Multimedia refers to content that uses multiple forms of media like text, images, audio, video, and animation to inform or entertain users. It has become common in presentations and has various applications from entertainment to education. Multimedia consists of five basic elements - text, audio, images, animation, and video. It can be linear, with no user control over progression, or non-linear, allowing interactivity. The World Wide Web is a major hypermedia application that incorporates multimedia elements and links to connect documents.

1. Multimedia Systems
Page 1 of 4 Prepared By: Kumkumo K.
DIRE DAWA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Department of Computer Science
Chapter One
1. Introduction
Multimedia has become a predictable part of any presentation. It has found a range of applications
right from entertainment to education. The evolution of internet has also increased the demand for
multimedia content.
1.1 What is Multimedia?
When different people define the term multimedia, they often have quite different viewpoints.
For Example:
 A PC vendor: a PC that has sound capability, a DVD-ROM drive, and perhaps the
superiority of multimedia-enabled microprocessors that understand additional multimedia
instructions.
 A consumer entertainment vendor: interactive cable TV with hundreds of digital channels
available, or a cable TV-like service delivered over a high-speed Internet connection.
 A Computer Science (CS) or IT student: applications that use multiple modalities,
including text, images, drawings (graphics), animation, video, sound including speech, and
interactivity.
Multimedia is: -
 The media that uses multiple forms of information content and information processing to
inform or entertain the user.
 The use of electronic media to store and experience multimedia content.
Graphics, visualization, HCI, Computer vision, data compression, networking, graph theory,
database systems all have important contribution to make in multimedia at the present day.

2. Multimedia Systems
Page 2 of 4 Prepared By: Kumkumo K.
DIRE DAWA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Department of Computer Science
1.2 Component of multimedia
Basically multimedia has five elements such as text, audio, images, animation, and video (still).

3. Multimedia Systems
Page 3 of 4 Prepared By: Kumkumo K.
DIRE DAWA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Department of Computer Science
Multimedia consists of variety of research topics and projects. Some of them are:
1.3 Categories of Multimedia
Multimedia may be based on control broadly divided into two. These are: -
A) Linear multimedia: - is a type of multimedia when active content progresses without any
navigation control for the viewer such as a cinema presentation.
B) Non-linear Multimedia: - is a type of multimedia when content offers user interactivity to
control progress as used with a computer game or used in self-paced computer based
training. Non-linear content is also known as hypermedia content.
Multimedia can be presentation in the form of:-
 Recorded a recorded presentation may allow interactivity via a navigation system.
 Live a live multimedia presentation may allow interactivity via interaction with the presenter
or performer.

4. Multimedia Systems
Page 4 of 4 Prepared By: Kumkumo K.
DIRE DAWA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Department of Computer Science
1.4 Multimedia and Hypermedia
Ted nelson invented the term hypertext. Hypertext is a text which contains links which are used to
move to other texts. These links are called Hyperlinks. Hypermedia contains a link called hyperlink.
By using these links we can move from one document to another document.
Hypermedia is one of the most common applications of multimedia. Hypermedia is constrained to be
text-based. World Wide Web which contains text link is the best example of hypermedia application;
however it can include graphics, images, and especially the continuous media such as sound and
video. Hypertext is therefore usually non-linear.
1.5 Multimedia and World Wide Web
A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents
are formatted in a markup language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) that supports links
to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one
document to another simply by clicking on hot spots.
NB; Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web. There are several applications called
Web browsers that make it easy to access the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is the largest
and most commonly used hypermedia application
1.6 Characteristics of Multimedia
A Multimedia system has four basic characteristics:
1. Multimedia systems must be computer controlled.
2. Multimedia systems are integrated.
3. The information they handle must be represented digitally.
4. The interface to the final presentation of media is usually interactive