Information Processes and Technology

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The multimedia industry

Topic headings

Major uses of multimedia systems
The influence of advances in technology on multimedia
How are multimedia systems displayed?
Information processes in multimedia systems

The area of multimedia has grown rapidly over the past 10 years. As hardware and software have become more available for usage, even for everyday users, the needs of industry have continued to demand more and more processing speed and higher amounts of RAM to achieve the end goal.

People involved in the multimedia industry have a variety of roles and require particular skills that enable the production of multimedia systems. The UniXL (external website) website provides an overview of the jobs and qualifications required by the industry.

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Major uses of multimedia systems

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The influence of advances in technology on multimedia

Advances in technology including increased disk storage capacity, greater bandwidth capacities, improved resolution of capture devices and the increasing processing power of CPUs have influenced the development of multimedia systems.

Increased disk storage capacity as well as advanced codecs for compressing data have enabled the creation of high quality interactive multimedia products that can be stored with ease.

The speed and capacity of Internet connections have allowed large organisations, for example, to use online multimedia tutorials for computer based training (CBT). Home users interact with a multimedia websites for education purposes but more and more people now regard the net as a source of multimedia leisure and entertainment - online games, for example. Even traditional information providers such as newspapers and magazines are now creating Web-specific multimedia content.

The increased use of DVDs over the past few years has brought about a significant change in the way we look at multimedia. Not only do we see a video as it was meant to be, but we can also interact with DVDs and have more control of the content that is displayed.

The ever increasing speed and power of CPUs has had a tremendous influence on the ability of computers to create and display multimedia. High quality musical and video programs can be easily handled by modern CPUs, with the added benefit of being able to jump to any point in a program instantaneously.

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How are multimedia systems displayed?

There is a variety of hardware that can be used to display and create multimedia, including:

How do we create a multimedia system using these display devices?

There are several methods that enable us to create a multimedia system using these display devices. The methods include the use of:

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Information processes in multimedia systems

Collecting When collecting data, we need to consider what data needs to be collected and how to collect such data.

Processing Multimedia systems need to process data for presentation. This covers the aspects of how text, number, audio, image, animation and video are integrated into the system.

Organising In order to organise a presentation from a multimedia system, we need to look at using a storyboard to show the flow of the screens. A storyboard can be in one of three main formats or a combination of all three together.

The three main formats are:

Storing and retrieving There are various file formats used in multimedia systems that enable data to be stored and retrieved. Some of these formats are:

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