University of Gondar

MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS

CHAPTER-ONE
INTRODUCTION

Department of Information Technology

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 What is Multimedia?
Derived from the words “Multi” and “Media”
• Multi – Many and Media – a way to transmit information
• Media- A medium refers to different type of data
representation such as text, images, graphics, speech, audio,
video, etc.
• Tools that is used to represent or do a certain things, delivery
medium, a form of mass communication – newspaper,
magazine / TV.
• Multimedia is used exclusively to describe multiple
forms of media and content.
–Multimedia concerns the representation of mixed modes of
information as digital signals.
–It includes a combination of text, audio and speech, video,
images and graphics content forms
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 Conti..
–The content may be in the form of animation based on
which multimedia is divided into conventional media (text,
image, …) and new media (audio, video, …).

• Multimedia represents the convergence of text,

image, video and sound into a single form.
– The power of multimedia and the Internet lies in the way
in which information is linked.
• Multimedia describes multiple forms of media and
content.
• Multi media means combination of more than one
medium.
• Multimedia is a means of communicating information
using multiple channels.

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 Conti..
• Multimedia is a combination of text, graphic, sound,
animation, and video that is delivered interactively to the
user by electronic or digitally manipulated means.
IMAGE
TEXT GRAPHIC

VIDEO
AUDIO
ANIMATION

Multimedia means of representing information through audio,

video, and animation in text, graphics/drawings, images digitally.
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 Conti..
• Multimedia consists of text, images, drawings, graphics,
animation, video, sound (including speech), and, most
likely, interactivity of some kind .
• In today’s digital world, multimedia content is recorded
and played, displayed, or accessed by digital information
content processing devices, ranging from
• smart phones,
• tablets, laptops, personal computers,
• smart TVs, and game consoles,
• to servers and datacenters, over such distribution media
as tapes, hard and Flash disks, or more popularly
nowadays, wired and wireless networks. 5
 Multimedia Files
Text:
• It is the most common medium in multi media.
• Source: keyboard, optical character recognition, data stored on disk.
• File formats: txt, doc, pdf, HTML, Rich Text Format (RTF), etc.
Images:
• picture which are natural taken from real world object.
• Input: digitally scanned photographs/pictures or direct from a
digital camera.
• Format: GIF, TIF ,PNG, BMP, etc
Graphics:
• is an extension of images.
• constructed by the composition of primitive objects such as lines,
polygons, circles, curves and arcs.
• Format :BMP, etc
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 Conti..
Audio:
• Audio signals are continuous analog signals. It include speech and
music.
• Input: microphones and then digitized and stored
• Format: wav, MP3,etc
Video:
• contains image in motion and audio.
• All video files occupy lot of disk space.
• Input: Analog Video is usually captured by a video camera and then
digitized.
• Format: mov,3GP,AVI,MPEG,MP4,etc.
Animation:
• Animation means moving of an image.
• It is an extension of video
• Animations are created from series of individual images called ‘frames’.
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Conti..

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 Media Types: Based on Animation
• The content may be in the form of animation based
on which multimedia is divided into
– Conventional/Traditional media (text, image, graph, …)
– New/Modern media (audio, video, animation …).
• Interactivity is seen as a key association with new
media as it basically sets apart the old & new media
– Old media could only offer a sit-back type interaction
– New media is much more engaging to their audiences,
where a user can control what they watch and when.
– Internet has become the prime model of an interactive
system
• Users can become fully immersed in their experiences by
viewing material, commenting it & then actually
contributing to it.
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 Media Types: Based on Human
Perception
• How do human perceive information?
– Perception media refers to the nature of information
perceived by humans; i.e. what humans see and what
humans hear
• Auditory media:
– A media that transmits what humans hear
– It includes sound, music and voice.

• Visual media:
– A media that transmits what humans see, observe and
visualize
– It includes text, still images and moving pictures
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 Media Types: Time dimensions
• Discrete (or Static) media: it refers to text, graphics, and
images as they are composed of time independent
information item.
– Information in these media consist exclusively of a sequence
of individual elements without a time component. Indeed
they may be displayed according to a wide variety of timing
or even sequencing and still remain meaningful
• Continuous (or Dynamic) media: refers to time-dependent
media like sound, and video, where the presentation requires
a continuous play-out as time passes.
– Information is expressed as not only of its individual value,
but also by the time of its occurrence. In other word, time
dependency between information items is part of the
information itself.
– Thus if the timing of the items change, or the sequence is
modified, the meaning of the items is altered.
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Media Types: Based on user interactivity
Linear Medium
• Basically meant to be read from beginning to end.
• Multimedia is linear, when it is not interactive and the
users just sit and watch as if it is a movie.
Nonlinear Medium
• Multimedia is nonlinear, when the users are given the
navigational control and can browse the contents at
well.
– E.g. Hypertext

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 Multimedia System
• A Multimedia System is a system capable of processing
multimedia data and applications.
– A Multimedia System is characterized by the processing,
storage, generation and manipulation of Multimedia
information, such as Image, Audio, Video, Text and Graphics.
• Multimedia system represents a technology/tool used to
process and combine two or more categories of information
having different transport signal characteristics.
• Multiple forms of information content are often considered
as multimedia if they contain conventional media and new
media, say image and audio or video.
– Which of the following is a multimedia system?
• a word processor that handles embedded graphics/image along
text
• macromedia flash that helps to create animated objects
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 Properties of Multimedia System
• Multimedia system handles discrete & continuous media
– It is a system capable of handling at least one discrete and one
continuous media in digital form
– E.g. Multiple forms of information content are often not
considered multimedia if they don't contain, say, audio or
video.
• It integrates and synchronizes the different medias
simultaneously into a coherent framework.
– Integrate and use minimal number of different devices for
presentation of multimedia
– Synchronize well the presentation of the result of the different
media such that information flows in the correct order
• Multimedia system must be computer controlled.
– A digital device, like computer must be involved in the
presentation of the multimedia information to users
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 Why we learn Multimedia?
• It helps to simulate our day-to-day activities
– Virtual environments: e-commerce, e-education, e-governance…
– Collaboration: video conferencing, tele-conferencing, social
networking, …
– Webcasting: broadcasting via. the Internet to distribute a single
content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers.
• Existence of wide variety of application potential in
different areas; and, hence it gains Huge markets
– Potential for improving our lives (e.g., learning, entertainment,
and work)
• Convergence of computers, telecom, and TV industries
– Caused by technology and competition
– Dramatic changes in products, infrastructure, etc.
• Digital Audio and Digital Video are revolutionizing music, film, and
video industries
• Interesting technical and research issues
– There are many challenges which needs further investigation
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 Application
• Multimedia finds its application in various areas with
the help of Web technologies
–Education: hypermedia courseware, e-learning, audio/video
conferencing
–Business: e.g. multimedia authoring, video-on-demand
–Digital and virtual libraries
–Entertainment: e.g. games
–Advertisements: e.g. interactive television
–Scientific research: e.g. virtual worlds
–Engineering: e.g. AutoCAD
–Art, Medicine, Mathematics, etc.

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• Hypermedia first introduced by Ted Nelson, went beyond text-only.
• It includes a wide array of media, such as graphics, images, and
especially the continuous media sound and video, and links them
together.
• The World Wide Web(WWW or simply Web) is the best example of a
hypermedia application, which is also the largest.
• Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)
– HTML is a language for publishing hypermedia on the Web.
• The W3C has listed the following three goals for the WWW:
– universal access of web resources (by everyone everywhere),
– Effectiveness of navigating available information, and
– responsible use of posted material.
• It is worth mentioning that the Internet serves as the underlying
vehicle for the WWW and the multimedia content shared over it.
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 Conti..
• Internet gradually became the dominating global network that
interconnects numerous computer networks and their billions of
users with the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP).
• It evolved together with digital multimedia. On one hand, the
Internet carries much of the multimedia content. It has largely
swept out optical disks as the storage and distribution media in the
movie industry.
• It is currently reshaping the TV broadcast industry with an ever
accelerating speed. On the other hand, the Internet was not initially
designed for multimedia data and was not quite friendly to
multimedia traffic.
• Multimedia data, now occupying almost 90 % of the Internet
bandwidth, is the key driving force toward enhancing the existing
Internet and toward developing the next generation of the Internet.

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A Course-on-Demand System

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 Challenges of Multimedia Computing
Developing a successful multimedia system is non-trivial.
• Memory space requirement:
– multimedia data need a lot of space to store
– At least 256MB main memory; Up to 10-30 GB secondary
storage;
• Data transmission bandwidth:
– Multimedia needs very high bandwidth to transmit.
– Faster network (up to 25Mbs per video stream) with very high
bandwidth to transmit
• Complexity of multimedia data management:
– Multimedia needs more complex and more efficient algorithms;
say, for automatically analyzing, indexing and organizing
information in audio, image and video is much harder than from
text. They involve many different research issues.
• Hardware platforms:
– Multimedia data need efficient hardware platforms
– Better CPU, graphics card, video card, sound card
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 Issues in Multimedia Computing
The following are some of the research issues under study.
• How can multimedia be efficiently stored and
transmitted?
– The need for compression and indexing
• Can multimedia be retrieved by its content?
– The need for proper segmentation and representation of an
object from multimedia content through feature extraction and
pattern analysis
– The need for matching technique to effectively identify a
video/audio/image that satisfy users need
• How can we enhance quality of multimedia data?
– Is the image as high-quality as users need? What could we do if
the image is poor quality?
• How can a user formulate a query for video/audio/image
retrieval?
– How we enable users to search for multimedia information
retrieval using multimedia query, such that, for instance image
by image search takes place 27
Multimedia is a Multidisciplinary
subject

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 Evolution of Multimedia
• 1945 - Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) wrote about Memex
• 1960s - Ted Nelson started Xanadu project
• 1967 - Nicholas Negroponte formed the Architecture Machine Group
at MIT
• 1968 - Douglas Engelbart demonstrated NLS system at SRI
• 1969 - Nelson & Van Dam hypertext editor at Brown
• 1976 - Architecture Machine Group proposal to DARPA: Multiple
Media
• 1985 - Negroponte, Wiesner: opened MIT Media Lab
• 1989 - Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web to CERN
• 1990 - K. Hooper Woolsey, Apple Multimedia Lab
• 1992 - The first M-Bone audio multicast on the Net
• 1993 - U. Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications:
NCSA Mosaic
• 1994 - Jim Clark and Marc Andreesen: Netscape
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• 1995 - JAVA for platform-independent application development.
 Assignment one
1.Write the definition of the following terms:-

 Text
Audio
Image
Graphic
 video
Animation
2. Write the difference between Animation and Video.
3. Write the difference between image and graphic.
4. DAT file is multimedia? Write your answer with a clear reasoning

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 Assignment Two
Review different literature (books and articles) and write a
report (overview, advantage & disadvantage, its function,
methods used, architecture, applications, future research
directions proposed and reference materials used). Also
prepare PPT & present in class the summary of your
report. There is also a ten minutes presentation

1. Multimedia Database Indexing

2. Content-based Image Retrieval
3. Content-based Video retrieval
4. Spoken document & music information retrieval
5. Multimedia (like video) summarization
6. Multimedia classification
7. Multimedia mining 31