Definition

1. Interactive multimedia- End user is allowed to control what and when the elements are delivered.


2. Interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia when developer provides a structure of linked elements through which the user can navigate.


3. Multimedia developers: The people who develop multimedia.


4. Multimedia project: are the messages, and the content presented on a computer, television screen, PDA (personal digital assistant) or cell phones.


5. Multimedia title: The project that is sold to consumers or end users.


6. Multimedia could also be inserted in a page or site on the world Web Wide Web, that uses HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or DHTML (Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language) or XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and play rich media files created in such programs as Adobe’s Flash, Live Motion, or Apple’s Quick Time by installing plug-ins into a browser.


7. Browser is software programs or tools for viewing content on the Web such as Internet Explorer and Firefox.


8. Multimedia project could be a linear or a nonlinear presentation.

   Linear: following a flow from start to end.

   Nonlinear: users are given navigational control and wander through the content.



9. Authoring tools are used to develop project. These software tools are designed to manage individual multimedia elements and provide user interaction.


10. Integrated multimedia is the weaving part of the multimedia definition, where source documents such as montages, graphics, video cuts, and sounds merge into a final presentation.


11. Graphical user interface or GUI is the sum of what we get played back and how it is presented to the viewer on a monitor.

CD-ROM, DVD, and the Multimedia Highway

• Multimedia requires large amounts of digital memory when stored in an end user’s library, or large amounts of bandwidth.


• The greater the bandwidth, the bigger the pipeline, so more content can be delivered to end users quickly.

CD-ROM, DVD, Flash Drives, and Multimedia

• CD-ROM discs can contain up to 80 minutes of full-screen video, images, or sound. The disc can also contain unique mixes of images, sounds, text, video and animations.


• The production of discs is fast and cheap.


• Virtually all personal computer sold today includes at least a CD-ROM player.


• Many systems also come with a DVD player combination that can read and burn CD-ROMs as well.


• Multilayered Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) technology increases the capacity and multimedia capability of CDs to as much as 18GB of storage in a single disc.


• CD and DVD burners are used for reading discs and making them, too, in audio, video, and data formats.


• CD-ROM and DVD discs are but provisional memory technologies that will be replaced by new devices such as Flash Drives and Thumb Drives.

The Multimedia Highway

• These days telecommunications networks are global, so when information providers and content owners determine the worth of their products and how to charge money for them, information elements will ultimately link up as online as distribute resources on a data highway, where you will pay to acquire and use multimedia-based information.


• Full text content from books and magazines is downloadable on the data highway; feature movies are played at home.

Multimedia in Business

• Business application for multimedia include presentations, training, marketing, advertising, product demos, simulations, databases, catalogs, instant messaging, and networked communications.


• Voice mail and video conferencing are provided on many local and wide area networks using distributed networks and Internet protocols.


• Most presentation software packages let you add audio and video clips to the usual slide show of graphic and text material.


• Multimedia around the office has also become more commonplace. Image capture hardware is used for building employee ID and badging databases, for video annotation, and for real-time teleconferencing.


• Presentation documents attached to e-mail and video conferencing is widely available.

Multimedia in Schools

• Multimedia will provoke radical changes in the teaching process during the coming decades, particularly as smart students discover they can go beyond the limits of traditional teaching methods.


• An interesting use of multimedia in schools involves the students themselves.


• Students can put together interactive magazines and newsletters, make original art using image manipulation software tools, and they can even make Quick Time movies. They can also design and run web sites.


• ITV (Interactive TV) is widely used among campuses to join students from different locations into one class with one teacher.

Multimedia at Home

• Multimedia has entered the home. Eventually, most multimedia projects will reach the home via television sets or monitors with built-in interactive user inputs.


• Today, home consumers of multimedia either own a computer with an attached CD-ROM or DVD drive or a set-top player that hooks up to the television, such as a Nintendo, X-box, or Sony PlayStation machine.


• Live Internet pay-for-play gaming with multiple players has also become popular, bringing multimedia to homes on the data highway.

Multimedia in Public Places

• Multimedia is already available at stand-alone terminals or kiosks, hotels, train stations, shopping malls, museum, libraries, and cinema.


• Multimedia is piped to wireless devices such as cell phones and PDAs. Such installations reduce demand on traditional information booths and even in the middle of night when live help is off duty.

Virtual Reality

• Virtual reality or VR is the convergence of technology and creative invention in multimedia.


• Human interfaces such as goggles, helmets, special gloves, helps us to experience the lifelike experience.


• In VR, your cyberspace is made up of many thousands of geometric objects plotted in three-dimensional space: the more objects and the more points that describe the objects, the higher the resolution and the more realistic your view.


• On the World Wide Web, standards for transmitting virtual reality worlds or scenes in VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) documents have been developed.


• Intel and software makers such as Adobe have announced support for new 3-D technologies.


• Virtual reality (VR) is an extension of multimedia and it uses the basic multimedia elements of imagery, sound, and animation. Because it requires instrumented feedback from a wired-up person, VR is perhaps interactive multimedia at its fullest extension.