What is a multimedia system?
A Multimedia System makes use of multiple formats to present the information. Text, sound, static or moving images and videos are the most common formats. They combine these formats together with interactive elements.
Technological advances influence all human activity. This influence affects multiple domains such as communications, education or artistic expression.
New technological processes are applied in the different moments of the creative process (definition, design, production, etc.). Factors such as its low cost or the wide range of possibilities offered by Interactive Multimedia Systems have increased their use.
Application
Interactive Multimedia Systems can fulfill a multitude of functions. These include communication (presentations, commercial information points, tourism, newspapers, etc.), entertainment (graphic adventures, simulations, interactive movies, strategy games, puzzles, etc.), education (e-Learning, Serious Games, MOOCs, etc.) or even advertising (catalogs, brochures, points of sale, etc.). We can highlight four main areas.
Information and communications
The great information capacity that multimedia can contain and their quick and easy access makes them suitable means to host informative content. The media, digital television and interactive television are examples of Interactive Multimedia Systems in the field of information and communications. Encyclopedias can take advantage of interactive resources and also contain large amounts of information. Incorporating sounds and dynamic images gives an impossible result to achieve in conventional paper works.
Advertising and marketing
They are based on taking advantage of the commercial effectiveness of Interactive Multimedia Systems for advertising purposes. For example, advertising on social networks, mobile and web marketing platforms, promotions, etc. Interactivity plays an important role because it allows to capture the user's attention more easily, which can later be translated into consumption.
Education and Entertainment
The Interactive Multimedia Systems allow to organize in a useful and flexible way the contents providing a clear advantage over the traditional forms of teaching. They also play an important role in distance education, especially in some geographical areas. Interactive Multimedia Systems are all those that have support for teaching and learning such as virtual campuses, learning platforms, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and systems based on gamification are some examples.
Art
Video games currently have a profitability and a market superior to that of the film industry. In recent years, Virtual Reality systems have become more relevant (the best known being Oculus Rift and the most recent "Vive" a Valve and HTC project). We can also find simulators in amusement parks or arcade games. simulators
Format
Types of information or formats that usually appear in an Interactive Multimedia System.
Text
Traditionally used to communicate information between people or computers asynchronously. It may not be formatted (ASCII) or formatted (PDF), it may be linear or branched (hypertext). There are also brand languages such as HTML or metalanguages (XML).
Animation
It consists of giving movement sensation by drawing several times per second moving graphics. The way of storing information remains compact and easily editable.
Graphics
They are formed by a series of graphic primitives (points, circles, segments) and serve to represent planes, graphs, schemes, etc. They have the property of being easily scalable and of occupying relatively little. They are also known as vector graphics. SVG is a vector graphics format based on XML
Video
This technique is achieved by showing enough images per second to notice fluency. Because the size of the static images is high, the size is multiplied when we deal with videos. As with static images, there are also video compression algorithms. WMV (Windows Media Video) is the video format with compression designed to use proprietary Microsoft codecs.
Images
They tend to be called bitmaps and tend to be much larger files than vector graphics. To solve the problem of size there are different compression algorithms that reduce considerably the occupied space without affecting too much the quality of the image. PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless compression format that allows transparency.
Sound
Incorporating sounds favors the reinforcement of auditory memory. Three types of sounds used in Interactive Multimedia Systems can be distinguished.
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Music: can be stored as a series of instructions that will then be interpreted (MIDI) or digitized and then played.
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Sound effects: they can be synthesized or directly reproduced, like music.
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Talk: the most used method, currently, is to play already edited voice recordings although there are other techniques as well, such as speech recognition and speech synthesis.