Technical Design

Technologicical factors may limit the ambition of your mutlimedia presentation:

• Technical parameters that affect the design and delivery of multimedia applications

Video Mode	Resolution	 Colors
	----------    --------------	--------
	  CGA    	 320 x 200	      4
	  MCGA   	 320 x 200	    256
	  EGA    	 640 x 350	     16
	  VGA    	 640 x 480	    256
	  S-VGA        1,024 x 768	 $>$= 256
	  S-VGA        1,280 x 1,024     $>$= 256
	   		     .
	   		     .
	   		     .
	   16-bit color --$>$ 65536 colors
	   24-bit color --$>$ 16.7 million colors

1.

Video Mode and Computer Platform

PC <-> Macintosh

There are many "portable", "cross-platform" software and "run-time modules", but many of them lose quality/performance during the translation.

2.

Memory and Disk Space Requirement

Rapid progress in hardware alleviates the problem, but software is too "greedy", especially the multimedia ones.

3.

Delivery

• Live Presentation

  Short checking list for hardware/software requirements:

  • type of graphics card
  • video memory (1 MB, 2 MB, 4 MB, etc.)
  • access time of hard disk (important for real-time video)
  • type of sound card (support for General MIDI)
  • audio-video software

• Delivery by diskette

  -: Small in size, slow to install

• Delivery by CD-ROM

  +: Large capacity -: Access time of CD-ROM drives is longer than hard-disk drives

• Electronic Delivery (ftp, www, etc.)

  - depends on baud rate, network connection, and monthly bill