Unit 5 MULTIMEDIA AUTHORING AND USER INTERFACE The multimedia applications can be classified as 1. Mail 2. Information repositories 3.

Business processes But all the above applications have common characteristics as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. They are shared applications and used by large number of users The users share data objects Processes are carried out in sequential manner The applications require distributed network operations

The two considerations that must be considered while designing multimedia system is functionality and modeling the user interface MULTIMEDIA AUTHORING SYSTEMS Authoring systems are designed with two primary users and they are 1. Professionals who prepares documents, audio and sound tracks and ful motion video 2. Business users preparing documents DESIGN ISSUES FOR MULTIMEDIA AUTHORING The standards must be set for a number of design as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Display resolution Data formats for captured data Compression algorithms Network interfaces Storage formats

DISPLAY RESOLUTION The human eye perceives resolution on per inch basis with picture window 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels high and the issues that must be considered for handling display outputs are 1. 2. 3. 4. Level of standardization on display resolution Display protocol standardization Corporate norms for service degradation Corporate norms for network traffic

DATA FORMATS

It is useful to have attribute information about an object available without having to decompress the object itself are as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Compression type Estimated time to decompress & display the object Size of the object Object orientation Annotation markers Index markers Date and time of creation Source file name Version number Required software application to display

SERVICE DEGRADATION POLICIES The service policies are 1. 2. 3. 4. Decline further requests with a message Provide the play back service with lower resolution Provide playback service with high resolution for sound or full motion video Provide service at full resolution and frame rate in blocks

DESIGN APPROACHES TO AUTHORING The design issues for designing an authoring system is as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Hypermedia application design specification User interface aspects Embedding/linking stream of objects Storage and access to multimedia objects Playing back combined streams in a synchronized manner

The user interface presents a window for controlling storage and retrieval TYPES OF MULTIMEDIA AUTHORING SYSTEMS 1. 2. 3. 4. Dedicated authoring systems Timeline based authoring systems Structured authoring systems Programmable authoring systems

DEDICATED AUTHORING SYSTEMS This is used for single user and are at the desk of end users and the authoring is performed on objects captured by camera

This is used by users who may not be as knowledgeable about multimedia management TIMELINE BASED AUTHORING SYSTEMS In this Objects are placed along timeline and the timeline is drawn on screen in a window in graphic manner. Here once the multimedia object has been captured in timeline, it is fixed in location and can be manipulated easily STRUCTURED AUTHORING SYSTEMS This system is based on structured object level construction of complex presentations and it may be composed of video clips, music This structured authoring systems consists of 2 stages and they are 1. Construction of structure of presentations 2. Assignment of detailed timing constraints The capabilities of this system are as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Ability to view the complex structure Maintain object hierarchy Capability to zoom down View specific components in part Provide running status of designated length of the presentation Showing the timing relations Ability to address all multimedia types

PROGRAMMABLE AUTHORING SYSTEMS This system not only checks for gaps or overlaps but also checks the temporal adjustment parameters of offending objects and it is improved in the following areas 1. Providing powerful functions based on image processing and analysis 2. Embedding program interpreters to use image processing functions The functions of programmable authoring systems are as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. Return the time stamp of next frame Delete a specified movie segment Copy or cut a specified movie segment Replace the current segment

MULTISOURCE MULTIUSER AUTHORING SYSTEM

The classes of objects that are addressed by multisource multiuser authoring system are as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. Transparent objects with no temporal qualities such as graphics Opaque objects with no temporal qualities such as images Transparent objects with no temporal qualities such as sound and audio Opaque objects with no temporal qualities such as videos

TELEPHONE AUTHORING SYSTEMS The interesting applications are linking the phone into multimedia electronic mail applications and the applications are 1. The phone can be used as reading device by providing full text to speech synthesis 2. Telephone can be used for voice command input for setting up and managing voice messages 3. The capability to recognize continuous speech, phones can be used to create electronic mail messages where the voice is converted into ASCII text HYPERMEDIA APPLICATION DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS The user interface must be highly intuitive to allow the user to learn the tools quickly and be able to use them effectively By controlling desktop environments, users also need control of their environment and this control includes the following 1. The ability to specify a primary server for each object class within a domain specified by the system administrator 2. The ability to specify whether all multimedia objects or only references should be replicated 3. The ability to specify that the multimedia object should be retrieved immediately for display 4. Decompression should be performed at another network server locally The steps for the good hypermedia design are as follows Structuring the information Determining the navigation through application Methodologies for accessing the information Designing user interface

INTEGRATION OF APPLICATIONS The system is used for diverse set of applications that includes the following 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Electronic mail Word processing Graphics and formal presentation software Spreadsheet software Access to relational or object oriented database

6. Customized applications such as billing, portfolio management COMMON USER INTERFACE AND APPLICATION INTEGRATION Microsoft windows has standardized the user interface for large number of applications at the following levels 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Overall visual look and feel Menus Dialog boxes Buttons Help features Scroll bars Tool bars File open and save

DATA EXCHANGE Microsoft windows clipboard allows the exchanging data in any format and used to exchange the multimedia objects The application clipboard allows the following formats to be stored 1. Text 2. Bitmap 3. Image 4. Sound 5. Video DISTRIBUTED DATA ACCESS Application integration succeeds only if all applications required for compound object can access the sub objects that they manipulate In a fully distributed data management, the applications need access to data on any server from any workstation Fully distributed data access implies that any application at any client workstation STRUCTURING THE INFORMATION Information structuring is used to identify the information objects and to develop an information structure is as follows 1. Object types and object hierarchies- this shows how the various attributes and representations of real world objects are related. The nature of information structure determines the function that can be performed on that information set 2. Object representations multimedia objects have a variety of objects representation and consists of several information elements as text, image, audio and video

3. Object connections another issue of hypermedia design is object interconnections. In relational model, the connections are achieved through joins and in object oriented models through pointers 4. Derived connections and representations traditional schemes ignore derived connections between objects and representations of derived objects. Modeling of hypermedia system should attempt to take derived objects for establishing guidelines ATTACHING SOUNDS AND VIDEO CLIPS TO OBJECTS The overall process of creating sound track for a film merge along the parallel paths through recording, editing, premising, final mixing and print mastering Dialogue editing is the first step in creating a mixed language dialogue track consisting of production dialogue clips as well as dubbed studio clips The final mix brings the dialogue, music, sound effects together in terms of timing synchronization and the tracks are then combined into print master used for video tape or movie duplication The key point is that attaching video and sound object is complex process with multiple objects in fully time synchronized manner.

USER INTERFACE DESIGN It is important due to number of types of interactions with the user and the four types of user interface development tools are as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. Media editor Authoring applications Hypermedia object creation Multimedia object locator and creator

NAVIGTION THROUGH THE APPLCATION Navigation refers to the sequence in which application progresses and objects are created, searched and used The navigation is direct when the user needs to know what to expect with navigation actions to know what to expect with navigation actions The navigation is browse mode where the user does not know the precise question The operation from the display or entry of one object to display or entry of next object is called as link. DESIGNING USER INTERFACES The effective interface design have the following guidelines 1. Planning the overall structure of application

2. Planning the content of the application 3. Planning the interactive behavior 4. Planning the look and feel of the application The interactive behavior of application determines how the user interface with the application and issues are as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. Data entry dialog boxes Application designed sequence of operations Context sensitive operations of buttons Active icons that perform adhoc tasks

METAPHORS FOR MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS Multimedia applications have 2 key technologies and they are as follows 1. Entertainment 2. Business computing The entertainment consists of video recording , video playback and game systems Business computing brings phone integration with GUI and voice activated user interface and the types of metaphor are as follows 1.organizer metaphor 2. telephone metaphor 3. aural metaphor 4. VCR metaphor AUDIO VIDEO INDEXING OPTIONS The three issues for indexing audio and video tape are as follows 1. Counters identify tape locations and the user maintains index listings 2. Special events are used as index markers 3. Users can specify locations for index marking INFORMATION ACCESS The information access defines the way objects can be accessed and how navigations takes place through the information objects and the types are 1. Direct information 2. Random selection 3. Path selection

OBJECT DISPLAY/PLAYBACK ISSUES Each object type has to address common features expected by users and to provide users with special controls and the issues are 1. Image display issues images are stored in compressed form and the images scanned by high quality scanners are scanned at 400 pixels 2. Audio quality audio files are stored In any format 3. Video playback they provide video frame interleaving, scene change frame detection, video scaling, panning and zooming 4. Three dimensional object display planar imaging technique is used. 3D images are constructed from 2D images and special projection techniques are used to display them