Multimedia is an evolution of technology as well as a convergence which
brings together hardware and software. It has been called digital fusion - the
merger of digital technologies based on the use of computers. The technologies
that are converging are computing, television, printing and telecommunications.
Bringing them together results in the whole having greater impact than each
individual part and is one of the industry's most significant developments. The
convergence of digital technologies and their use will impact the future of
teleconferencing, distance learning and business. Multimedia can be recorded and
played, displayed, interacted with or accessed by information content processing
devices, such as computerized and electronic devices, but can also be part of a live
performance.
The term "multimedia" was first used in 1965 to describe a performance that
combined music, lights, cinema, and performance art. In the history of multimedia
development, technological advances have expanded the definition, and people
have argued about how exactly the term should be used. Most people agree that the
term multimedia should be used to describe a product that contains several types of
media. For example, a multimedia website might feature text, graphics, and
clickable sound files.
With the advent of the Internet and its growing prominence as a news,
entertainment, and shopping destination, people skilled in computer multimedia
are in great demand. Another growing sector is broadcast design. Broadcast
designers come up with ideas for sets for television news programs and create
motion graphics for television stations. These graphics might be used to introduce
or end shows, to advertise upcoming network shows, or to introduce different
segments of one show. The graphics are usually created using computer animation
software. Multimedia is also used in education. Multimedia designers create
interactive computer software that adapts itself to students' needs.
Careers in multimedia are growing faster than average according to the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Multimedia is a fairly new field, and its growth should
continue to keep pace with new technologies. Every time a new way of presenting
information is created, multimedia designers will be needed to figure out how to
integrate multimedia's new technology with the history of multimedia.
Desk-Top Training: Desk-top training or "just in-time training" is evolving
out of the interest in multimedia as the convergence of technologies continues. The
end result of the convergence which brings together hardware and software will be
training received at the individual's desktop. The term "just-in-time" training
implies that much of the training in the future will not occur until the employee
needs the information. In the desktop environment, the employee will be able to
retrieve the information to complete a current task.
This ability will be harnessed through the merger of digital technologies
based on the use of computers. The technologies that are converging are
computing, television, printing and telecommunications. Bringing them together
results in the whole having greater impact than each individual part and is one of
the industry's most significant developments. The convergence of digital
technologies and their use will impact the future of teleconferencing, distance
learning, and business.
By joining TV and computers, the best aspects of each technology are
combined. The result is a powerful communications and information system that
joins TV's ability to introduce and highlight a subject with the computer's ability to
provide in-depth information tailored to immediate needs. The computer changes
existing media by helping one find, store, search, and re-use many kinds of
information. Interactivity is the term to describe this ability to control what is
happening. Two-way communications have the highest level of interactivity,
whether the communication is with a person or with a machine.
The recently introduced AT&T Videophone has given even more credibility
to the future of just-in-time training. Compressed Labs, Inc. is introducing a
product called Cameo. It is essentially a video phone which operates in a computer
environment. Through a small camera mounted on the computer screen, a video
picture of the operator is taken and compressed through a small codec. The video
motion picture is sent to the person who is called who has the same equipment and
a video picture of that person is transmitted back. The video picture appears in a
small window on the computer screen. Computer files can be exchanged and
viewed during the video conversation. The first Cameo product is Macintosh based
but an IBM version is expected to be released in several months.
A fiber optic infrastructure throughout the U.S. is one of the final enabling
technologies that will link learners, instructors and access to information.
However, before a national system is in place, sophisticated systems will be in
place in companies linking training technologies with individual learners at their
desktop.
Multimedia systems are those that are able to control some or all of the tasks
associated with creation, development, production, and post production via a single
easy-to-use universal graphic console. Multimedia will make desktop video as
significant in the '90s as the '80s desktop publishing.
At its most basic level, multimedia involves the human senses - especially
sight and hearing, and give users a sense of interactive control over the computer.
Programs include realistic graphics, animation, movement, music, sound, images,
text, and digitized realistic voice. At its most sophisticated level, it is the beginning
of the use of virtual reality (VR) the revolutionary interactive technology that
creates the completely convincing illusion that one is immersed in a computer
generated artificial world.
Virtual Reality: VR technology resembles and is partially derived from
flight simulators. VR is loosely defined as putting users into a computer-generated
environment, rather than merely reacting to images on a screen. Full "immersion"
VR can include a helmet that senses head movement and changes the view seen
through small TV screens mounted in front of each eye along with gloves that
allow users to touch objects in the virtual world. VR has left the hands of
philosophers and engineers and has the potential to transform business and society.
For years, people have been looking forward to personal computers that
could combine text, graphics, animation, sound, music, voice, and video in
education, training and business programs. Some computers and some programs
used several media, but very few could handle all. While "just-in-time training"
enabled by multimedia and digital telecommunications has been talked about for
several years, the reality is that microprocessors aren't yet powerful enough to
generate live-action video images that lure adults.
Emerging Standards: Storing the video signal is a problem as it takes a 300
megabyte hard disk to store just 10 seconds of digital video. Compression is the
answer to storage problems. Future digital-video products will offer compression
ratios of 50:1 to 200:1. JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) is an industry
standard for still-image compression that is moving into full-motion video. MPEG
(Moving Pictures Experts Group) has a three-part compression standard for
professional and consumer applications - digital video, digital audio and systems
compression. MPEG compression compresses similar frames of video, tracks
elements which change between frames and discards the redundancies. This allows
full-motion video to be sent at DC-ROM data rates - around 160K per second.
A multimedia personal computer (MPC) standard describes a PC that can
run Microsoft's Windows efficiently because the system software beneath
multimedia would be "Windows with Multimedia Extension." The specification
calls for added audio and CD-ROM hardware).
Each form of media presents information differently and motivates its use.
Printed materials encourage scanning, reading as much as is necessary, then
making a decision to learn more or go on. Television has been described as a
passive medium because it does not encourage scanning, analysis, action, or
making a decision to move on; instead it encourages the user to watch the entire
piece by involving higher levels of emotional and sensory stimulation. Computers
tend to present focused information through words, spreadsheets, databases or
other kinds of formats. The purpose of multimedia is to combine all of these so that
the benefits of each can be used in a desktop environment.
Hypermedia: is software that allows the user to interactively manipulate
information in a variety of formats - text, images, animation, graphics, sounds,
digitized voice, and video. Together, it is called multimedia which can branch to a
motion video presentation within a window on the screen, to text, or any
combination including a live video telephone connection, perhaps with a content
expert. Interactive documents represent a shift in computer use because it becomes
the delivery platform. An interactive document requires the user's participation or
it stops. A hypermedia document can present an overview with sensory and
emotional information to involve the user (like television), encourage text
scanning, analysis, action, or move on to new material (like print), or let the user
re-use parts and add others to create new documents and communicate with others
(like a computer). These capabilities lend themselves to a four-layer structure: the
audiovisual surface, an information navigation system, information content, and
creative tools.
Control: When people watch children play electronic games and see the
concentration and total motor involvement, they wonder why the game isn't math,
"They've missed the point" says Nicholas P. Negroponte, director of the Media
Laboratory at MIT. "You need to realize the key ingredient is control and not the
sound and electronic fireworks. Everyone likes control. The computer is the
medium that allows that control (TechTrends, 1988)."
The Media Lab was formed in 1984 based on Negroponte's vision that all
communication technologies were going through a joint metamorphosis which
could only be understood properly if treated as a single subject, and only advanced
properly if treated as a single craft. He has kept the efforts focused on the human
and how humans converse. The way to decide what needs to be done is through
exploring the human sensory and cognitive system and the ways that humans most
naturally interact. Join this and you grasp the future (Brand, 1988, p. 11). The
Media Lab is committed to making the individual the driver of new information
technology by focusing on "idiosyncratic systems" that adapt to the user, by
encouraging computation in real time means the human can interact live,
"converse" with the machine, oblige it to function in human terms (p 255).
Negroponte coined the term "idiosyncratic system" to distinguish a PC from a
personalized computer, one that knows its user and can invoke all the inferences to
handle vagaries and inconsistencies (p. 153).
Multimedia is successful because it reaches many learning styles. The
variety of methods used in multimedia ensures that the content is grounded for the
learner in many ways which assists retrieval, retention and application. The
multiple impressions assist the memory system so that new information is moved
from short term memory into long term memory through maintenance and
elaborative rehearsal.
Kaleida is the multimedia joint venture between IBM and Apple. The two
companies will develop new microprocessors and software needed to move
personal computing into the next century. Kaleida will try to expedite the arrival of
multimedia computing by making it easier for outside companies to write software
that combines video, sound and graphics. By the mid-1990s, it could be licensing
products to Apple and IBM, which share nearly 40 percent of the PC market.
The future of multimedia technology is dependent upon the evolution of the
hardware. As storage devices get faster and larger, multimedia systems will be able
to expand, and increased use of DVD should result in improved quality. Rising
network speeds will increase the possibility of delivering multimedia applications
over the WWW. Currently, Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) is used
for some WWW applications and may drastically expand the multimedia
experience. Virtual reality is becoming more realistic and will stretch the
multimedia experience to envelop the user. The one certainty in multimedia
technology is that it will continue to change, to be faster, better, and more realistic.
Though the history of multimedia development is a short one, the future of
multimedia looks long and bright.
Bibliography
1) Pyatibratov, Aleksandr Petrovich Computational systems, networks and
telecommunications: the textbook
2) Stepanov, Anatoly architecture computing systems and computer networks
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia
4) http://www.tecweb.org/eddevel/edtech/multi.html
5) https://mmezhenin.wordpress.com/multimedia-en/lab1/
Multimedia technologies
Multimedia is an evolution of technology as well as a convergence which
brings together hardware and software. It has been called digital fusion - the
merger of digital technologies based on the use of computers. The technologies
that are converging are computing, television, printing and telecommunications.
Bringing them together results in the whole having greater impact than each
individual part and is one of the industry's most significant developments. The
convergence of digital technologies and their use will impact the future of
teleconferencing, distance learning and business. Multimedia can be recorded and
played, displayed, interacted with or accessed by information content processing
devices, such as computerized and electronic devices, but can also be part of a live
performance.
The term "multimedia" was first used in 1965 to describe a performance that
combined music, lights, cinema, and performance art. In the history of multimedia
development, technological advances have expanded the definition, and people
have argued about how exactly the term should be used. Most people agree that the
term multimedia should be used to describe a product that contains several types of
media. For example, a multimedia website might feature text, graphics, and
clickable sound files.
With the advent of the Internet and its growing prominence as a news,
entertainment, and shopping destination, people skilled in computer multimedia
are in great demand. Another growing sector is broadcast design. Broadcast
designers come up with ideas for sets for television news programs and create
motion graphics for television stations. These graphics might be used to introduce
or end shows, to advertise upcoming network shows, or to introduce different
segments of one show. The graphics are usually created using computer animation
software. Multimedia is also used in education. Multimedia designers create
interactive computer software that adapts itself to students' needs.
Careers in multimedia are growing faster than average according to the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Multimedia is a fairly new field, and its growth should
continue to keep pace with new technologies. Every time a new way of presenting
information is created, multimedia designers will be needed to figure out how to
integrate multimedia's new technology with the history of multimedia.
Desk-Top Training: Desk-top training or "just in-time training" is evolving
out of the interest in multimedia as the convergence of technologies continues. The
end result of the convergence which brings together hardware and software will be
training received at the individual's desktop. The term "just-in-time" training
implies that much of the training in the future will not occur until the employee
needs the information. In the desktop environment, the employee will be able to
retrieve the information to complete a current task.
This ability will be harnessed through the merger of digital technologies
based on the use of computers. The technologies that are converging are
computing, television, printing and telecommunications. Bringing them together
results in the whole having greater impact than each individual part and is one of
the industry's most significant developments. The convergence of digital