Marketing with Multimedia

Multimedia finds application in highly diversified areas like marketing which includes sales promotion, direct sales and customer series, multimedia brochures and multimedia catalogues are used for sales promotion merchandising systems are being used as point of sale information systems or direct sales.

Business presentations
Video conferencing
The internet and the world wide web
Multimedia in media and entertainment

Multimedia in Education and research

Multimedia provides the power of interactive ness to learning a fundamental distinction between multimedia and television. Based on interactive computer technology multimedia can present a continuous stream of individual choices allowing students the freedom to navigate knowledge as a personal voyage.

Medical and health care education
Multimedia museums
Multimedia encyclopedia
Multimedia in training
Multimedia in CBT

Full Motion Digital Video

A video capture card, which has input jacks for analog devices, is used to capture analog video and convert them to digital video

Video compression Techniques
large memory requirements of multimedia applications require usage of various compression techniques Video compression reduces the amount of data needed to reproduce images It saves ,torage space, increases access speeds and is the only way to achieve acceptable quality of digital motion video Video compression is measured in terms of four basic criteria viz
Compression Ratio
Picture Quality
Compression and Decompression speeds
Hardware and Software resources required to achieve it

MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) compression is used widely for full motion video compression It allows for compressing multiple frames by only recording changes from frame to Inlme It uses a Compression technique known as Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) which uses a complex mathematical algorithm to eliminate redundant data in square blocks of pixels
When we store Multimedia information we store it in two different storage levels

The media level storage where the actual information is stored in the form of audio clippings, images, text etc
The data level where files representing" and controlling different forms of media elements are keeps The conventional CD-ROM storage, stores all data in the standard computer format, irrespective of the type of media This means that, sound, images and text and the controlling software, are all stored in the same way a normal PC would store data MPC standards use ,Multimedia Extensions Strategy It is focused on getting audio information stored and accessed without any computer processing In other words, the Multimedia computer would play.

Sound

There are two types of sound files:

Files that store wave information. They have the WAV extension

The files that do not store waveform information. The non-wave form file format is called MIDI (musical instrument digital interface ). For high quality audio, the application should be delivered on a CD ROM disk. The files sizes are too large for any other storage medium to handle.

Compression Techniques

Still pictures consume considerable amount of disk space. For example, a full image at IO24x512 resolution needs around 1.5 MB of disk space ( IO24x512x3 bytes).

Images

All graphic images contain information defined in color or gray-scale values. Black and white images have I bit per pixel. Gray-scale images contain 8 bits per pixel. As explained in the earlier section, images are of two types; raster and vector images. CorelDraw is one of the most popular packages using the vector imaging technique. Some packages allow the use of both vector and raster graphics. One good example is PageMaker. CorelDraw supports export to a variety of file formats. It is possible to export aCorel clipart (a vector image) to Paint Brush, a paint package (uses raster graphics). CorelDraw also allows raster to vector conversion. Different image files are available which include BMP, DIB, WMF, TIF, GIF, TGA, PCX etc.

Full Motion Digital Video

Just like audio, video also is of two types; analog and digital. Digital video is a series of images whose information is stored in digital bits; and they can be played on computers. Video capture cards convert analog signal to digital signal. They have input jacks to capture analog video and convert the video to a digital form. Analog video that is captured could be of any format; e.g. the North American (NTSC) standard and the European (PAL) standard.

Requirements for Digital video are : .
A video capture card
An audio capture card or built-in audio capture capability
A video display card or accelerator
Video/audio capture and editing software

Audio/Sound

Audio information could be stored in two formats; W A V file and MIDI file formats. . W A V files are digitized audio. Whereas. MIDI ( Musical Instrument Digital Interface) stores only the description of the sound. The sound synthesizer is required to produce the actual sound. MIDI files can store audio information in a very compact form, i.e they occupy less disk space than WAVfile The following guidelines are provided as MPC standards. Sound Blaster cards are considered to be the standard Hence, sound cards often have 'Sound Blaster compatible' written on them. A sound card must be MIDI capable and have.
Microphone input
Mixer software
Amplifier
At least 8-bit resolution or higher

Animation

Animation. is a series of images displayed frame by frame to produce an effect that resembles continuous movement. Animation software have the capability of importing different file formats such as GED (geometry file forl1jat) RAS (Raster file format). AI (Adobe Illustrator) and TGA. TIF, GIF, BMP. PCX. RA W (uncompressed) and JPG files. Animation file formats include A VI (audio-video interleave) from Microsoft, QT (QuickTime) from Apple Computer, FLC and FLI from Autodesk (used in AnimatorPro). It does not support audio files. Other formats are ISO and IETC's (International Electronic Technology Commission) MPEG format. MPEG (Motion Picture Expert's Group) uses discrete cosine transformation (DCT), which is a method of breaking up images into small blocks, such as pixels, using mathematical calculations. ,

Multimedia elements

Image
Images are important multimedia elements. They play an important role in enhancing the understandability of any presentation. There are two popular image types generated on the computer. They are raster images and vector images.

Overview of multimedia design and production

Two aspects of multimedia design are expressive and technical design. Expressive design is the process of designing the interface, for instance, to develop the mode of experience for Imagery, feel of terrain and so on. The technical design part includes the process of actually implementing the expressive design by combining the various elements together. In other words, it is the process of constructing the physical world, creating an electronic network etc. The experience of viewing multimedia presentation is a linear event, however, the information stored in the presentation is not stored in a linear fashion. It is the narrative that connects the linear and non- linear forms of presentation.
The three major activities in multimedia production are : .
Authoring.
Presenting.
Distributing

Multimedia Hardware

A multimedia System is one which can access audio, text and graphics from suitable storage devices, process them and present them at a required speed. The system is sometimes required to access some form of motion video also. To add these capabilities to a system, some extra facilities need to be incorporated, viz

Why Multimedia?

Ideas, thoughts and information can be shared through various means. It could be text based, or through audio visual medium. Conventional computer prograrns have the capability to handle text and numbers, but this may not be sufficient for effective communication. Multimedia, with its capability to integrate text, graphics, sound and full motion video provides the alternative. For Example, the Internet's World Wide Web enhances communication by using multimedia to a great effect.

What is Multimedia?

Multimedia is a technology including or involving the use of several types of media. These different types of media are numbers, text, graphics, audio, animation and full motion video (in digital format) . The power of multimedia is it's capability of integrating the above component~. This capability of multimedia applications makes them effective tools for interactive and informative communication. Multimedia finds applications in diverse fields such as education and research, video conferencing, marketing, entertainment, the Internet, virtual reality, business presentations etc.