Chapter 1.1-Multimedia Data

MULTIMEDIA DATA
Anandi Giridharan
Electrical Communication Engineering,
Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore – 560012, India
E0262 Multimedia Information Systems
Multimedia Information Systems
● The word multimedia is made up of the two Latin words "multi"
which means many and "media" which is the substance through
which something is transmitted.
● In this case multi is the multiple data types such as voice, video,
image, animation, text etc. and media is the computer
environment used to transmit the information made up of this
multiple data types.
● Multimedia data imposes new requirements to the computer
networks due to the large volumes involved. In addition to huge
volumes the way we look at multimedia information is also
different.
● An image takes much longer than text to download but a user
may look at it in a much shorter period and discard it if it is not
what he or she wants and requests for a new one. This process
means fast networks are required to handle multimedia data..
Characteristics of a Multimedia System
A Multimedia system has four basic characteristics:
* Multimedia systems must be computer controlled.
* Multimedia systems are integrated.
* The information they handle must be represented digitally.
* The interface to the final presentation of media is usually interactive.
Multimedia systems may have to render a variety of media at the same instant -- a distinction from
normal applications. There is a temporal relationship between many forms of media (e.g. Video and
Audio.
There 2 are forms of problems here
* Sequencing within the media -- playing frames in correct order/time frame in video
* Synchronisation -- inter-media scheduling (e.g. Video and Audio). Lip synchronisation is clearly
important
HyperText and HyperMedia
Hypertext is a text which contains links to other texts.
The term was invented by Ted Nelson around 1965.
HyperMedia is not constrained to be text-based. It can
include other media, e.g., graphics, images, and
especially the continuous media - sound and video
The World Wide Web (WWW) is the best example of
hypermedia applications.
Constraints Introduced
●The computer systems used must have
MULTIMEDIA DATA HANDLING capability.
●Enough storage
●memory capacity
●sound and video handling capability
● a video capture board if it is used for producing
multimedia applications
●Necessary tools to produce the presentations.
●Images, sound and video must be COMPRESSED in
order to be handled in the PC environment.
Technical Demands
● The NETWORKS SHOULD BE HIGH SPEED to cope with the
large amounts of data to be transmitted synchronously over them.
●The PROCESSORS must be powerful enough to execute the
software codecs fast enough.

●The BUS must have enough bandwidth.
●Communication techniques and requirements are also different to
those commonly employed today.

# Operating system issues have to be handled.
# Data types are diverse and different techniques for handling these
are required eg. video compression.
# Special tools for producing MM applications are required.
# There must be sufficient and fast storage capacity.
●Information retrieval techniques suitable for the new types of data
need to be developed.
Hardware requirements of the multimedia computers
● Multimedia computers should support the capture, editing and viewing
of video and audio data and provide facilities for the transfer of these data
types between computers either through modems or through local and
wide area networks.
● in order to support these functionalities and their specifications have
been defined by the Multimedia PC (MPC) group and included in the
MPC Level 3 standards.
● The MPC 3 standards defined the characteristics of the various parts of
the computers shown in Figure below. USB : Universal Serial Bus , MIDI : Musical
Instruments Digital Interface ,NIC : Network Interface
Card ,
* Processor: Pentium II 350 MHz, * Memory: 64

Mbytes, * Disk : 4 Gbytes * CD ROM : 24 speed,
* Sound Card: 16 or 32 bits, * Graphics card: one with
4 Mbytes of memory
Processor:
Multimedia applications require powerful processors because of
their demanding nature. Applications such as compression or
decompression of MPEG (Motion Picture Expert Group) video
for example requires that 25 to 30 frames of video should be
processed and displayed per second
Memory:
Considering the size of the multimedia applications memory
capacity is important to reduce the number of disk accesses.
CD_ROM:CD-DA : Supports digital audio
CD-I : This a format developed for applications requiring interactivity.
Supports graphics, audio and video.
CD-XA: XA stands for extended architecture. This format improves the
CD ROM's audio and video capability.
MSCDEX: A capability to allow the use of CD-ROMs in the DOS
environment.
PhotoCD: It is used to save photos in the compressed form. The
compression allows for 100 photos to be recorded in one CD.
Video CD: It is used to store video compressed in MPEG_I format.
Videos up to 74 minutes in duration can be stored in one CD using this
format.
DVD: Digital Video Disk technology improves the storage capacity to 4.7
to 17 Gbytes. It is mainly used to store video compressed in MPEG II
standards in a CD ROM.
Sound Card:
The audio system specified in MPC Level 3 includes
* 8 or 16 bits per sample sampling capability, * 8, 11, 16, 22, or 44 KHz
sampling rate, * A linear Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) Codec to convert the
sampled analog values to digital data., * A playback and recording of 16-bit
stereo that uses no more than 13 % of CPU time for 44.1 K samples/sec.
* CD ROM drive with CD-DA outputs and volume control., * Speakers
* One MIDI port.
● Video Graphics Interface Card: A graphics display card is used
to display an digital data on an analog monitor. Each pixel is represented
with 8 to 32 bits and these are converted to RGB signals through a
palette. These values are then converted to analog signals for display on
the monitor.
● MPC Level 3 standards require that a graphics adapter should be capable
of displaying a 352x240 video at 30 frames per second without dropping
any frames. An additional card is usually required to playback videos
compressed using MPEG-I. MPEG corresponds to Motion Picture
Experts Group. Using this card MPEG videos can be displayed on the
monitor.
● It has to be remembered that one minute of a video recording will
occupy 10 to 20 Mbytes of disk space depending on the compression
used.
Universal Serial Bus
With the introduction of multimedia applications the number of devices
connected to the computers have increased considerably and this has
created problems in management and maintenance of the systems. To
avoid the increased number of connectors being used the USB has been
developed. Using the USB
* The current peripheral devices
* Telephony equipment
* Joysticks and other tools for playing games
* Video equipment such as cameras
can be connected to the computers from a single port. The total speed of
this connection can be 1.5 Mbits/s or 12 Mbits/s and the configuration is
shown in figure
The peripheral devices could be connected through hubs or one of the
equipment such as the keyboard could serve as a hub. This way a total of 127
devices can be connected to the bus. The maximum cable length in any one
connection cannot be longer than 5 m. USB has a limited bandwidth. This
prevents many devices to be connected simultaneously and even if they can be
connected they cannot be serviced simultaneously. To solve this problem High
Performance Serial Bus defined by IEEE 1394 standards has been developed.
This bus can support bit rates of 100, 200, and 400 Mbits/sec. The Apple
version of HPSB is called firewire.
Multimedia Computer Software
We can classify multimedia software as system software and
authoring tools used to develop multimedia applications.
system software sets up the communications between the system
resources and the application programs.
example of this class is Multimedia Control Interface (MCI) by
Microsoft. Block diagram of this software is shown in figure
Telephony: The most important developments in the recent years is the computer
telephony integration. This way the reliable telephone technology has collaborated
with the innovative computer industry and this generated switches controlled by
software and computers connected by the telephone network.
Video for Windows: This software has been developed by Microsoft to prepare video
data to be used in multimedia applications. It is used to compress and decompress and
play the video. Microsoft Video I, Intel Indeo, Cinepak or Microsoft run Length
Encoding (RLE) are examples of the codecs used for compressing the video data. The
videos generated by VfW are stores in AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) format. Videos
can be captured, edited and played using the set of software included in the VfW.
Editing involves cutting, inserting and merging video data to generate a new sequence
of frames. VfW uses VidCap to capture video, and VidEdit to edit it. It is a free
software which comes with all the source codes.
Quicktime
This is a system software for Apple Macintosh. It enables the integration of video, audio,
animation and graphics in a standard way in multimedia applications. It supports JPEG, Apple
Compact Video, Apple Animation Compressor, Real Time Video, MPEG and motion JPEG.
Indeo and Digital Video Interactive
Indeo is Intel Video (Indeo) technology and defines a file format for converting NTSC and PAL
analog signals to digital video which can be stored and played back in a PC. The compression
defined in Indeo is Real Time Video which uses a vector quantization scheme similar but less
complicated than MPEG.
DirectX by Microsoft is an example of new multimedia
architecture designed to improve the application performance
of Windows 95.
Multimedia Authoring Tools
Multimedia authoring tools are classified into 4 categories.

* Programming languages: These are the 3rd and 4th generation
programming languages such as C/C++, Visual Basic and Delphi.
If these are chosen to prepare the multimedia applications then one can
achieve maximum control over the contents and developing interactive
applications become easy.
* Presentation software: Powerpoint is an example of such
presentation tools .Can Include graphics based word processing
software where video and audio can be inserted. It is ideal for
applications which use text and simple graphics.
* Simple Interactive software: These are suitable for developing
multimedia applications where there is interactivity.
* Complex interactive software:These are the most powerful multimedia
development tools. It is possible to incorporate programming languages into the
applications and improve the control over the navigation and interaction.
There are three different types.
Page Based: In these tools the contents and controls are placed in pages. These
pages can be accessed through linked items or controls. eg. ToolBook
Time Based: These authoring software include a time line where the pages or
data components are inserted and display of different components can be
controlled either by assigning a duration to each page or manually. This way very
successful animations and effects can be produced.
eg.Director and Scala.
Icon Based:These products use icons which makes it possible to access to the
contents or controls. They are useful for producing complex structural
applications. Authorware is an example of such a software.
Videoconferencing
A Video conference is a set of interactive
telecommunication technologies which allow two or
more locations to interact via two-way video and audio
transmissions simultaneously.
Video Conferencing
There are three standards defined for video conferencing and they are
defined in the table below:
Network Interface card - NIC
●NICs are used to connect the computers using local

area networks. These cards can support Ethernet, Token
Ring or Token Bus structures.
●The bit rates depend on the type of network being used
and can be 4, 10, 16 or 100 Mbits/sec.

●There also exist network cards which support cable
TV connections.
Text Data
This type of data is understood the best and it is the easiest to handle. It may be
ASCII or binary.
The following may be said about this data type :
* Text data is the most familiar learning resource.
* It has been available since the advent of the printing process.
* It requires only 7-8 bits per character.
* It is usually processed by automatic programs.
* It needs to be indexed and cross-referenced to other data types and structures
to allow the integration of all media types.
Audio Data
● Audio data is more complex than text but simpler to handle compared to video data.
● Audio is represented as digital data in the computer environment. Advantages of digitized
audio data : * high noise immunity , * stability , * reproducibility
● Digital data can be manipulated easier and it will be less immune to noise i.e. it will not be
corrupted permanently and any noise may be removed at the receiver.
● reproducing or copying digital audio is easier and the copies are exact replicas of the
original.
● Types of Audio in Multimedia Applications:

● Music - set the mood of the presentation, enhance the emotion, illustrate points
● Sound effects - to make specific points, e.g., squeaky doors, explosions, wind, ...
● Narration - most direct message, often effective
Digital Audio
Macromedia Soundedit -- Edits a variety of different
format audio files, apply a variety of effects
Video Data
Video data stream is complex from the aspects of storage, playback
and retrieval. There are various types of information associated with
the storage of the physical video stream.
* size
* frame rate
* compression method etc.
A video stream bears the following information
* physical object, video stream
* physical attributes, length, size, frame numbering
* video related information, format headers, frame rate
Video signal
In National Telvision System committee standard a video frame is made up of
525 lines and the television receiver displays these lines on the screen to form
a frame which is repeated 30 times per second.
A composite analog color video signal transmitted in this manner is made up of
a luminance (Y) and two chrominance (Cb,Cr) components.
The luminance signal (Y) is composed of the RGB components as given
Y = 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B.
The choice of the coefficients in the above equation are based on the human
visual system. The Cb and Cr fields are related to the RGB fields in the
following manner;
Cb = B-Y
Cr = R-Y
Digitization of video data :
This analog video data is sampled to obtain digital video.
●
The sampling rate is standardized by the International Consultative

●
Committee on Radio (CCIR) as recommendation 601, this standard is

widely known as CCIR 601.
The recommended sampling frequency in this standard is 3.375 MHz.
●
Video Formats
The video formats adopted by the ITU for video telephony are Common
Intermediate Format (CIF) and Quarter- CIF (QCIF).
Image Data
The term image refers to a two-dimensional light intensity function
f(x,y)
The amplitude at spatial coordinates x,y gives the intensity (brightness) of the
image at that location.
In black and white pictures the intensity is called gray levels.digital picture
made up of pixels.
Usually there are 256 gray levels for 8 bit pictures. Image could be the
photographic image (or the electronic photograph), or the visual representation
of the structured graphical data as used in CAD and some other systems.
There are many image formats in the literature. These can be :
* captured image format
* stored image format
Images may be captured at different resolutions such as 640x480 pixels or
320x240 pixels each pixel represented as above namely
* 1 bit per pixel binary image

* 8 bits per pixel greyscale
* 24 bits per pixel color-RGB
An image may be stored as 3 numbers representing intensities of red, green, and
blue components in different ways
* table values
* indices to table
* actual values etc.
* RIFF Resource Interchange File Format
* GIF Graphical Interface Format
* JPEG Joint Photographic Expert Group
* TIFF Tagged Image File Format and others
IMAGE
JPEG GIF
Graphics Data
Graphic data is the most complex both to handle and to obtain because it is unnatural.
Graphics Formats : Graphics image are specified through graphics primitives and their attributes.
Graphics primitives are :
* lines, * rectangles, * circles, * text, * strings, * 2 or 3 dimensional objects etc.
characteristics of graphics :
* Graphical images are not represented by a pixel matrix. It represents a higher level of image
representation.
* This higher level of representation needs to be converted at some point of the image processing into
the lower level of the image representation.
* The advantage of the higher level primitives is the reduction of the data to be stored per one
graphical image and easier manipulation.
* The disadvantage is the additional conversion step from the graphical primitives and their attributes
to its pixel representation.
* Graphics may be stored in bitmaps ie. one bit at a time that map to pixels on the screen.
* Screen resolution of 1024x1280 is also possible

Graphics
Animation
Applications
Examples of Multimedia Applications include:
* World Wide Web
* Hypermedia courseware
* Video conferencing
* Video-on-demand
* Interactive TV
* Groupware
* Home shopping
* Games
* Virtual reality
* Digital video editing and production systems
* Multimedia Database systems
– MIS and their multimedia data types
Office automation systems (OAS)
T
hese are systems that support the automation of various
managerial and clerical activities. The primary goals of
office automation are to enhance communication in the
workplace and increase the efficiency and productivity
of knowledge workers and clerical workers. Office
automation systems include.
•Word processing ; Facsimile transmission, or fax:
•Electronic meeting systems ; E-mail;
• Voice mail ; Videoconferencing:
•Desktop publishing ; Image retrieval and storage:
Medical Information System
Patient information, like images, films or findings, is
available at all digital workstations in all departments
within a few seconds of generation.
Medical information system in the medical area is
usually divided into 2 parts:
An administrative management information system
A Medical information system
Much medical data is now in digital format. In
collaboration with industry, they have developed
advanced informatics systems to make these data more
readily available to clinical users by implementing all-
electronic multimedia patient records, internet-based
with PDA technology to provide rapid data access.
Weather information system
Weather data collection/web distribution
systems, is myriad of tools evolved from a
simple program to report and store a weather
station data to a complex program able to
support thousands of unique business, private
and public requirements.
Email
E-mail, short for electronic mail and often abbreviated

to e-mail, email or simply mail, is a store and forward
method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving
messages over electronic communication systems.
Internet e-mail system based on the Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and to X.400 systems, and to
intranet systems allowing users within one organization
to e-mail each other.
Tourist Information System
●complex self-service information system
●wide spectrum of provided information
●using the latest technologies
●information system with multimedia character
●unlimited capacity of presented data
●unlimited amount of network users
●low operation costs
Tourist Information System serves as a worldwide

advertisement of tourist services, agencies and tourist
activities. It helps attract new clients providing them all
information they need to know about traveling in
particular country and it saves money on marketing and
advertising costs. E0262 Multimedia Information Systems
Perspectives on IT and organisational change.
MULTIMEDIA INFORMATION SYSTEMS AS STRATEGIC
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Barclays Bank is a United Kingdom-based leading financial
institution, the third largest bank in the United Kingdom and the
fifth largest bank in Europe.
Barclays operates on a decentralised basis through regional offices
throughout the United Kingdom, which led to the establishment of
300 business network centres to cater for the needs of small- and
medium-sized organisations.
The Banking division is the largest business in the group and
includes the branch network, card and insurance services,
providing corporate and personal banking round-the-world and
round-the-clock. The revenues, consisting of fees and
commissions, dealing profits and net interest margins.
The organisational structure of the Service Business Division
(SBD)
Barclays Global Services (BGS),

which offers information and
transaction support services and
products.
Barclays Network Services (BNS),

which provides the group's network and
communications infrastructure
Barclays Computer Operations (BCO),

which acts as the principal computer
service provider.
The Multimedia Department established by merging the
Interactive Video Unit and Divisional Research Unit.
The main tasks of the Multimedia Department at Barclays are:

● Evaluating multimedia information systems through pilot studies.
● Developing electronic catalogues for retailers and Barclays
Group companies.
● Developing a specification for a generic multimedia application
framework for retailers.
● Developing a software environment for multimedia information
systems for retailers.
● Developing and testing on-line loan services.
● Developing and testing on-line plastic card transactions.
The organisational structure of Barclays Multimedia.
Barclays' exploitation of multimedia information systems shows a
growing need to change the delivery channel from the branch
infrastructure to a digital delivery channel.
The changing process of a 'store-based shopping' to a 'shopless
shopping' paradigm is being implemented with multimedia
information systems.
Financial services can be transmitted to the workplace, to the home
and to public-access automated multimedia teller kiosks via
(basically) the same technology and software.
Customer:
· improved service;
· allows effective needs analysis;
· impartial advice;
· convenience;
· allows financial modelling.
Staff:
sales aid;
flees sales staff to concentrate on selling;
training;
branch office procedures;
fraud/security issues via video and audio in scenarios;
professionalism.
Operational:
· branch infrastructure;
24-hour availability;·
· Interactive Sales Terminals (ISTs);
· recruiting new customers in public places;
· on-line networked services/information.
Homestead is intended to be a multimedia home shopping
information system using interactive multimedia catalogues.
It has been developed using CD-I players equipped with MPEG
full-screen motion video decoders .
The second system is a travel guide for the travel agency
Page&Moy.
The third is Barclays Financial Services. This interactive
multimedia information system is for home use and should help
users find and analyse their financial needs.
Multimedia information systems architecture at Barclays
Crucial for the multimedia client is the integration of database

technology with multimedia display and retrieval, which is to be
found on the client as the new multimedia (MM) data type
category of Binary Large Objects (BLOB - referred to as MM-
BLOB)
Database Management System (DBMS)
Application Programming Interface (API) and the
Structured Query Language (SQL) interpreter. software
architecture approach provides audio and video elements to
information
Multimedia information systems architecture at Barclays.

Chapter 1.1-Multimedia Data

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MULTIMEDIA DATA

* Multimedia systems must be computer controlled.

* Multimedia systems are integrated.

* The information they handle must be represented digitally.

* The interface to the final presentation of media is usually interactive.

There 2 are forms of problems here

●sound and video handling capability

● a video capture board if it is used for producing

●Images, sound and video must be COMPRESSED in

order to be handled in the PC environment.

software codecs fast enough.

●Communication techniques and requirements are also different to

those commonly employed today.

* Processor: Pentium II 350 MHz, * Memory: 64

Indeo and Digital Video Interactive

complicated than MPEG.

DirectX by Microsoft is an example of new multimedia

architecture designed to improve the application performance

Multimedia authoring tools are classified into 4 categories.

●NICs are used to connect the computers using local

and can be 4, 10, 16 or 100 Mbits/sec.

● Types of Audio in Multimedia Applications:

The sampling rate is standardized by the International Consultative

Committee on Radio (CCIR) as recommendation 601, this standard is

* 1 bit per pixel binary image

Graphics primitives are :

* lines, * rectangles, * circles, * text, * strings, * 2 or 3 dimensional objects etc.

the lower level of the image representation.

graphical image and easier manipulation.

to its pixel representation.

* Screen resolution of 1024x1280 is also possible

•Word processing ; Facsimile transmission, or fax:

•Electronic meeting systems ; E-mail;

• Voice mail ; Videoconferencing:

•Desktop publishing ; Image retrieval and storage:

E-mail, short for electronic mail and often abbreviated

●wide spectrum of provided information

●using the latest technologies

●information system with multimedia character

●unlimited capacity of presented data

●unlimited amount of network users

●low operation costs

Tourist Information System serves as a worldwide

Barclays Global Services (BGS),

Barclays Network Services (BNS),

Barclays Computer Operations (BCO),

The main tasks of the Multimedia Department at Barclays are:

● Developing and testing on-line plastic card transactions.

Crucial for the multimedia client is the integration of database

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