CHAPTER FOUR & FIVE

Multimedia Sound and Image

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 Using Sound in Multimedia
• You need to know
– How to make sounds
– How to record and edit sounds on the computer
– How to incorporate sounds into your multimedia
project

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 Multimedia System Sounds
Multimedia sound is either digitally recorded
audio or MIDI (Musical Instrumental Digital
Interface) music.
Windows system sounds are .WAV files in the
Windows\Media directory
MS Office includes additional sounds
You can add your own sounds by including
them in the Windows\Media directory and
selecting them from the Sound Control Panel
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 MIDI vs. Digital Audio
MIDI ( Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a
communications standard developed in the 1980’s
for electronic instruments and computers.
It allows instruments from different manufacturers
to communicate.
MIDI data is NOT digitized sound- it is music stored
in numeric format
Digital audio is a recording, which depend on your
sound system
MIDI is a score and depends on both the quality of
the instruments and the sound system
Quality depends on end user’s device rather than
on the MIDI device and is device dependent.
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 Making MIDI Audio
• Creating a MIDI score requires:
– Knowledge of music and some talent
– Ability to play a musical instrument
– Sequencer software
– Sound synthesizer
• Built into PC board
• Add-on for MAC

• MIDI can synthesize over 100 instruments

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 MIDI
A MIDI file is a list of commands that are
recordings of musical actions, that when sent
to a MIDI player results in sound
MIDI data is device dependent
MIDI represents musical instruments and is
not easily used to playback spoken dialog

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 MIDI Audio
 MIDI is a shorthand representation of music stored in
numeric form.
 Since they are small, MIDI files embedded in web
pages load and play promptly.
 Length of a MIDI file can be changed without
affecting the pitch of the music or degrading audio
quality.
 Working with MIDI requires knowledge of music
theory.

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 Digital Audio
Digital audio is a representation of the
original sound
Sampling rate is measured in kilohertz (kHz)
Digital audio represents a sound stored in
thousands of numbers or samples.
Digital data represents the loudness at
discrete slices of time.
It is NOT device dependent and should
sound the same each time it is played
It is used for music CD’s
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 Digital Audio
• The three sampling frequencies most often used in
multimedia are CD-quality 44.1 kHz, 22.05 kHz and
11.025 kHz.
• The number of bits used to describe the amplitude
of sound wave when sampled, determines the
sample size.
• Digital audio is device independent.
• The value of each sample is rounded off to the
nearest integer (quantization).

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 Digital Audio Editing
 Once a recording had been completed, it almost
always needs to be edited.
 Basic sound editing operations include: trimming,
splicing and assembly, volume adjustments and
working on multiple tracks.
 Additional available sound editing operations include
format conversion, resampling or downsampling,
fade-ins and fade-outs, equalization, time stretching,
digital signal processing, and reversing sounds.
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 MIDI Advantages
• MIDI file are much more compact and take
up less memory and system resources
• MIDI files embedded in web pages load and
play much faster than digital
• You can change the length of a MIDI file by
varying its tempo
• With high quality MIDI devices, MIDI files
may actually sound better than digital

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 MIDI Disadvantages
• MIDI represents musical instruments not
sounds and will be accurate only if your
playback device is identical to the production
device
• MIDI sound is inconsistent
• MIDI cannot be easily used to reproduce
speech

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 Digital Audio Advantages
• Digital audio sound is consistent and device
independent
• A wide selection of software support is
available for both MAC and PC
• A knowledge of music theory is not required
for creating digital audio, but usually is
needed for MIDI production

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 Choose MIDI data
• If you don’t have enough RAM memory, or
bandwidth for digital audio
• If you have a high quality sound source
• If you have complete control over the
playback hardware
• If you don’t need spoken dialog

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 Choose Digital Audio
• If you don’t have control over the playback
hardware
• If you have the computing resources and
bandwidth to handle the larger digital files
• If you need spoken dialog

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 Digital Audio
• You can digitize sound from a microphone,
synthesizer, tape recording TV broadcast, or
CD’s.
• Digitized sound is sampled every nth of a
second. The more often you take the sample,
the better the sound.
• Sample sizes are either 8 or 16 bits and
common frequencies are11.025, 22.05, and
44.1 kHz

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 Digital Audio
• To prepare digital audio from analog media,
record it from a device, like a tape recorder,
into your computer using digitizing software.
• Balance the sound quality with your available
RAM
• Set proper recording levels for a good clear
recording

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 Editing Digital Recordings
• Apple’s QuickTime Player Pro provides for
primitive playback and editing
• Sonic Foundry’s Sound Forge is a more serious
sound editor
• These can be used to trim, splice, volume
adjustment and format conversion as well as
special effects

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 Audio File Formats
• A sound file’s format is a recognized methodology
for organizing data bits of digitized sound into a
data file.

• On the Macintosh, digitized sounds may be stored

as data files, resources, or applications such as
AIFF or AIFC.
• In Windows, digitized sounds are usually stored as
WAV files.

• Both can use MIDI files (.mid)

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 Adding Sound to a
Multimedia Project
• Decide what sounds you will need and
include them in the story board or cue sheet.
• Decide whether to use MIDI or digital audio
• Acquire source material (record/buy)
• Edit the sounds
• Test the sounds to be sure they are timed
properly

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 Sound for the World Wide Web
• To play MIDI sound on the web
– wait for the entire file to download and play it
with a helper application
– stream the file, storing it in the buffer and
playing it while it downloads
• Streaming is dependent on the connection
speed
• FLASH allows sound to be integrated in a
multimedia presentation, controlled by
buttons and saved as .mp3
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 Creation of multimedia images
• Images obviously play a very important role in
multimedia products
– Images may be photograph-like bitmaps, vector-based drawings, or 3D
renderings

• The type of still images created depends on the

display resolution, and hardware and software
capabilities.
• Access to the right tools and right hardware for
image development is important!
– E.g., graphic designers like to have large, high-resolution monitors or
multiple monitors

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 Types of Still Images
Still images are generated in two ways:
– Bitmaps (or raster-based) .
– Vector-drawn graphics.

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 Bitmaps
• Bitmap is derived from the words ‘bit’, which means the
simplest element in which only two digits are used, and ‘map’,
which is a two-dimensional matrix of these bits.
• A bitmap is a data matrix describing the individual dots of an
image that are the smallest elements (pixels) of resolution on
a computer screen or printer.

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 Bitmaps
• Bitmaps are an image format suited for
creation of:
– Photo-realistic images.
– Complex drawings.
– Images that require fine detail.

• Bitmapped images are known as paint

graphics.
• Bitmapped images can have varying bit and
color depths.

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 Bitmaps
• More bits provide more color depth, hence more photo-realism;
• but require more memory and processing power

Available binary Combinations for Describing a Color

Monochrome just requires one bit per pixel, representing black or white
8 bits per pixel allows 256 distinct colors
16 bits per pixel represents 32K distinct colors (Most graphic chipsets now
supports the full 65536 colors and the color green uses the extra one bit)
24 bits per pixel allows millions of colors
32 bits per pixel – trillion of colors

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 • Bitmaps are best for photo-realistic images or complex
drawings requiring fine detail
• Bitmaps picture and their suitability of use:-
– Use the native Microsoft bmp format as a raw image
that will later be processed. It faster to process.
– Use JPEG, for photo sharing on the web because of its
size and quality.
– GIF is normally used for diagrams, buttons, etc., that
have a small number of colors
• It is also suitable for simple
animation because it supports
interlaced images.
– PNG is almost equal to gif except that it didn’t support
the animation format.

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 Bitmaps can be inserted by:
Using Clip Art Galleries
• A clip art gallery is an assortment of graphics,
photographs, sound, and video.
• Clip arts are a popular alternative for users
who do not want to create their own images.
• Clip arts are available on CD-ROMs and on the
Internet.

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 Using Bitmap Software
The industry standard for bitmap painting and
editing programs are:
• Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Macromedia's Fireworks.
• Corel's Painter.
• CorelDraw.
• Quark Express.

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 Capturing and Editing Images
• Capturing and storing images directly from the
screen is another way to assemble images for
multimedia.
• The PRINT SCREEN button in Windows and
COMMAND-CONTROL-SHIFT-4 keystroke on
the Macintosh copies the screen image to the
clipboard.

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 Capturing and Editing Images
Image editing programs enable the user to:
– Enhance and make composite images.
– Alter and distort images.
– Add and delete elements.
– Morph (manipulate still images to create animated
transformations).
Scanning Images
 Users can scan images from conventional sources and
make necessary alterations and manipulations.

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 Applications of Vector-Drawn Images
• Vector-drawn images - created from geometric objects such as

lines, rectangles, ovals, polygons using mathematical formulas

• Vector-drawn images are used in the following areas:

– Computer-aided design (CAD) programs.

– Graphic artists designing for the print media.

– 3-D animation programs.

– Applications requiring drawing of graphic shapes.

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 Vector-Drawn Images v/s Bitmaps
• Vector images use less memory space and
have a smaller file size as compared to
bitmaps.
• For the Web, pages that use vector graphics in
plug-ins download faster, and when used for
animation, draw faster than bitmaps.

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 Vector-Drawn Images v/s Bitmaps
• Vector images cannot be used for
photorealistic images.
• Vector images require a plug-in for Web-based
display.
• Bitmaps are not easily scalable and resizable.
• Bitmaps can be converted to vector images
using autotracing.

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 3-D Animation Tools
3-D animation, drawing, and rendering tools
include:
– Ray Dream Designer.
– Caligari True Space 2.
– Specular Infini-D.
– Form*Z.
– NewTek's Lightwave.

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 Natural Light and Color
• Light comes from an atom where an electron
passes from a higher to a lower energy level.
• Each atom produces uniquely specific colors.
• Color is the frequency of a light wave within
the narrow band of the electromagnetic
spectrum, to which the human eye responds.

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 Understanding Natural Light and Color
• The tools we use to describe color are
different when the color is printed than from
when it is projected
– Additive color (projected color).
– Subtractive color (printed color).
– Monitor-specific color.
– Color models.

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 Additive Color
• In the additive color method, a color is created
by combining colored light sources in three
primary colors - red, green, and blue (RGB).
• TV and computer monitors use this method.

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 Subtractive Color
• In the subtractive color method, color is created
by combining colored media such as paints or ink.
• The colored media absorb (or subtract) some
parts of the color spectrum of light and reflect
the others back to the eye.
• Subtractive color is the process used to create
color in printing.
• The printed page consists of tiny halftone dots of
three primary colors- cyan, magenta, and yellow
(CMY).
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 Monitor-Specific Colors
• Colors should be used according to the target
audience's monitor specifications.
• The preferred monitor resolution is 800x600
pixels.
• The preferred color depth is 32 bits.

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 Color Models
• Different ways of representing information
about color.
• Models used to specify color in computer
terms are:
– RGB model - A 24-bit methodology where color is specified in terms of red,
green, and blue values ranging from 0 to 255.
– HSB and HSL models – Color is specified as an angle from 0 to 360 degrees on
a color wheel.
– Other models include CMYK, CIE, YIQ, YUV, and YCC.

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 Most Popular Image File Formats

• JPEG (Joint-Photographic Experts Group)

• GIF (Graphical Interchange Format)
• PNG (Portable Network Graphic)
• Other formats:
– BMP, PSD, TIFF/TIF, TGA, EPS, PCX, ICO

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 Most Popular Image File Formats

• JPEG
– For continuous tone images, such as full-color photographs
– Supports more than 16 millions of color (24-bit)
– Uses lossy compression (averaging may lose information)
• GIF
– For large areas of the same color and a moderate level of
detail.
– Supports up to 256 colors
– Allows transparency and interlacing
– Uses lossless compression

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 Most Popular Image File Formats

• PNG
 lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of
raster images
 patent-free replacement for GIF
 also replace many common uses of TIFF
 Support indexed-color, grayscale, and true color
images + an optional alpha channel for
transparency

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 Information Delivery
 Images or Graphics are used to convey information in
multimedia products.
 For example, a picture of an automobile engine is much
more effective than text that merely describes it.

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 Information Delivery
 Images or Graphics for information delivery include:

 Drawn images

 Charts and graphs

 Maps

 Scenery

 People
 In each case, the image must be relevant to the
overall product.
 Image size, color in respect to the application and
other images, and positioning must all be considered
when using images.
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