What is multimedia?

Any combination of text, graphics, sounds, etc. that is viewed to you on a computer. Basically a mixture of medias.

When a user can choose the media content, then you have interactive multimedia.

When the user can navigate, then you have hypermedia.

Uses of Multimedia:

• Business

  • Training

  • Video Conferencing

  • Presentations

• Schools

  • Educational software

  • Simulations of hazardous topics. Like chemistry where chemicals can explode.

  • Look up databases of various topics, like encyclopdias.

• Home

  • Convergence of computer and entertainment devices.

  • DVR

• Public places

  • Kiosks

• VR

Stages of a Project

• Planning & Costing

  • Figure out what media you will need

  • Prototype

• Designing & Producing

  • Get feedback from the client

• Testing

• Delivering

History:

• Pong first commerical multimedia product

• Home PCs

• Video Game Systems

Evolution of the interface

• Text Menus by keys

• Text by mouse. Drop down menus.

• Icons and graphics

Hardware involved:

Multimedia Production PC

• Get a good PC with lots of RAM and plenty of hard drive space. Video requires lots of disk space.

• A large monitor with the resolution set hight (1024 x 768 or larger). However test your application with the resolution set to 640 x 480 to see how people with lower resoution monitors will see your program.

• Scanner or Digital camera to get images into the computer.

• Microphone to get sound into your computer.

• Photo and video editor

• Sound editor

• Multimedia authoring tool (such as Director)

Even game console games are developed on a PC. Some use a emulator, like to emulate the actions of intended device.

Be organized. Watch for deadlines, budgets, and resources. Backup files and keep various file versions (so you can go back to a previous stage).

Macintoshes and Windows based machines run on different hardware. Software compiled for one machine will not run on the other machine. However you can create a cross platform CD with both Windows and Mac based code.

Memory

• RAM

  • More is needed for media production, because the programs that create the content demand more power (generally) than those that view the content. If you run out of memory, the system will swap memory to the hard drive and this slows things down conciderably.

• Flash Memory

• Hard Drive

• DVDs (Digital Versatile Disc) can hold GBs of data.

• CD-R/W

• Blu-ray

Input Devices

• Keyboards

• Mice/Trackballs/Tablets

• Touchscreens

• Scanners

• Video Capture Cards

• OCR (Optical Character Recognition) helps get printed text into electronic text.

• Microphone

• Voice Recognition

• Digital Camera

Output Devices

• Speakers

• Monitor

• Printers