MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS

• What constitute Multimedia – a combination of text with

document images.
• Document image management – an outgrowth of facsimile
technology.
• Facsimile – scanning and converting a document into coded
information that describe each pixel as white or black.
• Low number of pixels manages the information easily.
• As the pixel densities increased – high capacity of storage
needed.
• Document image management systems support 400 dpi or
higher.
• Hence, compression is needed to reduce both the overall storage
requirements as well as the time it takes to transmit the data.
• Facsimile systems use run-length encoding for compression.
• Run-length encoding – modified and adopted by CCITT
(International Consultative Committee for Telephone and
Telegraph) as a standard in 1980 and commonly known as Group
3 – also known as Huffman encoding.
• 1984 – another standard – 2d encoding to achieve much higher
compression rates – Group 4
• Gray-scale encoding – Group 5
• Compression and Decompression techniques play an important
role in multimedia applications. Eg. Video Conferencing.
• Basics of conferencing technology includes,
- text conversations
- document conferencing
- live or store-and-forward video conferencing.
• Common theme is interactive electronic mail.
• In 1990’s – desktop video conferencing came into existence –
video e-mail.
• Key to the success of video conferencing – ability of the
systems to be open with sophisticated networking and good
compression / decompression capabilities.
• Medical applications, CBTs, Security systems for employee
identification.
• Multimedia elements
- facsimile transmission – Group 3 compression standards, medium
level compression, pixel densities – 100 to 200 dpi, contrasts with
laser printing.
- document images – 300 dpi
- photographic images – used for identification such as security
badges, fingerprint cards, photo identification systems, bank signature
cards, patient medical histories, proper handling of soft shades and
tones, 600 dpi
- geographic information systems maps – 2 kinds of technologies
used for storage and display of geographic maps:
• raster storage consists of road maps with attribute data assigned and
identified by map coordinates. (road maps and area maps)
• combines a raster image that has the basic color map and a vector overlay
showing the railroads or highways.
- voice commands – used for hands-free operation of a computer program
- voice synthesis – used for presenting the results of an action to the user
in a synthesized voice. (patient monitoring system)
- audio messages – substitute for text messages and requires large
volumes of storage.
- video messages – range from a single snapshot to fullmotion video clips.
- full-motion stored and live video – need for large bandwidths for
communications media, massive storage requirements and high-density
high-performance compression technologies.
- Holographic images – extend the concept of virtual reality by allowing
the user to get “inside” a part, such as, an engine and view its operations
from the inside.
 - fractals – regular objects with a high degree of irregular shape –
decompressed images that uses arithmetic algorithms to define
repeated patterns in the image.
Multimedia applications
The fundamental concepts of storage, compression, and decompression,
and display technologies used for Multimedia systems were developed
for document image management – plays a very important role in most
office applications based on multimedia systems.
Image processing (Image recognition) – intended for recognizing objects
by analyzing their raster images.

1. Document Imaging - applications that will evolve to create the

efficient combination of text, image, sound, and video for the
multimedia.
- work flow management and contribution to productivity is possible
thru’ document imaging by storing, retrieving, and manipulating very
Large volumes of drawings, documents, & other graphical
representations of data.

- optical character recognition systems

- scanning systems provide scanning resolutions in the range of 400 to 600 dpi.
2. Image processing & Image recognition – involves image
recognition, image enhancement, image synthesis, and image
reconstruction.
Examples.
Image recognition – factory floor quality assurance systems.
Image enhancement – satellite investigation systems.
Image synthesis – law enforcement suspect identification systems.
Image reconstruction – plastic surgery design systems.
• Image enhancement – may be a simple scanner sensitivity
adjustment. Increasing the sensitivity and contrast makes
the picture darker by making borderline pixels black or
increasing the gray-scale level of pixels.
- capabilities built in the compression boards or
programmed in software.
image calibration
Real-time alignment
Gray-scale normalization
RGB hue intensity adjustment
Color separation
Frame averaging
• Image animation
• Image annotation
• Optical character recognition
• Handwriting recognition
• Non-textual image recognition – facial expressions, posture, and gestures
Full-motion Digital video applications
• 3 major application groups are there.
• Most complex and demanding component.
• Business applications – e-mail, video conferencing, presentations,
demos.
• Training and manuals – on-line reference, CD-ROM interactive training
• Games and entertainment – video karaoke, pay-per-view newspapers,
CD-ROM interactive games, interactive TV.
• Electronic messaging – requires a sophisticated
infrastructure consisting of the following to support it:
- message store and forward facility
- message transfer agents to route messages
- message repositories
- repositories for dense multimedia components
- ability for multiple electronic hypermedia messages
- dynamic access and transaction managers
- local and global directories
- automatic protocol conversions and data format conversions
- administrative tools to manage enterprise-wide networks
• Electronic messaging systems also include a no. of other
workgroup-type applications such as calendars and scheduling,
forms-based applications for workflow management and so on.
Hence, called as mail-enabled multimedia applications.
• Also represented as universal multimedia application.
• Universal Multimedia application – manipulates data types
that can be combined in a document, displayed on a screen, or
printed, with no special manipulations that the users needs to
perform.
• Document type – phonebook, color brochure with pictures and
drawings, memo, phone message, video-phone message, or
live teleconferencing.
• Truly distributed
• Methodology for dissemination of the information on a
network.
• The key factor of multimedia technology is the progress in
standardization for encoding knowledge in an active form, in
objects, so that the stored information knows the decompression
algorithms as well as display parameters.
Full-motion video messages. E-mail has progressed to the
point of using object linking and embedding (OLE)
technology to embed a variety of bit streams. An OLE link
allows starting up another application to process a data
component not native to the product which it is embedded.
• E-mail capability allows embedding of voice and video messages.
Video messages may consist of video snapshots or live video with
full-motion picture and sound. Two important technological concepts
are at play in the implementation of full-motion video messages:
- the storage and transmittal of a very large volume of data at a high
rate, &
- decompression of that data to present a continuous playback.
• Viewer interactive live video
- key difference with that of full-motion video is live
- used for direct interaction, medical applications, manufacturing
applications, other process control applications.
 - frame grabbers – to capture images such as photographs for
live display in a GUI display system, used as an image processor
to display live video images captured from a camera.

• Audio and video indexing

- feature present in VCRs
- electronic index marker
- indexing allows the person viewing the tape to mark the start of
a program, a conversation.
- marking the location allows rewinding rapidly to the marker to
view a section of the scene again.
 Multimedia systems architecture
• Integration of multiple architectures interacting in real time.
APPLICATIONS

Include scanners,
GRAPHICAL USER MULTIMEDIA EXTENSIONS
INTERFACE video cameras,
VCRs, and sound
OPERATING SOFTWARE MULTIMEDIA equipment along
SYSTEM DRIVERS DRIVER SUPPORT with their
SYSTEM HARDWARE Add-On Multimedia associated device
(Multimedia-Enabled) Devices and Peripherals controllers and
encoding hardware

Multimedia workstation architecture

• For each of these special devices, a software device driver is needed to
provide the interface from an application to the device.
• High resolution display technologies allow multiple applications
to be operational at one time, thereby requiring additional
resources to manage programs and data requirements.
• Various graphics standards – MCA, CGA, EGA, VGA, & XGA
increased the demands for higher resolutions for GUIs.
• Combined graphics and imaging applications require
functionality at 3 levels provided by 3 classes of single-monitor
architectures with substantially varying levels of capabilities:
- VGA mixing => the image acquisition memory also serves as
the display source memory, thereby fixing its position and size
on screen.
- VGA mixing with scaling => use of scaler ICs allows sizing
and positioning of images in predefined windows; resizing
the window causes the image to be retrieved again.
- Dual-buffered VGA mixing/scaling => double-buffer
schemes maintain the original images in a decompression
buffer and the resized image in a display buffer.
• The IMA architectural framework – to provide
interoperability for multimedia products. The task group
has 2 areas of concentration: the desktops and the
servers.