for selecting portions of a bitmap
Image and balance controls for brightness, contrast, and
color balance
Good masking features
Multiple undo and restore features
Anti-aliasing capability, and sharpening and smoothing
controls
Color-mapping controls for precise adjustment of color
balance
Tools for retouching, blurring, sharpening, lightening,
darkening, smudging, and tinting
Geometric transformations such as flip, skew, rotate, and
distort, and perspective changes
The ability to resample and resize an image
The ability to create images from scratch, using line,
rectangle, square, circle, ellipse, polygon, airbrush,
paintbrush, pencil, and eraser tools
Sound - Editing
Tools
Enables the user to see music as well as hear sound.
This is done by drawing a representation of sound
in fine increments.
Enable the user to create custom system beeps.
System beeps are pre-packaged sounds that indicate
an error, warning or special user activity.
Animation, Video
And
Digital Movie
Tools
Animation is a sequence of bitmapped graphic scenes
or frames, rapidly played back.
Animations can be made within some authoring
systems by moving objects or sprites to simulate
motion.
Moviemaking tools take advantage of QuickTime and
AVI formats to create, edit, and present digitized
motion video segments.
Digital video editing and playback require a large
amount of free disk space.
It is necessary to compress movie files before delivery.
When working with digital video, it is necessary to
defragment and optimize the disk before recording
and playing back movie files.
Compression ratio is the size of the original image
divided by the size of the compressed image.
Compression can by lossy or lossless.
Lossy schemes ignore picture information the
viewer may not miss.
Lossless schemes preserve the original data
precisely.
Video
Formats
Quick Time
Is a software-based architecture for integrating sound,
text, animation, and video on Macintosh and Windows
platform.
Is an extensible system for multimedia delivery.
Can deliver 3-D animations, virtual reality, and streaming
audio-video on the Web.
The three QuickTime elements are Movie file format, Media
Abstraction Layer, and Media services.
Includes built-in support for ten different media types.
Offers a comprehensive set of services.
Allows embedded commands in HTML documents.
Audio Video Interleaved (AVI)
Is a Microsoft-developed format for playing full-motion
interleaved video and audio sequences in Windows.
Does not require specialized hardware.
Is an inextensible, open environment.
Lacks serious video editing features.
The OpenDML format was developed to make AVI more
functional.
QuickTime and Audio Video Interleaved (AVI)
formats support special algorithms, provide a
methodology for interleaving, and allow organized
streaming of data from disk into memory.
Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) is a hardware format
that uses laser light to store and read digital
information.
Helpful Accessories
Screen-capture software enables the user
to move bitmapped images by placing
them on the clipboard.
Format converters are useful for projects
where the source material originates on
different platforms.
Summary
Word processors and OCR software are used to
handle text in multimedia.
Painting and drawing tools, 3-D modeling tools, and
image editing tools manipulate the graphical
content of the project.
QuickTime for Macintosh and AVI for Windows are
the two most widely used video formats.
