Multimedia

Multimedia, the combination of sound, graphics, animation, and video with traditional media such as text. In the world of computers, multimedia is a subset of hypermedia that combines the elements of multimedia with hypertext, which links the information.

A multimedia application is one that uses a collection of media sources. Some of the better-known examples of such applications are Powerpoint, the presentation package from Microsoft, and Acrobat, the document presentation product from Adobe Systems.

Despite being long-touted as the future revolution in computing, multimedia applications were not widely available until the mid-1990s due to the expensive hardware needed. With the dramatic increases in computer performance and the coincident decrease in prices, multimedia is now commonplace.

The key feature of modern computers that has pushed multimedia systems to the fore is the high processing power that enables good quality reproduction. Special hardware, such as dedicated sound or video cards, is now commonplace in personal computers and is an absolute necessity for anyone who wants, for example, to play the latest role-playing game.

Because of the storage demands of multimedia applications, the most effective medium for their delivery is the CD. Virtually all multimedia applications are packaged as CDs or DVDs, and many require several CDs to store all of the information contained in the product. Encarta is a leading example of this. The video clips, 3D photographs, and virtual tours that are part of this encyclopaedia consume a huge amount of storage space.

As well as being multimedia, Encarta also allows the user to navigate through its content with information links, so it is also a hypermedia product. The roots of hypermedia lie in hypertext, text that contains links to other text, and which was invented by Ted Nelson around 1965. Hypermedia is a much more recent arrival, but one that is now commonplace in modern computer products.