Multimedia Computing, Communication and Applications

Author: Ralf Steinmetz
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: This book elaborates on multimedia from three main aspects: components, systems, and applications. It is systematic, comprehensive, and rich in content, covering many important topics from operating systems and hardware to user interfaces, applications, and programming examples. The book consists of 18 chapters:
The first five chapters introduce the concepts of multimedia, media, and the characteristics of data flow. They specifically discuss the basic concepts, composition, and representation methods of sound/audio, images and graphics, video, and animation. Chapter 6 summarizes the storage of audio and video data, the reasons for data compression, and encoding methods for implementing data compression (e.g., DCT). Chapters 7 and 8 introduce optical storage media and computer technology. Chapter 9 provides a detailed explanation of resource and process management, offering numerous algorithms for real-time processing. Chapter 10 outlines the layers, protocols, services, and classifications of network systems, as well as the characteristics, classifications, and compositions of local area networks, wide area networks, and metropolitan area networks. Chapter 11 discusses how multimedia communication is implemented in application layer and transport layer subsystems, as well as how QoS and resource management are achieved. Chapter 12 briefly describes the composition and management of multimedia databases. Chapter 13 analyzes document architecture by utilizing ODA, SGML, hypertext, hypermedia, and MHEG. Chapter 14 introduces an important aspect of multimedia, the design of multimedia interactive interfaces. Chapter 15 provides a detailed description of the core of multimedia systems—the synchronization problem, including the concept, requirements, and a reference model for multimedia synchronization. Chapter 16 covers programming abstraction, providing a detailed overview of abstraction levels such as libraries, system software, advanced procedural programming languages, and object-oriented methods. In the final chapters 17 and 18, the book discusses the applications of multimedia in media component production and synthesis, media communication, and entertainment, as well as the future development directions of multimedia. This book can serve as a textbook for multimedia courses in universities and colleges, as well as a reference for professionals working in this field.