Lesson 1

Introduction to Multimedia

Media is something that can be used for presentation of information. Two basic ways to present some information are: Unimedia presentation: Single media is used to present information Multimedia presentation: More than one media is used to present information Multimedia presentation of any information greatly enhances the comprehension capability of the user as it involves use of more of our senses

Multimedia is the media that uses multiple forms of information content and information processing (e.g. text, audio, graphics, animation, video, interactivity) to inform the user. Multimedia also refers to the use of electronic media to store and experience multimedia content.

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).

Categories of Multimedia
Multimedia may be broadly divided into linear Non-linear categories(hypermedia content)
Multimedia presentations can be live or recorded.

hypermedia
An extension to hypertext that supports linking graphics, sound, and video elements in addition to text elements. The World Wide Web is a partial hypermedia system since is supports graphical hyperlinks and links to sound and video files

Hypermedia
Networked Hypermedia = Hypertext + Multimedia + Network

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

Convergence of Multimedia (Virtual Reality)

At the convergence of technology and creative invention in multimedia is virtual reality, or VR. Helmets, and special gloves, attempt to place you inside a lifelike experience. VR requires terrific computing horsepower to be reality. 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.

(Virtual Reality)
Helmets

gloves

Stages of Multimedia Application Development

The four basic stages of multimedia project development : 1. 2. 3. 4. Planning and Costing Designing and Producing Testing Delivering

Check Your Progress 1

List five applications of multimedia

answers to Check your progress

Your answers may include the following Education Medicine Engineering Industry Creative Industry Mathematical and scientific Industry Commercial

Multimedia Computer System

Multimedia computer system is a computer having capability to integrate two or more types of media (text, graphics, animation, audio, and video) In general, size for multimedia information is much larger than plain text information Multimedia computer systems require: Faster CPU Larger storage devices (for storing large data files) Larger main memory (for large data size) Good graphics terminals I/O devices to play any multimedia

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. 2. Audio : Sound is perhaps the most element of multimedia. It can provide the listening pleasure of music, 3. Images : Images whether represented analoge or digital plays importers role in a multimedia. 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

Lesson 2

Text

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.

Text in Multimedia
Words and symbols in any form, spoken or written, are the most common system of communication. Most academic related text such as journals, emagazines are available in the Web Browser readable form.

Text Media
Alphanumeric characters are used to present information in text form. Computers are widely used for text processing Keyboards, OCRs(OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION.), computer screens, and printers are some commonly used hardware devices for processing text media Text editing, text searching, hypertext, and text importing/exporting are some highly desirable features of a multimedia computer system for better presentation and use of text information

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 , italic, and underlining The size of a text is usually measured in points. One point is approximately 1/72 of an inch i.e. 0.0138.

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 are some examples of sans serif font.

F
(Serif Font)

F
(Sans serif font)

Sans serif fonts work better than serif fonts. As shown in figure on next slide. The top figure shows good use of fonts and color . It has a consistent color scheme, uses large and all sans-serif (Arial) fonts.
The bottom figure is poor, it used too many colors, and they are inconsistent. The red adjacent to the blue is hard to focus on, because the human retina cannot focus on these colors simultaneously. The serif font is said to be hard to read in darkened, projection setting.

The British Royal university has many collage on it. IT is one of its collage departments The British Royal university has many collage on it. IT is one of its collage departments

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.
In large size headlines, the spacing between the letters can be adjusted The different effects and colors of a font can be chosen in order to make the text look in a good manner. Drop caps and initial caps can be used to accent the words. 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

Check Your Progress 1.

List a few fonts available in your computer

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, Arabic numbers and math symbols. 32 control characters are also included.

Character set and alphabets:

Character set and alphabets:

The ASCII 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

The Extended Character set

Unicode
Unicode makes use of 16-bit architecture for foreign text and character encoding. Unicode uses about 65,000 characters from all known languages and alphabets in the world. Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Netscape, IBM, Xerox and Novell are participating in the development of this standard . Microsoft and Apple have incorporated Unicode into their operating system.

00 0000

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

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0A

0B

0C

0D

0E

0F

10

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12

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14

15

16

17

18

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1A

1B

1C

1D

1E -

1F Symb ols Numb er Alpha bet

0020 0040 0060 0080 00A0 00C0 00E0 0100 0120 0140 0160 0180 01A0 01C0 01E0 0200 0220 0240 0260 0280 02A0 02C0 02E0 0300 0320 0340 0360 0380 03A0 03C0 03E0 @ `

! A a

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( H h

) I i

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0 P p

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5 U u

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< \ |

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Latin

Greek

00 0400 0420 0440 0460 0480 04A0 04C0 04E0 0500 0520 0540 0560 0580 05A0 05C0 05E0 0600 0620 0640 0660 0680 06A0 06C0 06E0 0700

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

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0A

0B

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10

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1F Syria c Yiddi sh Arabi c Hebre w Russi an Cyrill ic

Komi Arme nian

0720 0740 0760

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Thaan a

3000

Symb ols Hirag ana

3020
3040 3060 3080 30A0 30C0 30E0 3100

Bopo mofo Hang ul Katak ana

3120
3140 3160 3180 31A0 31C0 31E0 3200 3220 3240 3260 3280 32A0 32C0 32E0 3300 3320 3340 3360 3380 33A0 33C0 33E0

Kanb un Bopo mofo CJK Hang ul CJK Hang ul CJK Katak ana Katak ana CJK

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.

Font Editing and Design tools

Special font editing tools can be used to make your own type so you can communicate an idea or graphic feeling exactly 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.

Font Editing and Design tools

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, and color your words into real artwork. Pretty text can be found in bitmapped drawings where characters have been manipulated and blended into a graphic image.

Font Editing and Design tools 3-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. When text is stored in a computer instead of on printed pages the computers powerful processing capabilities can be applied to make the text more accessible and meaningful. This text can be called as hypertext.

Font Editing and Design tools 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 may be consists of text, graphics, sounds or related information in the knowledge base.

Font Editing and Design tools

5. Searching for words: Following are typical methods for a word searching in hypermedia systems: Categories, Word Relationships, Alternates, Association, Intermediate words, Frequency.

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.