Karen Fraser, 16G06

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Karen Fraser, 16G06

• email, k.fraser_at_ulster.ac.uk, website,
  karenfraser.co.uk

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Introduction

• All modules notes on my web site
• All course details on IMD site
• imdweb.infj.ulst.ac.uk
• Lectures are
• Tuesday 09F03 2.15 4.05
• Wednesday 21D23 12.15 1.05

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(No Transcript)
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Marking

• Criterion marking
• Competitive marking
• Plagiarism

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Assessment. Coursework Assignments 40, Written
Examination 60

• Coursework 1
• Students will be required to create their own
  HTML-based home page for the course. The
  assignment will be issued in week 1 and should be
  submitted in week 3. It is expected that students
  should spend approximately 8 hours on this
  assignment and it will contribute 20 of the
  overall coursework mark. The assessment criteria
  may focus upon
• Correct usage of specified HTML tags.
• Functionality without errors.
• Ease of navigation.
• Aesthetic quality.
• Quality of content.
• Attention to detail.
• Evidence of personal research (e.g. using
  tags/parameters not explicitly presented in the
  practical classes).
• This assignment will measure the students
  achievement of learning outcomes (i) and (ii).
• Do NOT USE A TEXT EDITOR
• Eg Dreamweaver or Frontpage

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Excuses are not accepted!

• Common ones!
• The computer crashed and I lost my work
• Back it up and keep recent copies of everything
• The CD writers in the lab arent working
• Everyones coursework is due at the same time
  do not try to burn you cd on the day your
  coursework is due
• I cant get a computer in the lab
• Everyone has the same amount of timetabled lab
  space but the lab are usually empty before 9 in
  the
• morning and after 6

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Lectures

• Week 1 Introduction
• Week 2 Graphics
• Week 3 Colour
• Week 4 Why Use Flash
• Week 5 Animation
• Week 6 Sound

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Lectures

• Week 7 Hypertext and Hypermedia
• Week 8 Networks
• Week 9 Search Engine Optimisation and
  Content Management Systems
• Week 10 Video
• Week 11 Revision
• Week 12 Revision

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Practicals

• All in 16E28/29
• ICT Monday 1.15 3.05
• IMD Group A Tuesday 12.05 3.05
• IMD Group B Friday 11.15 1.05

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Assessment

• Weeks 1 - 3 HTML
• Coursework due 17th October..... Worth 20 of
  coursework mark
• Weeks 4 12 Flash MX
• Coursework due 8th December..... Worth 80 of
  coursework mark
• Coursework is worth 40 of the marks allocated
  for the whole module
• Exam .. January and is worth 60 of the marks
  allocated for the whole module

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Books Recommended

• Digital Multimedia, 2nd edition
• Nigel Chapman Jenny Chapman
• Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Flash MX 2004 in
  24 Hours
• Phillip Kerman
• Macromedia Flash MX 2004 BibleRobert Reinhardt,
  Snow Dowd

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• So lets get started!

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Digital Multimedia

• The same story, information, etc can be
  represented in different media
• Text, images, sound, moving pictures
• All media can be represented digitally as a
  structured collection of bits
• Manipulated by programs, stored, transmitted over
  networks
• Digital media can be combined into multimedia

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Interactive Multimedia

• Combination of media is actually commonplace
  (e.g. TV news) and natural we perceive the
  world through all our senses at once
• Novelty of digital multimedia is that all media
  can be treated as data
• Programs can manipulate data in response to user
  input, so digital multimedia can be interactive

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Historical Context

• Some dates
• CD-ROM specification published 1985
• CD-ROM drives on desktop machines from 1989
• WWW publicly available at start of 1992
• Handful of servers line-based browser
• HTML 3.2 adopted as W3C Recommendation in January
  1997
• Audio and video proprietary extensions

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Cultural Development

• Takes time for conventions about content and
  consumption to become established
• 1895 footage of train arriving at station
• Early animations and trick films shown as part of
  vaudeville acts at the same time as narrative
  films were being shown in cinema
• Established forms translated into new medium
  (e.g. newsreels based on newspapers)

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Terminology

• Multimedia production display and presentation
  is the sole purpose
• Multimedia application display is driven by
  computation
• e.g. Web application presenting data stored in a
  database
• Multiple media user must switch between
  modalities (read, watch, listen,) instead of
  combining them

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Definition

• Digital multimedia any combination of two or
  more media, represented in a digital form,
  sufficiently well integrated to be presented via
  a single interface, or manipulated by a single
  computer program

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Delivery

• Online
• Uses a network (usually the Internet) to send
  information from one computer to another
• World Wide Web is commonest form of online
  delivery of multimedia
• Offline
• Removable storage medium is used to carry the
  data
• CD-ROM, DVD

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Page-Based Multimedia

• Text, images laid out in 2-D arrangement as in
  book or magazine
• Time-based elements embedded as if they were
  images
• Playback controls may be provided
• Pages combined using links (hypermedia)
• Essentially static

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Time-Based Multimedia

• Elements arranged in time
• Presented in sequence on a timeline
• Elements may be frames or discrete pages
  (slideshow)
• Often incorporates parallelism
• Parallel elements may be synchronized

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Linearity

• Film fixed order of frames defines a single
  playback sequence
• Book physical arrangement of text and pages
  implies a linear reading order

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Non-Linearity

• Flash jumps between frames, controlled by
  interactivity, permit branching and loops
• Hypermedia links between pages permit multiple
  arbitrary reading orders

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Interactivity

• User input may control a multimedia production,
  but only within limits set by the multimedia
  producer
• Only choices that are coded into the program are
  possible
• Can allow the user to control events at many
  points, leading to combinatorial growth in number
  of possibilities
• e.g. 4 choices at each of 5 points implies 20
  branches but 1024 possible sequences

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User Interfaces

• Means of presenting choices and accepting user
  input can vary enormously from
• Stylized interface elements used by mainstream
  OSs and applications
• to
• Free-form, dynamically changing interaction of
  games
• Conventions are predictable, but limited to
  (static) context in which they were developed

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Access

• If access to multimedia is the norm, those denied
  access become marginalized ('digital divide')
• Access may be limited by lack of
• Access to equipment and skills
• Network infrastructure
• Literacy and education
• Physical and cognitive abilities
• These factors may depend on wealth, geographical
  location,

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Web Site Production

• Potentially anyone with Internet access can have
  their own Web site
• ISPs provide free Web space
• Free and inexpensive tools are adequate
• WWW has potential for revolution in access to the
  means of production and distribution of digital
  material

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Control of Content

• All sufficiently complex societies seek to
  control what people may see or hear, either by
  explicit policing, economic or other means
• Rapid growth of the Internet and its potential
  for disseminating unacceptable content has given
  new impetus to debates about censorship
• Complicated ethical issues with no enduring
  conclusion or consensus despite thousands of
  years of debate

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Diversity

• WWW is global network, hence material reaches
  many different societies and cultural and
  religious groups within those societies
• Many different models of censorship none, rigid
  centralized control, self-regulation,
• Unrealistic to expect a single model of
  censorship to be acceptable everywhere
• Difficult to assign responsibility for
  disseminaton of content on Internet

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• So how does it work?

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Bits and Bytes

• Devices can only be in one of two states
• 0 or 1, yes or no, on or off,
• Bit a unit of data that can only have one of two
  values
• Byte an ordered sequence of eight bits
• Word a short sequence of bytes, usually four (32
  bits)

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Interpretation of Bits

• Numbers to base 2 (binary)
• 01100001 97 decimal
• Characters associate bit patterns (numbers)
  with characters via a character set
• 01100001 a in ASCII
• Brightness of an image at a point, instantaneous
  amplitude of a sound wave, etc

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Addresses

• Each byte can be identified by its position in
  the sequence of all bytes in memory its address
• Collections of bytes can be combined into data
  structures using addresses
• e.g. store an image as a sequence of brightness
  values, use address of the first to access the
  image data
• store a video sequence as series of images, add
  address of next and previous to each frame

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Digitization

• Converting a signal from analogue to digital form
• Analogue signal can vary continuously, digital is
  restricted to discrete values
• Two-stage process
• Sampling measure the value at discrete
  intervals
• Quantization restrict the value to a fixed set
  of quantization levels

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Software Requirements

• Applications for different media types
• Images image editing, painting and drawing
  (Photoshop, Illustrator)
• Text editors, layout programs
• Video editing and post-production (Premiere,
  After Effects, Final Cut Pro)
• Animation drawing, interpolation (Flash)
• Sound editing and effects (Audition, Bias Peak)

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Software Requirements

• Applications for combining media types
• 'Authoring systems'
• Timeline-based (e.g. Director)
• Markup-based for WWW (e.g. Dreamweaver)
• May require some programming in a scripting
  language to provide interactivity
• Behaviours provide prefabricated parameterized
  actions

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Networks

• Local area networks (LANs) connect several
  computers on one site (Ethernet)
• LANs connected together by routers, bridges and
  switches form an internet
• The Internet is a global network of networks
  (internet) communicating via TCP/IP protocols
• Mostly operated by commercial Internet Service
  Providers (ISPs)
• Domestic users connect via telephone, cable or
  satellite

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Internet Access

• Dial-up connection uses modem and analogue
  telephone line
• V90 modem, 56kbps maximum
• Broadband always-on digital connection (may be as
  little as 512kbps, not true broadband)
• ADSL
• Cable
• Satellite
• Dedicated line (T1, T3)

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Clients and Servers

• Servers listen on a communication channel for
  requests from clients and send responses
• Often servers (the programs) run on dedicated
  machines, also referred to as servers
• Clients run on separate machines (e.g. desktop
  computer)
• Interaction is governed by protocols

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The World Wide Web

• HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
• Client (Web browser) sends request for a Web
  page, server returns it (HTML document)
• Identify server and location of page from a URL
• http//domain name/path
• e.g. http//www.digitalmultimedia.org/DMM/index.ht
  ml
• Server may create page dynamically
• Communicates with other program via CGI etc

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Standards Organizations

• ISO (International Organization for Standards)
• All technical fields except electrical and
  electronic engineering
• IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission)
• ITU (International Telecommunications Union)
• IT dealt with by joint ISO/IEC technical committee

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Internet Standards

• Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) deals with
  technical development
• Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
  registers MIME types, language codes, etc
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• No official status, but Recommendations are
  treated as standards for the WWW

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• Next lecture tomorrow in 21D23