Computer Notes Chapter-13 Multimedia-Media ! multimedia ! A Multi-Media computer can do the following ! System Requirements ! Graphics Accelerator Card ! Sound Card !! Video Capture Card ! CD-ROM Drive ! software for multi-media ! Sound ! Sound Recorder ! Media player ! Media Sounds ! Sound Scheme in Windows ! Some of the standard events are ! Setting Sound ! Creating Images !Adobe Photoshop ! Animation ! Morphing ! Video !
Multimedia (Lat. Meltum+Medium) is media that uses multiple forms of information processing (e.g. text, audio , graphics, animation, and video, interactivity ) to inform or entertain the (user) audience. Multimedia also refers to the use of electronic media and experience multimedia content. Multimedia is similar to traditional mixed media inline art, but with a broader scope. The term 'rich media" is synonymous for interactive multimedia. Multimedia means that computer info can be represented through audio graphics, image, video and animation in addition to tradition media (text and graphics)
A Multi-Media Computer can do the following :
1. Produce large amount of textual information.
2. Recreate the sound of musical instrument.
3. Play back recorded sounds.
4. Show picture and moves on the monitor.
5. Access information stored on a compact disk.
System Requirements :
Minimum hardware requirements to setup a Multi-Media computer.
1. 386 dx2 +Graphics acceleration card.
2. 8 MB RAM
3. 512 Mb hard disk.
4. SVGA display.
5. Sound card, Microphone.
6. Keyboard, Mouse.
Graphics Accelerator Card:
Generating graphics takes up considerable amount of system resources. This slows the moving pictures that do not move smoothly. The graphics accelerator card takes the responsibility of generating picture on the screen without interaction of the CPU, generating excellent output of pictures and movies.
Sound Card:
A sound card is an electronic care that is inserted into any free expansion slot on the motherboard . Most system are what are known as 'plug & play' system - that is, you have to just plug in the new hardware card and the system automatically recognize it and advises you on the drivers to be installed. These days most motherboards have built-in sound cards. The sounds can act like a tape recorder they play and record sounds.
While recording a sound, the card converts the incoming sound wave to digital information and then stores the digital information in a file. while playing back the sound converts the digital information back into a sound wave. most sound cards have built-in amplifiers. Otherwise external amplifiers can be plugged on to the sound card.
Sound simple sound cards generate sound using FM synthesizers (frequency Modulation). The sound card modulates (change) the frequency to emulate the sound of various instruments this is not car.
There are other sound cards, which store recoded samples of real instruments known as sound fonts. These reproduce sound more accurately. The quality of sound cards depends on the sampling rate.
Video Capture Card:
This captures movies or picture from external device like TV,VCR or Camcorder. Video capture cards come in tow basic models, still image Grabber and Frame Grabber. Both work like a film in a camera match the colors on television set, computer screen should also support 16 million colors.
CD-ROM Drive
CD-ROM stands for compact disks. A CD is a circular light reflecting plate that can hold very large data. Commonly, CD's are used to store picture, software installation files, music, movies etc.
Software for Multi-Media:
To produce the media elements various software are available in the market, such as Ms-Word, sound can recorder, media player, Xing player, Wave studio, Note Worthy Composer, Corel draw, photo shop,
3d studio, Animator pro etc.
Sound:
Only sound file type that the PC speaker can play in the file with extension "WAV" with the help of PC speaker drive. Other sound file requires special hardware like sound card. To use the PC speaker the speaker drive has to be installed. Windows comes with the two application that play sounds: sound recorder and media player.
Sound Recorder:
Sound recorder can be used both to play and record sounds To record sound a microphone is require. The microphone is also plugged into the sound card. it can record a maximum of 1-minute audio in "WAV" format.
Media Player :
This is a versatile media player by Microsoft and can play audio (wav, mid, voc), video (avi, mpg, and mov) file. it can also play audio CD and video CD.
There are two types of sound devices- DC Audio and Media sounds. When a music CD is loaded in the CD ROM Drive, windows media player automatically checks the CD and lists the 1 track available and starts playing the 1 track. Buttons gives you the facility to fast forward, pause and rewind or go to any specific track.
Media Sound :
These are sound files having the extension WAV, MID or VOC. to play the sound open the file in the media player and click on the play button. other button are available to manipulate the position form which to play.
While using the media player, a portion or the entire sound file can be copied to the clipboard and after pasted into another document as an object with OLE. mark out are used to mark the beginning and ending part of a selection. use the copy option in the edit menu to copy the selection to the clipboard to paste it into the other document and use the paste option.
Sound Scheme in Windows:
Sound can be used as alerts to the user. Each System sound is generated under certain conditions. The sound option on the control panel can be used to assign sound to system and application events and to turn to windows warning beep and system sound on or off. with a sound card install MIDI and WAV file can be associated with an event. if there is no sound card, then a PC speaker drive will only be able to WAV file associated with an event.
Some of the standard events are :
Asterisk The usually occurs when a program needs to alter the user, it dies not having to be an error. E..g, job completion.
Critical Stop : These events occurs when a program encounters a fatal or near fatal error within the program E.g, a depends file is not found.
Default Beep : This sound is hard when a program general a generic warning or when a desired sound could not be found. E.g, default beep is hard when you try to click outside a dialog box that must be close manually before you can continue.
Exclamation : when the program needs to present information that requires no choices, you often see an exclamation, sound as on ok button.
Question : This event is generated with respect to a dialog box, the box has a large question mark in it.
Setting Sound:
Start Setting Sound and audio devices
Select an event and the required sound Wave file then click OK. Now perform and action that triggers the event (E.G, close any opened application).
Creating Images:
Image can be created using image edition software like Fractal Design painter, Corel Draw and Paint PhotoShop and so on. Image created can be stored in different file formats Some of the common file formats are TIFF, BMP, GIOF WMF and JPEG.
1. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format): This format is common in the desktop publishing word and almost all software package support it. The most recent version of the TIFF format allow for image compression: a handy format for large file when image have moved between computers.
2. BMP (Bitmap): This is well-known file format in Windows. it is an uncompressed format so file size can be quite large. As a result, it is selection the format of choice for large or high -resolution images.
3. GIF (Graphics Interchange Format): This compressed format was developed for use on Compu Serve. Most of the image files downloaded forms the Internet are in this format.
4. WMF (Windows Metafile Format ): This format is also associated with Windows. it is a vector format, but as the word metafile suggests. it can combine both vector and raster images.
5. JPEF (Joint Photographic Experts Group): This is a recent format designed for maximal image compression. JPEG uses a new kind of compression called lossy compression. Lossy refers to a compression scheme that actually loses some of the data needed to reconstruct this images The ideal is that the human eye will not miss the lost information.
Adobe Photoshop :
Photoshop is deep and powerful software best suited for editing scanned images or images made available from any other source. It is not very handy when a drawing is to be created form scratch. Different images can be put together using the tools provided. Like putting a dog on the moon along with as astronaut The images of the dog, the astronaut and the moon must be available: Photoshop is then very useful in putting these together in a single image file. You can save files in a varied range file formats images manipulation available includes resizing includes resizing, color channel splitting, altering pixels density etc.
Animation :
Animation is a single graphics file that depicts movements for instance, a man walking , a butterfly flapping its wings etc. This is achieved by superimposing several still pictures (frames) in pre- defined sequence. The time interval that each frame remains can be specified to achieve the best results if the frames move too slowly or too fast, the animation is not smooth. The speed at which the images are displayed is called frame rate and measured as frames per second (fps)
Generally, The minimum frame rate for acceptable animation is about 15 fps, which moves at a speed that allows us to recognize individual images as being seprate (seen as flickering effect ) but is still watch able. the ideal rate for animation is 30 fps, which matches video frame rates and is perceived with virtually no flicker. most of multi-media computer are capable of playing back 30 fps animation and video.
Morphing :
Morphing is also related to animation it is a technique that allows smooth changes to occur to an object's shape by defining beginning end and possible intermediate forms as guides or targets morphs can changes just about any from into another, but they also can be used to animate organic forms realistically such as snake's slithering motion or a sneezing man's facial contortions.
Some of the software that provides animation tools is Animator Pro. Animation Master 3D studio Max and Ray Dream Studio etc.
Video:
It is one of the ways to record and playback video in Multi-media program. It offers a wide range of flexibility as compared to standard video single unlike regular video quality of image would not degrade from copy to copy as digital video is made up of a digital code and not an electrical analog signal. the video output quality depends on how video images are converted to digital from during storage this is done using a video- digitizer-card The video single generating source such at TV, VCR or camera can be connected to the video-digitizer- card on the computer system. Analog signals from the external devices will be converted to digital format by the card and then stored the process of converting analog video signal to digital format is called sampling the digital format video file can be played back on the computer screen these digital files can also be edited using various videos editing software (E.g. Adobe photoshop) it can also modify photographic stills and movies. this method is often used to hide wires which might have been used to suspend the actor in the air (as in shaktiman serial ) or replacing facial expression of one with the other.
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