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Multimedia
Tool & Applications
What Is Multimedia?
There are many diferent definitions for
Multimedia, some people would say that a 'Multimeida' product contians
elements of text, video, sound and animation.
The word Multimeida is often used in conjunction
with PC's. This is becuase much computer software is regarded as multimedia
because it includes some; text, pictures, sound, video and animation.
A machine capable of utilising such software is regarded as a Multimedia
PC. Multimeida software often has one distinguishing feature, this is
'user interactivity', this differentiates it from other mediums such as
film, or music.
Explanations Of Media
As stated earlier Multimedia incorporates
text, sound, graphical images, video and animation.
TEXT:
This is just written words on a page.
SOUND:
Usually CD-quality audio is used to enhance
the software.
GRAPHICS:
Can be a drawn image, a photo, or a picture.
VIDEO:
Video files can be used on a Multimeida
product but often are not very large beacuse of the large file size.
ANIMATION:
This is a moving picture usually consisting
of various images put together, played back and looped continuously.
Merits Of Multimedia
TEXT:
This is the most popular medium as it is often easily understood. A file
containing lots of text will be a small in file size. This can be beneficial
on the Internet as it reduces loading times- text being one of the first
things the browser displays when a page is loading. Can be very plain
and become difficult to read if studied over a long period of time, large
sections of text may bore the user, who may become tired reading it.
AUDIO: Can enhance
web-pages, an example of where sound use is wide-spread is on fan sites
dedicated to various bands where songs are often played as background
music. WAV files are too large to do this so MIDI files are often used.
MIDI files do not contain any sound, but are a series of insturctions
to your sound card telling it what notes to play and when. Some MIDI files
are good, but it can become annoying especially if the sound keeps looping
in the background. Audio files are often used on pages in the form of
downloads, there are many different types of sound files in use;
MP3's have created the biggest amount of
fuss as it allows the user to download CD-quality sound in a compressed
format, this keeps downlaods down to a reasonable time. Unauthorized use
of MP3's is illegal and many sites have been closed for persisting to
offer them.
GRAPHICS: Usually
a drawn image, logo or picture. On the Internet the files used are usually
Gif. or Jpeg. Can make a web-page look a lot better and improves the layout
and content of the page. It is important to use files that are understood
by most browsers (namely Netscape navigator and Internet Explorer). Gif.
files and Jpg files are understood by both browsers. However graphics
files can be large and thus be slow to downlaod and appear on a page.
Often mistakes are made and a pciture may not appear at all.
VIDEO: Video can
be particularly effective and can be an important part of a website, often
Video will not be downloaded unless the user clciks to start a downlaod.
Video can transmit a lot of valuable information, however downlaods can
be slow if file sizes ar elareg.
ANIMATION: A collection
of images played together and often looped. An example is the animated
gif file which is collection fo gif files put together to from a moving
picture. Can be effective as the front page of a web-site (e.g a moving
logo). Can take a while to download. Other animations using Macromedia
porducts such as Shockwave or Flash can be particularly effective, however
some are not compatible with older browsers and the user may need to downlaod
flash or shockwave plug-ins.
Typical Multimeida Hardware
Todays Multimedia PC's have now far surpassed
the original MPC standards. MPC Level 3 which was set in 1995 stated that
a new Multimedia PC had to have a Pentium Processor of 75 mhz or higher,
8MB of RAM, a 540MB Hard Drive. The CD-ROM had to have a 600 KB/sec transfer
rate and be multi-session capable. The Audio had to be 16 bit digital,
wavetable, with MIDI playback. Video Playback was MPEG1 with OM-1 compliance.
The operating system had to be either Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.0.
Todays Multimedia PC's (1999/2000) are far
superior to the older machines, so much so that there is no official MPC
standard. New PC's come equipped with the latest hardware and software;
Optional extras that also come with most
new PC's are;
DVD-ROM;
CD-Writers;
Soundcards;
Most sound cards sold today should support
the SoundBlaster and General MIDI standards and should be capable of recording
and playing digital audio at 44.1kHz stereo. This is the resolution at
which CD AUDIO is recorded, which is why sound cards are often referred
to as having ‘CD-quality’ sound.
Wavetable;
WaveTable doesn’t use carriers and modulators
to create sound, but samples of real instruments. A sample is a digital
representation of a waveform produced by an instrument. ISA-based cards
generally store samples in ROM, although newer PCI products use the PC's
main system RAM, in banks which are loaded when Windows starts up and
can be modified to include new sounds.
Most instrument samples are recorded in
16-bit 44.1kHz but many manufacturers compress the data so that
more samples, or instruments, can be fit into small amounts of memory.
There is a trade-off, however, since compression often results in loss
of dynamic range or quality.
MIDI;
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface,
or MIDI, has been around since the early 80s. It was developed to
provide a standard way of interfacing music controllers such as keyboards
to sound generators like synthesisers and drum machines.
MIDI is a language for describing musically
important real-time events. It communicates over 16 channels , allowing
up to 16 MIDI instruments to be played from just one interface. Some MIDI
interfaces offer as many as 16 outputs, making it possible to access 256
at the same time.
Video Cards;
No single component of the PC is deploying
as quickly right now as the graphics subsystem. Graphic chip companies
such as NVidia, ATI and 3Dfx trump their own products with astonishing
swiftness, releasing new chips that more than double the capabilities
of the product released just six - nine months before.
The RAM DAC is the part that is responsible
to send the data for a decent picture to the monitor. Two factors are
important, the quality of the RAM DAC, e.g. is it stand alone or integrated
into the video chipset, and the max. pixel frequency, measured in MHz.
A 220 MHz RAM DAC is not neccessarily but most likely better than a 135
MHz one and it certainly offers higher refresh rates.
The Amount of Video RAM is responsible for
the colour resolution in combination with the screen resolution
in 2D, in 3D, which is getting more and more important, the amount of
local card memory is also determining the maximal 3D resolution.
3D needs much more local memory than 2D for the same resolution. This
is due to the fact that 3D needs a front, a back and a Z-buffer.
CD and DVD-ROM;
Perhaps one of the more noticeable changes
in Multimedia Computers has been the CD-ROM drives, Originally starting
out at a slow speed they have now risen to about 44x speed. The CD was
hugely improtant to Multimedia software as it could store a large volume
of information. One disk could store 740MB of data or 74 mins of audio,
this was huge when compared to the 1.44MB stored by an ordinary floppy
disk. This also meant that many software programs could be stored on a
single disk.
The CDRW (CD-Writer) gave users the chance
to create their own audio or data CD, files could now be stored on a CD
rather than a floppy disk, whats more CDRW discs could be used over and
over again because they were re-writable.
However a variation of the CD format is
the DVD, Home DVD players have been on the market for the last couple
of years and are dropping in price. However DVD-ROM drives are starting
to be incorporated on many new PC's in place of, or along side CD-ROMS
or CD-Writers. A DVD disc is similar in appearance to CD's but DVD's are
usually double-sided, a typical DVD disc can store 17 gigabytes of information
(8.5 gigabytes per side). DVD players look to be the future of multimeida
products howver they may not replace CD's completely. There are three
variations with DVD;
MPEG Cards;
MPEG-3 is a method of compression for Video,
which substantially reduces file sizes allowing greater downl;oad speeds
when used on the internet. MPEG Cards decompres the files so they can
be viewed on your PC.
Capture Cards;
When trying to transfer video from a digital
camera, or video camera capture cards are necessary. A Capture Card connects
the computer with a video device ensuring that a transfer can be made.
MULTIMEDIA SOFTWARE;
A good example of Multimeida Software is
the Intercative Encyclopedias, that include text, sounds, video clips,
and store a wide range of information.
Softeare that is commonly used to create
Multimeida effects are Adobe Photoshop, Sound Forge, Macromedia Dreamweaver
2 and Fireworks 2.
Adobe Photoshop
This is the industry standard and allows
users to create and alter images using various tools, layers and color
schemes (RGB or CYMK). Photoshop is a very sophistcated tool, an expensive
too, and not all the features are needed.
Once your used to Photoshop, the features
become easier to use, and very unsual effects can be mad to images. Once
the image is in 8-bit format it can be; blurred, charcoal, chrome, film
grain, glass, negative (inverse), neon glow, torn edges and transparent
to name a few.
Allwing users to edit individual layers
in an image allows easy editing, and can give some interesting effects.
Sound Forge
This software gives you the opportunity
to edit and add effects to sound files. Sound Forge is quite basic when
compared to other editing programs, but it is easier to use. In sound
forge it is easy to 'cut' and 'paste' sections of the spund file together.
Dreamweaver 2 and Fireworks 2
Dreamweaver is an advanced web-design tool.
It lets you create web-pages and is particularly good at creating frames,
and advanced tools such as forms, java-scripts etc. Fireworks 2 can run
alongside Dreamwaver and is useful at creating effects for your webpage
such as rollovers, on mouse over and on click effetcs. It is also possible
to crate an image with hotspots linking to different pages.
Criteria For Multimedia.
In my opinion for a product/or website to
be classed as Multimedia it must consit of any one of these elements;
If a website just contained Text (like this
page) I would not class it as an example of a multimedia website. Howver
if it contained sound in the background, or links to video footage or
a sound file then it would be. Similarly Text and Still Images although
form the basis of most websites, together they are not enough to justify
being described as multimedia.
Good web-sites also incroporate Java, or
java-scripts and look very professional and easy to navigate, however
for a website to be good it must download reasonably quickly otherwise
people will become impatient and move on.
Below are three websites that I consider
to be good examples of multimedia or contain Multimedia aspects.
MTV; This is a nice site, that
is well designed and reasonably easy to navigate. It contains text and
still images, however if you look around the site you will find sound
clips. This site does have Interactivity, because there are online competitions
and games to play. However I found the site could be quite slow at times.
WWF; Out of the three sites listed
this was probably the best, first of all it looked nice, with the 'on
mouse over' effects being particularly effective. Inside the site it contains
music sound files, photos, interviews, videos of previos shows and text.
I would class this as Multimedia because it contained a mix of sound,
video and pictures along with some interactive elements. It was reasonably
quick to load and navigation was good.
THQ; Out of the three sites this was
probably the worst, the java effects were good but it took an age to load,
and every time I clicked a link to go elsewhere in the site that page
took a while to load as well - I think they just went over the top with
the effects. The site contained text, pictures and video clips, but was
quite difficult to naviaget simply because of the loading times.
Sources Used for this assignment;
http://www.tomshardwareguide.com
Telephone 01709 852892 /852755
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