MULTIMEDIA We often see different pictures, songs and movies in our computer. Sometimes we also hear that some actions in films are not performed real but are made by computer animations. We see TV advertisements, different attractive advertisements in newspapers, and many other designs in walls, pamphlets and other places. How these have been possible after all? All of these things are made by using multimedia tools. These days, multimedia computers are used as the most prominent multimedia tool to develop such graphics designs, animations, videos, image editing, etc. multimedia computers are nothing but simply the computers like we use in our home which are enhanced with many other multimedia hardware and software. Multimedia computers are capable of generating, storing and displaying multimedia contents. Now a question arises”What is Multimedia?” lets try to answer i
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As the name implies, multimedia is the integration of multiple forms of media. Multimedia is the technology that uses any combination of different media; it may or may not involve computers. It may include several media like text, spoken audio, music, images, animation, and video. For example, a presentation involving audio and video clips would be considered a “multimedia presentation”. Educational software that involves animations, sound and test is called “multimedia software”. Multimedia programs are often interactive and include games, sales presentations, encyclopedias, and many more. Any systems can be said interactive if users could act or command the system and the system works accordingly. For example: in media player a playing video pauses if the user clicks on the pause button and starts again when user clicks on the play button and starts when user clicks on any button. The user’s clicks here are considered as the user’s interaction and the response made by the system is called interactive response. Users can interact in many other ways instead of mouse. If any multimedia supports or response specifically on one or more of the user’s interaction, then such multimedia is called the interactive multimedia. Such interactive multimedia has gained lots of popularity these days.
Multimedia requires the large amount of data to be stored. Hence, CD-ROMs and pen drives are the good option for storage of computer multimedia files. We could store multimedia in other high capacity storage devices which are also faster and easy to use. But mostly we choose CD-ROM and pen drive as multimedia storage devices as it is very cheap, it can store lots of data and it is very easy to store and handle. Such CD-ROMs which contain multimedia files are called “Multimedia CD-ROMs”. Nowadays we can get different multimedia CDs in the market which contain the entertaining and educational materials.
MULTIMEDIA SYSTEM
System means the combination of different components which work in coordination with each other in a certain manner so as to serve some specific purpose. Multimedia is the technology which can disseminate two or more different media like text, audio, video, etc in a single time frame. Thus multimedia system means the proper combination of different multimedia components which work together to create, edit, store and disseminate the multimedia components. Almost all of today’s multimedia systems take advantage of power and ease of computer systems. Without computers, today’s sophisticated multimedia cannot be thought of. So, multimedia system could be more accurately defined as the combination of computer hardware and software designed so as to create, store and disseminate the multimedia content.
The multimedia computer generally contains the following components.
1) Computer
2) Multimedia Software
3) Sound card
4) CD-Drive
5) Micro-Phone
6) CD-ROM Disk
7) Multimedia speakers/Head-Phones
8) Digital Camera and many other components.
All of some of the above mentioned components work together to make up the multimedia system which can capture, digitize, compress, decompress, retrieve the multimedia component (multimedia data) and show it into the output devices like Computer Monitor, Multimedia Projectors, etc. Literally speaking, all the components that could be used in the multimedia system are impossible to list out. The above mentioned are only some of the important components of multimedia computer system.
ADVANTAGES OF MULTIMEDIA
We have already mentioned various advantages of using multimedia. We can still specifically list out following points that explains the advantages of the multimedia.
1. It can be used to help students and teacher to teach as well as learn the given topics easily.
2. It can be used to spread the knowledge easily all over the world wide in the cheap cost.
3. It is easy to take the multimedia files from one to other places as it can be stored in the cheap and light storage devices like CD-ROM.
4. It can be used for any subject and for anyone.
5. It can be used in Television, Films Industries and for personal entertainments.
6. It is highly used to realize the concept of Open University, Distance Education System, and Video Conferencing.
7. It is also used in Internet to make up the interactive web-page contents.
8. We can give the everlasting impression to the intended audiences on a specific topic by the use of multimedia.
9. Colored pictures, Motion pictures and other graphics could be shown in monitors and other big screens so that many people could view it and make out the impression about it.
10. Multimedia systems are generally very interactive so it is interesting to use.
DISADVANTAGES OF MULTIMEDIA
In comparison to the enormous advantages we have very little disadvantages of multimedia. These disadvantages could be listed out as:
1. It is expensive to produce multimedia contents.
2. It is expensive to set up the multimedia systems.
3. It needs well trained manpower to create and use it.
4. Multimedia files are too large so, it is time consuming to transfer across the Internet and Intranet.
MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGY
