Multimedia: Background and Applications
Multimedia is nothing more than its etymology would suggest. Multi refers to a variety of sources, and media refers to the channels through which information can be sent. In brief, then, multimedia is the combined use of varying mediums to transmit information, whether in a presentation, broadcast, or any other conceivable kind of transmission. Examples are so omnipresent that it is easy to overlook how common multimedia is in one’s daily life. Anytime a person turns on a television he or she is instantly immersed in a multimedia presentation, whether watching a news broadcast, game show, movie, sporting event, etc.; all of these programs utilize varying mediums to convey their information. In a local news broadcast, for instance, the news anchor may speak of a current news story while an onscreen graphic gives more information. A producer can cue up some video footage to further elaborate on the story. Envision a sporting event: if one sits in the stands at a football game, he or she receives a visual representation of the game on the field, one medium of gaining information. Even this event can become a multimedia presentation, by definition, if the spectator tunes into the radio broadcast on his or her AM/FM radio; he is viewing the scene visually (one channel), while listening on another channel to the same information. This concept of channeling information is the essence of understanding what multimedia is.
More pragmatically, though, multimedia can be very useful once understood for what it is. Now that it can be seen to be a simple concept to understand, it follows that multimedia need not be difficult to use. Indeed, the fact that multimedia is everywhere attests to its effectiveness at disseminating information to the masses. A clear tie exists here between mass media and multimedia, as the two fields do often work together, but for our current purposes a more in depth explanation of multimedia is due. Multimedia is excellent for grabbing one’s attention and holding it long enough for information to be imparted to the captive audience. As such, advertisers, marketers, and just about any other person or group with a message or information to relay all use forms of multimedia to better express their messages. As each individual or group has its own specific goal(s) and/or motivation(s) in mind for relaying a particular message, the method of conveying that message will correspond. An advertiser will use sights and sounds corresponding to the moods, ideas, feelings, etc. associated with a particular product, to encourage the captive listener to make a purchase. If anyone has ever wondered why the commercials played on television during football games strongly exhibit attractive people having fun (and drinking beer), it is because that type of commercial corresponds to the demographic considered most likely to view a football game and, thus, most likely to respond to exposure to that particular kind of commercial.
Since multimedia is quite common and is not a difficult concept to master, it should be within the capacity of anyone so inclined to make a multimedia presentation. The most prevalent type of presentation currently in use for small-scale broadcasting is PowerPoint. These days, building a PowerPoint is as easy as pointing, clicking, and typing. The most difficult part of the exercise is in developing a message to broadcast, as the rest is painfully easy. As outlined online , to create a PowerPoint one needs only to take his or her speaking points and type them into text boxes in successive slides, while adding whatever bells and whistles are desired to create the right atmosphere for the presentation. If one desires a more complex presentation, one will need a more sophisticated program.
Enter Adobe Premier . Where PowerPoint is good for making “lecture” presentations, Premier excels at making video presentations. Built around a concept called “timelines,” Premier allows a user to take stock video footage and manipulate it to excellent effect. Premier is a full video-editing suite, replete with enough effects to allow competent users to make professional presentations. More average users will still be able to produce a presentation of quality, as Premier takes the mess out of cutting film. All the user has to do is, once having input the video footage to the program, use a feature similar to “drag and drop” (familiar from the Windows environment) video segments into the desired location in the “timelines.” It should be noted that Premier has two separate timelines: one for video and one for audio. Both timelines allow mixing effects between media sources. For example, in moving from one video source to another, the producer may desire a cross-fade, with an accompanying fade on the audio soundtrack. All of this is easy to do with Premier, provided one has a PC powerful enough to handle the necessary computations. Aside from this one snare, Premier is a strong program to use for creating more sophisticated multimedia presentations, especially in comparison to the weaker and less versatile PowerPoint, limited as it is by the confines of the PC.
For the online multimedia coup de grace, one should certainly take a look at Macromedia’s new production suite, Macromedia Studio MX. Containing five tightly integrated programs, this suite will allow users to produce stellar webpages, if enough patience is invested to learn how to use these weighty and complex programs. In specific, the Macromedia suite includes “Dreamweaver MX (HTML creation), Flash MX (vector animation), Fireworks MX (bitmap manipulation), ColdFusion MX (server scripting), and Freehand 10 (vector manipulation).” Clearly, software this versatile and complex will surpass the needs of most individuals seeking to disseminate information via a multimedia presentation, but it is nice to know these capabilities exist. If one was to be so adventurous as to attempt to learn these programs, or if one were a multimedia professional, having access to a suite like this would make possible a truly immersing online experience. With Dreamweaver MX (MS FrontPage’s more intelligent cousin), a user could design a slick webpage. Flash MX could be used to add flash animations, appearance and functionality enhancing applets to the HTML churned out by Dreamweaver MX. Likewise, Fireworks MX could polish any graphics the user could want to implement onto his or her HTML source. ColdFusion MX could be used to regulate the potentially nasty, but necessary, server scripting (Perl, Java, etc.). Finally, Freehand 10 allows more control over graphical manipulation, as the program is designed to be a professional illustrator. With all these tools at a user’s disposal, some powerful web based content is bound to develop, provided the user has the requisite knowledge to put the software to good use.
In all of these programs, multimedia can be readily used to achieve whatever effect the content author intends. Choosing the right program is only a matter of knowing what one’s goal is in providing that content and then using the program most suited to that particular task. Keep the process simple with PowerPoint, broadcast content widely with Premier, or dazzle the online viewer with the Macromedia MX suite. In any of these cases, the only limitation to what content can develop is the content author’s own imagination.