What is Multimedia ?
-Questions and Exercises

What is Multimedia ?

People only retain 20% of what they see and 30% of what they hear. But they remember 50% of what they see and hear, and as much as 80% of what they see, hear, and do simultaneously.

Multimedia is any combination of text,graphics,art,sound,animation, and video with links and tools that let the teacher/learner/user navigate, interact, and communicate with the computer. When you allow the user (the viewer) to control what and when these elements are delivered, multimedia becomes interactive multimedia. When you provide a structure of linked elements through which the learner can navigate, interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia.

Although the definition of multimedia is simple, making it work can be complicated. Not only do you need to understand how to make each multimedia element work, but you also need to know how to tie the elements together using multimedia computer tools. However, if done properly, interactive multimedia excels in leaving lasting impressions in the teaching/learning process.

Over the last few years the personal computer has changed rapidly. These developments in hardware and software now allows people to create multimedia products that once could only have been created by film studios. The interent now allows people to quickly, easily and cheaply publish their multimedia to a wide audience - a situation which would, only a few years ago, have been impossible.

The effects of Technological Change on Multimedia

Technological Change Effect upon multimedia

The Internet Increased ability to communicate with people easily and cheaply provides a wide audience for authors of multimedia. This makes finding examples of multimedia easy, and allows authors to deliver material to their target audience without the expense of creating CDs or other media and physically moving the data to the audience. However, Bandwidth constraints presently prevent high quality material (like those found in commercial movies) from being transported cheaply and quickly. This situation is changing as the price of broadband internet access continues to fall.

CD Media Although now considered relatively small, the capacity of a CDROM (about 700 megabytes) was, only a few years ago (early to mid 1990's), considered a large amount of storage space. In those days, some computers still worked from floppy disks (only 1.4 megabytes) or had hard drives with capacities as low as 40 megabytes. With such small storage capacity, the computers of a few years ago, could not house the large files that multimedia demands. The CD may be considered the first format to allow a computer to host multimedia and, even today, is still an important way of storing text, sound and video data - something that was not possible with floppy disks.

DVD Media The DVD is the next step from a CD and allows the computer to house large data sets that complex multimedia requires. As the audience becomes more sophisticated, they demand multimedia of higher quality - larger images;sharper images;clearer sound. This higher quality media (usually video footage) requires more room than a CD can store and the capacity of a DVD (4.7 gigabytes or more depending upon the format used) allows this data to be stored in a small, compact form.

Large capacity Hard Drive The capacity of hard drives has grown rapidly in recent years. It is now common to find hard drives with a capacity of 300 gigabytes or more in a household computer and for people to carry hard drives in their pocket in the form of an iPod. This allows people to store and access their own personal multimedia - music, home movies, photographs - in any place convenient to them.

3d Accelerated Video Cards One of the constraints of a computer system was, in the past, the ability of the computer to display large images quickly enough to show video footage. Today, video cards are designed with their own processing (a Graphics Processor or GPU) and their own storage (256 Megabytes of video RAM - vRAM - is not uncommon). These new video cards easily allow video footage of high quality (like the new HDTV) to be displayed. Further, photo-realistic images generated in video games, can be created on the fly allowing characters in computer games like Half-Life 2 to seem almost real.

Surround Sound The capability of computers to generate realistic sounds has increased dramtically since the early beeps of computers found in the early to mid 1990's. Sorround sound systems like Dolby 5:1 systems allows the computer to generate cinema quality sound that can appear to come from the side, infront or even behind the audience. This greatlt enhances the viewing experience and adds a great deal of atmosphere to modern multimedia and multimedia games.

Digital Cameras The transition of cameras from film to digital media has placed pwoerful tools into the hands of almost everyone. Once digitised the footage from a camera (both still and video images) can be easily moved to a computer to be stored, edited and displayed.

Modern operating systems Modern operating systems like Windows XP or OSX provide a rich and (relatively) stable environment for the storage, editing and display of multimedia. All modern computers now come standard with the ability to display music, sound, photographic quality pictures and video footage.

Multimedia Storage formats New data formats that greatly compress multimedia information into a manageable size allows data that was once simply too large to handle to be stored and manipulated. File formats like %2%2/mp3/ allow the storage of high quality music, while compression algorithms (codecs) like divx and mpeg allow video footage to be stored.

Multimedia Tools Tools to edit and manipulate multimedia allow normal users to view as well as create their own multimedia from their own footage. Tools like Windows Media Player allow the user to view and play music and video footage, while applications like Windows Movie Maker allows the user to import media from a source like a camera, edit the footage, add sound, add transition effects and store the video as a new presentation.

Technological Change	Effect upon multimedia
The Internet	Increased ability to communicate with people easily and cheaply provides a wide audience for authors of multimedia. This makes finding examples of multimedia easy, and allows authors to deliver material to their target audience without the expense of creating CDs or other media and physically moving the data to the audience. However, Bandwidth constraints presently prevent high quality material (like those found in commercial movies) from being transported cheaply and quickly. This situation is changing as the price of broadband internet access continues to fall.
CD Media	Although now considered relatively small, the capacity of a CDROM (about 700 megabytes) was, only a few years ago (early to mid 1990's), considered a large amount of storage space. In those days, some computers still worked from floppy disks (only 1.4 megabytes) or had hard drives with capacities as low as 40 megabytes. With such small storage capacity, the computers of a few years ago, could not house the large files that multimedia demands. The CD may be considered the first format to allow a computer to host multimedia and, even today, is still an important way of storing text, sound and video data - something that was not possible with floppy disks.
DVD Media	The DVD is the next step from a CD and allows the computer to house large data sets that complex multimedia requires. As the audience becomes more sophisticated, they demand multimedia of higher quality - larger images;sharper images;clearer sound. This higher quality media (usually video footage) requires more room than a CD can store and the capacity of a DVD (4.7 gigabytes or more depending upon the format used) allows this data to be stored in a small, compact form.
Large capacity Hard Drive	The capacity of hard drives has grown rapidly in recent years. It is now common to find hard drives with a capacity of 300 gigabytes or more in a household computer and for people to carry hard drives in their pocket in the form of an iPod. This allows people to store and access their own personal multimedia - music, home movies, photographs - in any place convenient to them.
3d Accelerated Video Cards	One of the constraints of a computer system was, in the past, the ability of the computer to display large images quickly enough to show video footage. Today, video cards are designed with their own processing (a Graphics Processor or GPU) and their own storage (256 Megabytes of video RAM - vRAM - is not uncommon). These new video cards easily allow video footage of high quality (like the new HDTV) to be displayed. Further, photo-realistic images generated in video games, can be created on the fly allowing characters in computer games like Half-Life 2 to seem almost real.
Surround Sound	The capability of computers to generate realistic sounds has increased dramtically since the early beeps of computers found in the early to mid 1990's. Sorround sound systems like Dolby 5:1 systems allows the computer to generate cinema quality sound that can appear to come from the side, infront or even behind the audience. This greatlt enhances the viewing experience and adds a great deal of atmosphere to modern multimedia and multimedia games.
Digital Cameras	The transition of cameras from film to digital media has placed pwoerful tools into the hands of almost everyone. Once digitised the footage from a camera (both still and video images) can be easily moved to a computer to be stored, edited and displayed.
Modern operating systems	Modern operating systems like Windows XP or OSX provide a rich and (relatively) stable environment for the storage, editing and display of multimedia. All modern computers now come standard with the ability to display music, sound, photographic quality pictures and video footage.
Multimedia Storage formats	New data formats that greatly compress multimedia information into a manageable size allows data that was once simply too large to handle to be stored and manipulated. File formats like %2%2/mp3/ allow the storage of high quality music, while compression algorithms (codecs) like divx and mpeg allow video footage to be stored.
Multimedia Tools	Tools to edit and manipulate multimedia allow normal users to view as well as create their own multimedia from their own footage. Tools like Windows Media Player allow the user to view and play music and video footage, while applications like Windows Movie Maker allows the user to import media from a source like a camera, edit the footage, add sound, add transition effects and store the video as a new presentation.

Questions and Exercises

Create, in your books, a cover page for the topic Multimedia and Authoring.
Copy the following text into your note book under the heading What is Multimedia.

Write in your books how each of the following have improved, or made multimedia on a home computer possibble :

The Internet
CD, DVD and Large Hard Drives
3d Video Cards
Sound Cards and Sound systems
Compressed file formats like mp3

Create a new web site for your multimedia work. On the page, cut and paste the definition for multimedia written above and include links to (at least) two examples of multimedia you have found on the web.

Create a page under your multimedia site for Multimedia Hardware. Search the internet for Australian computer stores that sell modern multimedia capable computer systems. On your Multimedia Hardware page include :

List the components that are important for multimedia and describe why the component chosen is so good.
Try to find the price of each of the components and list them as a table. List the price of the computer and where it can be purchased from
Paste a picture of your computer onto the page.