Deja Vu #05 31 мая 1998

PC

ANOTHER WORLD - Multimedia - a synthesis of three elements.

SoundTrack: TEHNO-TREK OT RLA
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Edition: Ze Pagan / PGC / BD
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     MULTIMEDIA - a synthesis of three elements



   ... Multimedia has quickly become one of the
leading areas of information technology. Many experts believe
that 90 years will be years of multimedia,
just as the 80-s were years of personal computers. I invite 
you, dear readers DEJA VU, take a small excursion into the 
still very recent past, in the early 90's, and look at the 
essence of the term. The article is written based on edition of 
"Computer News" provided by for publication Strelnikov 
Andreem.Prezhde all, let's find out what this mysterious term 
... 


                  *



   "Multimedia" (multimedia) - it's interactive system, 
designed to work with still images and moving

video, animated computer graphics
and text, speech and high-quality sound. The term "multimedia" 
even in English journals is described as "ill-defined" - badly 
defined, in Russian the same language it looks very alien and 
attempt to express the concept of "multimedia" with existing in 
Russian terms leads to something long, for example, 
"videozvukovye interactive computer systems, which inevitably 
give rise to yet another unpronounceable acronym. 

   The advent of multimedia, of course, produces the 
revolutionary changes in areas such as education, computer 
training, in many professional fields of science, art, computer 
games, etc., but it was a logical extension of evolutionary 
development of a number of directions in computing theory and 
practice. 

   Thus, development of hypertext
and its application to the creation of electronic manuals, 
encyclopedias, naturally raised the question of illustrating 
articles inclusion of graphics cards and photos. C

development of technical capabilities of the hypertext systems 
began to include not only still images, but also short video 
clips, audio and speech illustrations. Also appeared in the 
system "giperizobrazheny" (hiperimage), providing "Nonlinear" 
work with files stored images, ie, allow to consider the 
fragments of images in an enlarged scale, to establish 
communication between the various images, their elements and 
the like. Such systems are often referred to as "hypermedia."


   Database users and has not
miss the traditional text and numeric
data types and appeared multimedia databases (hereinafter 
"MM-base"). MM-base allow store facsimile images, the original

and object codes of programs, digitized video and sound - that 
is, virtually any information that can be memorized computer.


   The Intellectual Development of graphic
UI, on the one hand, and the techniques of object-oriented
programming - on the other hand, user-generated media, such as 
HyperCard and NeXT step, which has actually been multimedia 
systems and identifying the necessary apparatus for the 
representation of different types of information. 

   From the workstations and specialized computers led to the 
emergence of multimedia development of CAD, television and post 
production, computer controlled, and musical computer centers. 

   Development of computer simulators and computer games that 
require complex animation real-time image and sound

support for simulating or modeling the behavior of objects and 
the environment also logically leads to a multimedia system.



             COMPONENTS



   Thus, the emergence of multimedia systems prepared as the 
requirements of practice and development of the theory. 
However, the sharp spurt in this direction, which occurred in 
the past several years, provided primarily technical and system 
development tools. This progress in the development of the PC: 
the sharply increased memory performance, graphics capabilities 
and features an external memory, and advances in video 
technology, laser disc - analog and CD-ROM, and

their mass adoption. Important role
played as the development of methods for rapid
and efficient compression / scan data.

   Consider some of the technical issues of building multimedia 
systems. Perhaps the main problem - the joint processing

heterogeneous data digital and analog,
Live video and still images and
etc. In the computer, all data (if someone
does not know yet;)) are stored in digital form,
while TV, video, and most
audio deal with analog
signal. However, computer output devices - monitors (mostly) 
and the speakers have an analog input. Therefore, the simplest 
and cheapest way to build first multimedia systems consisted of 
a heterogeneous docking equipment with a computer, providing a 
computer control capabilities of these devices, combining the 
output signals of the computer and video and / or audio 
devices, and providing them with a normal joint display. 
Perhaps to Such systems are most suitable, the term 
"multimedia" because they combined heskolko independent media 
systems - storage media. Further development of systems Media 
passes in the direction of "monomediizatsii - combining 
disparate types of data in digital form on a medium-medium, in 
the same system. 

   And now, I think it's time to address some of the 
manufacturers and see what steps they have taken in the 
development of multimedia ... 


             Commodore: CDTV



   A few years ago, when multimedia nobody knew anything, it 
was enough to get acquainted with the computer company Amiga 
Commodore, a look at giperrealisticheskie animated pictures of 
its games, listen to synthesized speech, sonorous multi-channel 
stereo, not at all which affects the speed of the animation and 
work with disk - and it became clear that the following

step should be something like an interactive movie. With the 
same multimedia Suddenly, what was the birth of the Amiga is a 
multimedia computer, and now waited in the wings.


   Three spetsprotsesora Amiga: Agnus, Denise
and Paula - provide a highly sophisticated imaging and sound. So
graphics co-processor - Copper, inbound
in the Agnus, manages all aspects of
displaying an image on screen, he acts
completely independent of the CPU on its own
program. Paula manages the computer's system bus, providing fast
send large volumes of data (video,
sound, text) in between
the work of the CPU and GPU, that is, not slowing down
their work. In addition, Paula has the scheme of synthesis of 
sound and speech, including a full set of English phonemes. 
Here it is, attention to detail architecture! Generally, can be 
long to enumerate the advantages of this computer.


   It is very important for multimedia original
oriented architecture Amiga for conformity TV standards. 
Frequency sweep from Amiga sovpodayut standard NTSC (in the 
European version of the company - with PAL). Supported 
interlaced mode. Amiga - perhaps the only PC that works like a 
TV Overscan mode: a full horizontal and vertical movement of 
the beam (752x482) greater than the area used for

display graphical information.

   In 1990, the company Commodore made a new important step 
towards multimedia: introduced the first home and multimedia 
learning system - CDTV (Commodore Dynamic Total Vision). CDTV 
is not computer in the traditional sense - it

combination of CD-ROM and a central computer unit Amiga in the 
body size VCR. He does not have a standard

configuration no keyboard, no floppy drive
(However, they can be plugged in). Control of the CDTV is the 
mouse infrokrasnym or remote unit. I

only briefly touch on some aspects of this devaysa.

   At the time of development CDTV has not yet been
chip video compression rather
cheap to keep the price of the device
suitable for home use (that's
care about the user!), so using software compression 
techniques. CDTV is able to reproduce 14 frames per second 
video window, which occupies 40% of the screen. CDTV system 
lets you mix sound, recorded on CD-ROM, with music and speech, 
computer-generated. 


             Apple: HyperCard



   Manufacturer Apple is known as a leader in the field of 
"desktop printing and graphic interface. Latest Models MacII 
(at the time, of coz), equipped with a processor

M68030, may contain up to 8 MB right
addressable RAM. Multiskanmonitory used with analog RGB-input. 
Unlike the Amiga does not support interlaced mode and Overscan, 
which complicates the task working with video, not in the 
architecture of Mac and special video processors-all work with

graphics programs provided by QuickDraw. Own sound capabilities 
of your Mac also bednovaty compared to Amiga; although

they provide quite a sensible synthesis
speech, multimedia needs must be provided with additional 
equipment. The choice of this equipment is quite wide, but I 
will focus only on HyperCard. 

   HyperCard - a shell, an add-on
operating system for quite some time
included in standard delivery
machine. In fact, this is the first widespread multimedia 
system. For this time (4 years) created thousands of 
applications for HyperCard, it has become a role model, 
embodied in her ideas implemented in later systems on different 
types of computers.


   HyperCard system combines the properties of hypertext, which 
allows the environment to create an environment through the 
mechanism links, and object-oriented language, it operates on 
objects such as "maps", "stack", "button", "fields", 
"background". HyperCard presents the user an electronic 
equivalent of "cards" logical objects, which may contain 
information of different types - text, graphics, speech, video. 
The system is extremely simple to use. 


         Next Step in the media?



   Computers families NeXT, "born"
later than others and therefore which absorbed in its
architecture of many new ideas and technological advances, 
perhaps the best way correspond to multimedia technology. At the

While IBM and Microsoft for ten years
hang all of the new bunch of improvements on the original IBM 
PC and primitive MS-DOS, as if creating a racing supercar based 
on the old three-wheeled Bike - Jobs did not hesitate for a 
third just start from scratch and create a computer

today. NeXT - the computer that has the basic tools of 
multimedia systems incorporated into the architecture and 
hardware, and software. 

   Application in the NeXT powerful central
processor (68030, and 68040), signal processor (DSP), which 
provides processing of sounds, signals, pictures, synthesis and 
speech recognition, compression images, providing tools to work 
with color (NeXTstation Color), a large amount of

operational and external memory, standard
Integrated LAN controller - provides developers with the 
necessary multimedia hardware support. Additional fee

NeXTdimension allows you to work with 16 million
colors (24 bits) and 8 bits is for
hardware transparency, for
accelerate graphics added to Intel
i860; additional JPEG Image Compression Processor CL550 
compresses video in real time and allows you to store 
High-capacity hard drive for over 60 minutes of video. 

   NeXTstep standard includes the system
Voice annotation: you can comment on text documents, using
microphone instead of a keyboard. Included in his
composition also NeXTmail - system of electronic "media" mail 
to exchange messages that include, in addition to text, voice 
and graphical information. 

   Opportunities provided by NeXT, provide a good platform for 
rapid growth number of multimedia products, and possibly the 
emergence of a new quality. 


          IBM and others: AVC, DVI



   Computers IBM PC type in their "natural" form of the least 
adapted to purposes of multimedia - the worst (until SuperVGA) 
graphics, a primitive monophonic sound, only 640K directly 
addressable memory (not contain even one frame of digital 
video), lack of user-friendly interface. However, due to high 
modularity, scalability architecture - IBM computer by 
installing additional cards is easily converted into a 
dedicated station of any orientation. 

   Market Multimedia IBM began to develop
in 1986, declaring the system InfoWindow, allowing the computer 
to control analog audio and video devices, as a dialog device 
InfoWindow was used touch screen (touch-screen).


   Another direction of development of multimedia
supported by IBM - it's AVC - Audio-Visual Connection 
(audio-visual communication), which the company announced in 
1989. System focused mainly on older computers family PS / 2, 
386 or 486 processor and at least 2.5m RAM. Graphic images can 
be obtained from the board Video Capture Adapter.Ona makes 
digitizing individual frames from a video camera, DVD or video 
tape, providing a resolution of 640x480 with 16 bits per pixel, 
as well as can demonstrate the on-screen "live"

analog video, or combine it with a computer image. At mid-1990
, the maximum transmission rate of digitized frames is only 3 
fps seconds for full color images (the size 614K

each), but since the VGA can operate only in modes 4 and 8 bits 
/ pixel image can be converted and

amount of data decreases.

   Soundtrack is provided by
additional fee Audio Capture / Playback Adapter, built on the 
basis of signal processor TI 320C25 productivity about 10 Mips, 
which allows produce digitized data with a linear

output of various audio, editing them and playing with a very 
high quality (including stereo). 

   In recent years, IBM's strategy
increasingly shifting towards digital
multimedia systems. This is primarily associated with the 
successes in the development of DVI line (Digital Video 
Interactive), which was co-lead of Intel and IBM. System DVI 
was developed by RCA (Sarnoff Research Center) and General 
Electric; then the right to DVI-technology firm acquired

Intel. Originally platform DVI based on asymmetric 
pattern-oriented CD-ROM. At the end of 1990 produced the first 
commercial products hardvernye DVI-two boards Action Media 750 
(by IBM - for architecture Micro Channel, and Intel - for the 
architecture of ISA). 

   Kernel boards DVI is a set of chips videobrabotki i750 firm 
Intel.Eti chips produce expansion / compression of video and 
audio in real time, in the process of writing or reading from 
disk. Major Chips set: Pixel Processor 82750PA, running at 
speeds of 12.5 Mips and Output Display Processor (ODP) 82750DA. 
ODP is capable of digital video in the range

permission from 256x200 to 1024x512, 8, 9
or 16-bits of the color of the pixel (currently being developed 
version of 24-packs bits). Furthermore, i750 provides a variety 
of visual effects due to the possibility reprogramming the 
microcode chips, not interrupting or slowing down operations. 
Fee DVI contains a library of functions visual effects,

transformations, etc., to which access may be from programs 
written in Cu.


   DVI brings television and computer technology that allows a 
computer equipped with VGA, play a full moving video. Digital 
Output Action Media is mixed with the analog output VGA; box 
DVI can be located anywhere on the screen, shrink, stretch, 
move, generated computer text and graphics can be placed in the 
window or placed on top of him. Estimated to Intel, when 
memorizing a moving video of the coefficient, compression 
achieves almost 160 to 1. Thanks This standard CD can hold 72

stereozvukovyh minute video and data (without
It has a capacity to compress only 28 seconds);
average size of the compressed frame - about 4.5K,
and even when the data rate 150K /
s CD-ROM has time to read 30 frames
sec. When storing the sets of still images (paintings, 
photographs), the coefficient compression drops to 25 to 1. 
Since DVI is a digital system, it is, in principle, can be set 
to any resolution, so it is possible to create DVI-systems

HDTV - High Definition TV (resolution 1050 or 1125 lines) and 
movies (about 4000 lines of resolution). 

   Currently, DVI provides a quality "near-VCR" - "almost-VCR 
(240 lines) for the products produced by Action Media (referred 
to as RTV - Real Time Video, or, in Russian, "real-time video). 
However, you can send the prepared data to the company Intel, 
where they will shrink to an asymmetric pattern PLV (Production 
Level Video); when playing data PLV, Action Media provides 
quality VCR. K 1992. expected to achieve higher quality of TV 
broadcasting, but lower for HDTV products and PLV Quality 
almost-TV for RTV. 

   DVI is the first technology to be used for full-featured
multimedia optical discs are not factory
production and available to any computer hard drive that 
greatly expands circle of developers and users of multimedia.


   Manufacturer Microsoft, though, and is involved
as co-executor in various projects
Multimedia (DVI, CD-ROM-XA, etc.), holds annual conference on 
CD-ROM, but obviously delayed the announcement of its own line, 
issue their own product. Only in late 1991, she was going to 
produce a multimedia extension of Windows, includes interface 
MCI-Media Control Interface, which, according to the property 
declaration would constitute a response to Microsoft's AMCA 
company Apple (Apple's Media Control Architecture, architecture 
media management information). As a result, the company leading 
the development of tools and products for multimedia computers 
through IBM, to act with an eye on possible future steps 
Microsoft, to suddenly be out of the "high road" after 
Microsoft finally announced its plans for the media. Such a 
policy is not new Microsoft - Remember the long-suffering

the history of Windows, only the last year, version 3.0, 
providing users of the service, which from birth had a 
Macintosh, from version to version of DOS, promises 
multi-tasking. 


              And in conclusion



   Well, dear readers, I believe
need to summarize all the above
material. I'd like to hope that this
article caused you some interest,
although it is essentially a reprint of the ...

   So, in the world is clearly booming multimedia. At this rate 
of development, when there are new trends, and others, which 
seemed very promising, suddenly become uncompetitive, it is 
difficult composes any surveys: their findings could become 
inaccurate or even obsolete. 

   Looks very interesting work on
introduce elements of artificial intelligence in hypermedia 
systems. System type "Knowledge Navigator" company Apple, 
"intelligent" e-books have the ability to "feel" the medium of 
communication, adapt to it and optimize the process of 
communicating with polzovatelem.Esche a rapidly developing 
field of computers, which plays an important role Multimedia - 
a system of virtual or alternate reality. Not to be confused 
with Virtual'no Amig'nym syndrome:)! And also

close to them of "Telepresence"
(Telepresence). With the help of special equipment, a helmet 
with two miniature stereo displays (eye-phones), 
kvadronaushnikami, special sensory gloves and even costume 
(well, straight Lawnmower some;)) you can "enter" into the 
generated or a simulated computer world is turning his head to 
look left or right go on, reach out ahead - and

see it in this virtual world, you can
even take a virtual object
(Feeling while its severity) and rearrange to another location; 
can thus build and create this world from the inside. 

   It is possible that multimedia technology is so integrated 
into the ideology architecture of the PC that the term 
"multimedia" gradually wither away ...