Multimedia Enabling Technologies

1. Computation technology

• Higher Processing Power Per Chip
• Continual progress in microelectronics, especially VLSI, has resulted in higher processing power per chip.
• Single microprocessor with 107 transistors is available


• Higher Capacity Memory Chips
• Growth in VLSI and more recently ULSI has resulted in 512 Mbytes DRAM chips being routinely available.

2. Storage technology

• Progress In Storage Capacity
• Storage is the key to the performance and functionality of any computer system.
• This is even more true for multimedia applications because digitized audio, image and video require large storage capacity (even after compression)
• Magnetic media has been the primary storage base for at least four decades.
• Rapid technological advances in optical storage media are now a serious challenge to magnetic media

3. Compression technology

• Progress In Compression Technologies
• Compression is necessary for two reasons:
• To reduce storage volumes of sounds, images, and motion video
• To reduce the bit rate to transmit them over networks


• Assuming no compression is used, a 8 minutes of CD-quality stereophonic sound or a 3.5 seconds of TV broadcast quality motion video need 80 MB of disk space for storage.
• Assuming no compression is used, digital motion video of PAL quality requires 160 Mbps

4. Carrier and Transmission technology
Growth in carrier/transmission technologies such as optical fiber lead to transmission of multimedia information with high speed, high capacity and high reliability.
Network Switching Services Technology
New networking switching services such as B-ISDN can easily support multimedia. Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is the technology used to support B-ISDN.

5. Input/Output Device Technology

• Technological Developments have covered a wide range of input and output devices for all aspects of multimedia. These devices include pen input, display systems, scanners, laser printers, digital voice and video input and output systems, video animation input.
• Electronic pen input is a new technology which is expected to become more popular in the future
• CRT based display systems have achieved higher and higher resolution.
• Flat panel display systems using LCDs have also become popular and are used for portable computers as well as personal computers.
• Printing technology has also matured sufficiently. Laser printers for normal office work having resolution of 300 to 600 DPI are routinely available. Higher resolution ranging from 600 to 1200 DPI are useful for specialized multimedia applications. Dot matrix printers also able to print out photo quality images.
• Digital Camera does not contain film roll; Instead, it stores the captured images in digital form. Images are stored on a magnetic or optical disk in the camera or on a memory cartridge. In some cases, the image is downloaded directly to a computer. A digital camera uses charged-coupled devices (CCD) and CMOS as photo-sensors.
• Digital images created by digital cameras offer a number of advantages
• Digital images can be printed immediately and any number of times for duplication
• Digital images can be integrated with word processor
• Digital images can be embedded in mail messages.
• Video frame grabber is used to capture, manipulate, and enhance still video images. Once a digital still image is available, it can easily be enhance, restored, distorted, or analyzed.
• Powerful image animation techniques are now available using computers where illusion of movement is created by sequentially playing still image frames at a rate of 15-20 frames per second.
• Full-Motion video is the most complex component of multimedia systems. Its most important component is the video capture board. A video capture board for full motion video is a circuit card which contains video input, ADC/DAC, audio and video compression and decompression circuits, video frame memory etc.

6. Protocol Technology
These technologies relate to providing generic services to the applications such as address location, address resolution, connection setup, multicasting, end-to-end control. New protocol suites are being developed at the application level to support multimedia applications.

7. Application Technology
These technologies act as a interface between the protocol technology and the applications themselves. Often these technologies are specific to a class of applications and require to be developed as communication subsystem independent and protocol independent, for deployment to a variety of systems.

8. Database Technology
These technologies address the issue of storing and retrieving multimedia information of the order of several gigabits. For example large databases, integrated databases, federated databases, active and proactive databases.

9. Software Technology
These technologies become vital in the modern computing environment as the development of multimedia applications require an appropriate development environment. For example the object-oriented software development environment, distributed environment and parallel environment.

10. System Integration Technology
This is by far the most important requirement in the context of multimedia . Integration involves hardware, software, communication, sensor, coding and compression technologies to coexist in the modern multimedia system and the whole system should have a simple and easy-to-use interface.