Multimedia Systems | Unit 2: Text, Audio, Image, Video NOTES
Unit 2: Text, Audio, Image and Video
Study Notes — Text Design · Sound Digitization · Image Formats · Video Standards
PART A — TEXT
Types of Text
• Unformatted (plain) text: fixed-size, single-font characters chosen from a limited set (e.g., ASCII text)
— simplest to store/process.
• Formatted text: text with variable fonts, sizes, styles (bold/italic), layout attributes — e.g.,
word-processor documents, RTF.
• Hypertext: text containing links (anchors) to other text/documents, allowing non-linear navigation — the
basis of the World Wide Web (HTML).
Ways to Present Text
• Text scanning/typing: using OCR on scanned pages, or direct keyboard entry.
• Word processors: creating formatted documents (MS Word, LaTeX).
• Hypertext systems / Web pages: presenting text with embedded links and multimedia.
• Font/typesetting systems: professional publishing using various character faces and layouts.
Aspects of Text Design
• Typeface/Font selection: serif vs. sans-serif, readability at different sizes.
• Font size and style: heading vs. body sizes, bold/italic for emphasis.
• Alignment and spacing: line spacing (leading), letter spacing (kerning), justification.
• Color and contrast: text color against background for readability and accessibility.
• Layout/whitespace: margins, columns, and white space to improve visual clarity.
• Consistency: uniform style across a document/presentation for professional appearance.
Character, Character Set, and Codes
A character is the smallest unit of text (a letter, digit, punctuation mark). A character set is a defined
collection of characters recognized by a computer system. A character code (encoding) maps each
character in the set to a unique numeric value so it can be stored/processed digitally.
Coding Scheme Description
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange — 7-bit code (128 characters), covers English letters
Extended ASCII 8-bit code (256 characters) — adds accented letters, symbols; various regional variants exist.
EBCDIC Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code — 8-bit code used mainly on IBM mainframes.
Unicode Universal character encoding standard capable of representing characters from virtually all world language
Unicode
Unicode assigns a unique code point (e.g., U+0041 for 'A') to every character across all major world scripts,
solving the incompatibility problems of many separate national encodings. It supports over a million code
points and is implemented via encoding forms: UTF-8 (variable 1–4 bytes, ASCII-compatible, most common
on the web), UTF-16 (variable 2 or 4 bytes), and UTF-32 (fixed 4 bytes per character).
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Multimedia Systems | Unit 2: Text, Audio, Image, Video NOTES
Encryption (of Text)
Encryption transforms readable text (plaintext) into an unreadable form (ciphertext) using an algorithm and a
key, protecting confidentiality during storage or transmission. Basic types include:
• Symmetric-key encryption: same key used for encryption and decryption (e.g., DES, AES) — fast, but
key distribution is a challenge.
• Asymmetric-key (public-key) encryption: uses a public key to encrypt and a private key to decrypt
(e.g., RSA) — solves key-distribution problem, but slower.
• Simple classical ciphers: substitution cipher (e.g., Caesar cipher) and transposition cipher, mainly of
historical/educational interest.
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Multimedia Systems | Unit 2: Text, Audio, Image, Video NOTES
PART B — AUDIO
Basic Sound Concepts
Sound is produced by vibration of an object, creating pressure waves that travel through a medium (air). Key
physical properties: Frequency (measured in Hz, determines pitch — the human audible range is roughly 20
Hz to 20 kHz), Amplitude (determines loudness, measured in decibels dB), and Waveform (determines
timbre/quality of sound).
Types of Sound
• Speech: narrow-band signal, typically 300 Hz–3.4 kHz for telephony-quality speech.
• Music: wide dynamic and frequency range, needs high fidelity (up to 20 kHz).
• Sound effects / ambient sound: general environmental audio used in games, film.
Digitizing Sound
Analog sound (continuous wave) is converted to digital form via an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC)
through two main steps: Sampling (measuring the amplitude of the signal at regular time intervals) and
Quantization (rounding each sample's amplitude to the nearest of a finite set of discrete levels).
Computer Representation of Sound
Parameter Meaning
Sampling Rate Number of samples taken per second (Hz). By the Nyquist theorem, the sampling rate must be at leas
Sampling Size (bit depth) Number of bits used to represent each sample's amplitude (e.g., 8-bit = 256 levels, 16-bit = 65,536 lev
Quantization The process of mapping each sampled amplitude to the nearest available discrete level; introduces sm
Channels Mono (1 channel) vs. Stereo (2 channels) vs. Surround (multi-channel) audio.
Data rate formula: Bit rate (bps) = Sampling Rate × Bit Depth × Number of Channels. Example: CD audio =
44,100 × 16 × 2 = 1,411,200 bps (~1.4 Mbps).
Audio Formats
Format Description
WAV Waveform Audio File Format — uncompressed/raw PCM audio, high quality, large file size.
MP3 MPEG-1 Audio Layer III — lossy compressed format, widely used for music due to small size.
AAC Advanced Audio Coding — lossy format, generally better quality than MP3 at same bitrate.
FLAC Free Lossless Audio Codec — compressed but lossless, preserves original quality.
MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface — not actual audio, but a set of instructions for synthesizers to generate s
Audio Tools
Software used for recording, editing, and mixing audio, e.g., Audacity, Adobe Audition, Sound Forge, and
MIDI sequencers such as Cubase or FL Studio. These tools support operations like trimming, normalization,
noise reduction, mixing multiple tracks, and format conversion.
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)
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Multimedia Systems | Unit 2: Text, Audio, Image, Video NOTES
MIDI is a standard protocol/interface that allows electronic musical instruments, computers, and other
devices to communicate. Rather than storing actual sound waveforms, a MIDI file stores a sequence of
events (note-on, note-off, pitch, velocity, instrument/patch selection, timing) that a synthesizer interprets to
generate sound. This makes MIDI files extremely small compared to digital audio, and easily editable
(change instrument, tempo, pitch) — but sound quality depends entirely on the synthesizer/sound bank used
for playback.
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Multimedia Systems | Unit 2: Text, Audio, Image, Video NOTES
PART C — IMAGE
Image Formats
Format Key Features
BMP Uncompressed (or simple RLE), simple raster format, large file size, Windows native.
JPEG/JFIF Lossy compression, ideal for photographs; supports millions of colors.
GIF Lossless, limited to 256 colors (8-bit palette), supports simple animation and transparency.
PNG Lossless compression, supports full alpha transparency, no licensing issues (replaced GIF for many uses).
TIFF Flexible, often lossless, supports layers/multiple images — common in publishing/scanning.
Image Color Schemes / Models
• RGB (Red, Green, Blue): additive color model used for displays/screens.
• CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black): subtractive model used for color printing.
• HSV/HSB (Hue, Saturation, Value/Brightness): intuitive model closer to human color perception,
used in image editing tools.
• Grayscale: single-channel intensity representation (no color, only brightness levels).
• Bitmap/Binary: 1-bit per pixel, black or white only.
Image Enhancement
Image enhancement techniques improve the visual quality or highlight specific features of an image for
better interpretation:
• Contrast/brightness adjustment: stretching or shifting pixel intensity range.
• Histogram equalization: redistributing intensity levels to improve overall contrast.
• Filtering: smoothing (blur, noise reduction) and sharpening (edge enhancement) using spatial
filters/convolution.
• Color correction: adjusting hue, saturation, white balance.
• Noise removal: median filter, Gaussian filter to reduce random noise.
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Multimedia Systems | Unit 2: Text, Audio, Image, Video NOTES
PART D — VIDEO
Analogue and Digital Video
Analog video represents a scene as a continuously varying electrical signal (as in traditional TV broadcast
— NTSC, PAL, SECAM standards), transmitted as a sequence of scan lines per frame. Digital video
represents a sequence of digitally sampled and quantized frames (each frame is a bitmap of pixels),
enabling compression, editing, and error-free copying/transmission.
Recording Formats and Standards
Standard Purpose / Description
JPEG Still-image compression standard (lossy, DCT-based) — the basis for intra-frame (I-frame) compression us
MPEG (MPEG-1/2/4) Family of standards for compressed audio/video: MPEG-1 (VCD quality), MPEG-2 (DVD, digital TV), MPEG
H.261 Early ITU-T video coding standard designed for videoconferencing over ISDN lines (px64 kbps), using bloc
Transmission of Video Signals
• Broadcast transmission: over-the-air analog/digital TV broadcast using RF channels.
• Cable/Satellite transmission: video delivered via coaxial/fiber cable or satellite links.
• Network/streaming transmission: compressed video transmitted over IP networks (Internet), requiring
buffering and adaptive bitrate streaming to cope with variable bandwidth.
Video Capture
Video capture is the process of converting analog video signals (from a camera/VCR) into digital form using
a video capture card/device, or directly recording digital video via a digital camera/webcam. Key parameters
affecting captured video quality: frame rate (fps), resolution, color depth, and compression codec used
during capture.
Computer-based Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of slightly different images (frames) to create the illusion of
movement. Computer-based animation techniques include:
• Frame-by-frame (cel) animation: each frame drawn/rendered individually.
• Keyframe animation with tweening/interpolation: artist defines key poses; software computes
in-between frames.
• 2D vector animation: objects defined mathematically and transformed (used in Flash-style animation).
• 3D animation: modeling objects in 3D space, applying motion, lighting, and rendering to 2D frames.
• Motion capture (MoCap): capturing real actor movement using sensors and mapping it onto a digital
character model.
Quick Recap
✓ Text: plain/formatted/hypertext; character codes ASCII → Unicode; encryption for security.
✓ Audio: sampling rate + sampling size + quantization define digital sound quality; MIDI stores
instructions, not waveforms.
✓ Image: raster formats (JPEG/PNG/GIF/TIFF), color models (RGB/CMYK/HSV), enhancement
(contrast, filtering).
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Multimedia Systems | Unit 2: Text, Audio, Image, Video NOTES
✓ Video: analog vs digital; JPEG/MPEG/H.261 standards; capture, transmission, and computer
animation techniques.
Multimedia Systems — Unit 2 Notes | Compiled for semester exam preparation (MAKAUT)
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