Multimedia elements to use project.

Multimedia elements are typically included into a project using authoring tools. These software tools are designed to manage individual multimedia elements and provide user interaction. In addition to providing a method for uses to interact with the projects, most authoring tools also offer facilities for creating and editing text and images and controls for playing back separate audio and video file that have been created with editing tools designed for these media.

Different Media Elements :

1. Text: Inclusion of textual information in multimedia is the basic step towards development of multimedia software. Text can be of any type, may be a word, a single line, or a paragraph. The textual data for multimedia can be developed using any text editor. However to give special effects, one needs graphics software which supports this kind of job. Even one can use any of the most popular word processing software to create textual data for inclusion in multimedia. The text can have different type, size, color and style to suit the professional requirement of the multimedia software.

2. Graphics: Another interesting element in multimedia is graphics. As a matter of fact, taking into consideration the human nature, a subject is more explained with some sort of pictorial/graphical representation, rather than as a large chunk of text. This also helps to develop a clean multimedia screen, whereas use of large amount of text in a screen make it dull in presentation.

Unlike text, which uses a universal ASCII format, graphics does not have a single agreed format. They have different format to suit different requirement. Most commonly used format for graphics is .BMP or bitmap pictures. The size of a graphics depends on the resolution it is using. A computer image uses pixel or dots on the screen to form itself. And these dots or pixel, when combined with number of colors and other aspects are called resolution.

Resolution of an image or graphics is basically the pixel density and number of colors it uses. And the size of the image depends on its resolution. A standard VGA (Virtual Graphics Arrays) screen can display a screen resolution of 640 x 480 = 307200 pixel. And a Super VGA screen can display up-to 1024 x 768 = 786432 pixel on the screen. While developing multimedia graphics one should always keep in mind the image resolution and number of colors to be used, as this has a direct relation with the image size. If the image size is bigger, it takes more time to load and also requires higher memory for processing and larger disk-space for storage.

However, different graphics formats are available which take less space and are faster to load into the memory.

There are several graphics packages available to develop excellent images and also to compress them so that they take lesser disk-space but use higher resolution and more colours. Packages like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, PaintShop Pro etc. are excellent graphics packages.

3. Animation: Moving images have an overpowering effect on the human peripheral vision. Followings are few points for its popularity.

Showing continuity in transitions : Animation is a set of static state, related to each other with transition. When something has two or more states, then changes between states will be much easier for users to understand if the transitions are animated instead of being instantaneous.

Indicating dimensionality in transitions : Sometimes opposite animated transitions can be used to indicate movement back and forth along some navigational dimension. One example used in several user interfaces is the use of zooming to indicate that a new object is "grown" from a previous one or that an object is closed or minimized to a smaller representation. Zooming out from the small object to the enlargement is a navigational dimension and zooming in again as the enlargement is closed down is the opposite direction along that dimension.

Video :

Beside animation there is one more media element, which is known as video. With latest technology it is possible to include video impact on clips of any type into any multimedia creation, be it corporate presentation, fashion design, entertainment games, etc. The video clips may contain some dialogues or sound effects and moving pictures. These video clips can be combined with the audio, text and graphics for multimedia presentation. Incorporation of video in a multimedia package is more important and complicated than other media elements. One can procure video clips from sources such as existing video films. All the video available are in analog format. To make it usable by computer, the video clips are needed to be converted into computer understandable format, i.e., digital format. Both combinations of software and hardware make it possible to convert the analog video clips into digital format. This alone does not help, as the digitised video clips take lots of hard disk space to store, depending on the frame rate used for digitization. The computer reads a particular video clip as a series of still picture called frames. Thus video clip is made of a series of separate frames where each frame is slightly different from the previous one. The computer reads each frame as a bitmap image. Generally there are 15 to 25 frames per second so that the movement is smooth. To cut down the space there are several modern technologies in windows environment. Essentially these technologies compress the video image so that lesser space is required. However, latest video compression software makes it possible to compress the digitised video clips to its maximum. In the p process, it takes lesser storage space. One more advantage of using digital video is, the quality of video will not deteriorate from copy to copy as the digital video signal is made up of digital code and not electrical signal. Caution should be taken while digitizing the video from analog source to avoid frame droppings and distortion. A good quality video source should be used for digitization.

Video is good for :

Promoting television shows, films, or other non computer media that traditionally have used trailers in their advertising. Giving users an impression of a speaker's personality. Showing things that move. For example a clip from a motion picture. Product demos of physical products are also well suited for video.

Audio:

Audio has a greater role to play in multimedia development. Incorporation of audio is one of the most important features of multimedia, which enhance the multimedia usability to its full potential. There are several types of sound, which can be used in multimedia. They are human voices, instrumental notes, natural sound and many more. All these can be used in any combination as long as they give some meaning to their inclusion in multimedia.

1. There are many ways in which these sounds can

2. be incorporated into the computer. For example: Using microphone, human voice can directly be recorded in a computer.

Pre-recorded cassettes can be used to record

3. the sound into computer. Instrumental sound can also be played directly from a musical instrument for recording into the computer.