Multimedia in Computers

1 Introduction Multimedia is nothing new. The nature of human communication has always involved “multimedia”. We hear, speak, write, draw, make gestures, play music, and act out our thoughts and feelings to one another. We have enjoyed multimedia presentations since our childhood through film, television, and, more recently, videotape, videodisc and digital videodisc. These have all involved analog media. What makes recent developments in multimedia new and exciting is that we can now deal with these …

…The requirements for producing thirty frames per second of full-screen, full-motion video push to the limits the processing power of our more powerful microprocessors. The MPC specification outlines the minimum requirements for creating and using multimedia on the PC. We can expect to see technological improvements and a higher level of requirements as titles become more sophisticated and make greater demands on hardware. We have opened the door to a whole new dimension of computing.