What is Multimedia?
-The use of computers to present text, graphics, video, animation, and sound in an integrated way. Long
touted as the future revolution in computing, multimedia applications were, until the mid-90s,
uncommon due to the expensive hardware required. With increases in performance and decreases in
price, however, multimedia is now commonplace. Nearly all PCs are capable of displaying video, though
the resolution available depends on the power of the computer's video adapter and CPU.
-Multimedia comes in many different formats. It can be almost anything you can hear or see.
Examples: Pictures, music, sound, videos, records, films, animations, and more.
Modern Web pages have often embedded multimedia elements, and modern browsers have support for
various multimedia formats.
Multimedia Formats
-Multimedia elements (like sounds or videos) are stored in media files.
The most common way to discover the type of a file, is to look at the file extension. When a browser
sees the file extension .htm or .html, it will treat the file as an HTML file. The .xml extension indicates an
XML file, and the .css extension indicates a style sheet file. Pictures are recognized by extensions like .gif,
.png and .jpg.
Multimedia files also have their own formats with different extensions like: .swf, .wav, .mp3, and .mp4.
Browser Support
The first Internet browsers had support for text only, and even the text support was limited to a single
font in a single color. Then came browsers with support for colors, fonts and text styles, and support for
pictures was added.
The support for sounds, animations, and videos is handled in different ways by various browsers. Some
multimedia elements is supported, and some requires an extra helper program (a plug-in).
Components of Multimedia
Text
It may be an easy content type to forget when considering multimedia systems, but text content is by
far the most common media type in computing applications. Most multimedia systems use a
combination of text and other media to deliver functionality. Text in multimedia systems can express
specific information, or it can act as reinforcement for information contained in other media items. This
is a common practice in applications with accessibility requirements. For example, when Web pages
include image elements, they can also include a short amount of text for the user's browser to include as
an alternative, in case the digital image item is not available.
Images
Digital image files appear in many multimedia applications. Digital photographs can display application
content or can alternatively form part of a user interface. Interactive elements, such as buttons, often
use custom images created by the designers and developers involved in an application. Digital image
files use a variety of formats and file extensions. Among the most common are JPEGs and PNGs. Both of
these often appear on websites, as the formats allow developers to minimize on file size while
maximizing on picture quality. Graphic design software programs such as Photoshop and Paint.NET
allow developers to create complex visual effects with digital images.
Audio
Audio files and streams play a major role in some multimedia systems. Audio files appear as part of
application content and also to aid interaction. When they appear within Web applications and sites,
audio files sometimes need to be deployed using plug-in media players. Audio formats include MP3,
WMA, Wave, MIDI and RealAudio. When developers include audio within a website, they will generally
use a compressed format to minimize on download times. Web services can also stream audio, so that
users can begin playback before the entire file is downloaded.
Video
Digital video appears in many multimedia applications, particularly on the Web. As with audio, websites
can stream digital video to increase the speed and availability of playback. Common digital video
formats include Flash, MPEG, AVI, WMV and QuickTime. Most digital video requires use of browser plugins to play within Web pages, but in many cases the user's browser will already have the required
resources installed.
Animation
Animated components are common within both Web and desktop multimedia applications. Animations
can also include interactive effects, allowing users to engage with the animation action using their
mouse and keyboard. The most common tool for creating animations on the Web is Adobe Flash, which
also facilitates desktop applications. Using Flash, developers can author FLV files, exporting them as SWF
movies for deployment to users. Flash also uses ActionScript code to achieve animated and interactive
effects.
Usage of Multimedia
Education
In Education, multimedia is used to produce computer-based training courses (popularly called CBTs)
and reference books like encyclopaedia and almanacs. A CBT lets the user go through a series of
presentations, text about a particular topic, and associated illustrations in various information formats.
Edutainment is an informal term used to describe combining education with entertainment, especially
multimedia entertainment.
Engineering
Software engineers may use multimedia in Computer Simulations for anything from entertainment to
training such as military or industrial training. Multimedia for software interfaces are often done as
collaboration between creative professionals and software engineers.
Industry
In the Industrial sector, multimedia is used as a way to help present information to shareholders,
superiors and coworkers. Multimedia is also helpful for providing employee training, advertising and
selling products all over the world via virtually unlimited web-based technologies.
Business
Training, informational and promotional materials, sales presentations, and point-of-sale displays that
allow for customer interaction and communication both within and outside the organization are all
common applications of multimedia in the business world. Multimedia presentations for many such
applications can be highly portable, particularly in the cases of the CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and videotape.
The equipment required to produce these presentations is relatively commonplace or otherwise easy to
access.
Mathematical and Scientific Research
In Mathematical and Scientific Research, multimedia is mainly used for modelling and simulation. For
example, a scientist can look at a molecular model of a particular substance and manipulate it to arrive
at a new substance. Representative research can be found in journals such as the Journal of Multimedia.
Entertainment and fine arts
Multimedia is heavily used in the entertainment industry, especially to develop special effects in movies
and animations. Multimedia games are a popular pastime and are software programs available either as
CD-ROMs or online. Some video games also use multimedia features.
Multimedia applications that allow users to actively participate instead of just sitting by as passive
recipients of information are called Interactive Multimedia.
In the Arts there are multimedia artists, whose minds are able to blend techniques using different media
that in some way incorporates interaction with the viewer. One of the most relevant could be Peter
Greenaway who is melding Cinema with Opera and all sorts of digital media. Another approach entails
the creation of multimedia that can be displayed in a traditional fine arts arena, such as an art gallery.
For the most part these artists are using materials that will not hold up over time.
Multimedia Revo
The term “multimedia” was first used in 1966 by the songwriter and artist Bob Goldstein to describe his
“Lightworks” project, a combination of music and visuals being performed in Long Island. Throughout
the ’60s and ’70s, the accompaniment of visuals (especially slideshows) to music became referred to as
multimedia. These early multimedia presentations in many ways anticipated the boom in music video
that would take place in the early ’80s.
With the advent of personal computing in the ’80s and early ’90s, multimedia increasingly became
associated with computers. Software offered new capabilities for user interactivity. Certain multimedia
art forms in the past had incorporated interactive features; on the avant-garde level, Fluxus
performances and happenings would invite the audience to participate, and on the pop level, improv
troupes would ask for audience suggestions. But with software, the user interacted with the medium
without there necessarily being a performer. Computers enabled a new level of interactivity, and
moreover interacted with the medium not the performer.
Another layer of multimedia has emerged with the rise of the Internet. A wider variety of interactive
media are available now than ever before, juxtaposing media in a vast array of different ways with
different degrees of person-to-person and person-to-machine interaction. New technologies at present
have the potential to incorporate the senses of smell and touch into the user experience. Potential also
exists to create immersive, 3-D environments for user interaction.
Because the term “multimedia” lacks a widespread, accepted definition, it’s difficult to peg down a
“birth” of multimedia. By some measures, the masques of 17th Century England, which combined lavish
spectacle, music, and performances for and by the nobility, can be classed as multimedia. Traditional
theater performances of any kind could even be classed as multimedia, incorporating both a visual and
an audio element at the same time.
In the arts, some of the first multimedia performances that we might recognize as such would come
about in the early years of the 20th Century, when new, electrified technologies would transform the
avant-garde arts of Europe. Futurists, Dadaists, surrealists, and others took the emerging technologies of
speed and light and applied them to art rather than science. Largely inspired by Richard Wagner’s
concept of gesamtkunstwerk (total art), these avant-gardists incorporated elements of music, painting,
film, dance, theater, puppetry, sculpture, and even cuisine into their performances in ways that are
jarring even today. Fernand Léger and George Antheil’s Ballet Mécaniquewas composed of experimental
silent film soundtracked with music partially generated by airplane propellers. The Italian futurists
advocated a “futurist cooking” in which different courses would be accompanied by different music,
scented air would be pumped into the room, and colored light was used to provide mood.