EED 502: UNIT 3.1.1

A MULTI MEDIA HARDWARE TOUR

A MULTI MEDIA HARDWARE TOUR

Hard ware can be grouped under the following:• Data capture devices• Data storage technologies• Data playback or display equipment

Data Capture Devices

Data Capture Devices include:• Video Cameras• Digital Cameras• Scanners• Microphones• Midi hardware

Video Cameras

• Capture full motion images• Store images in digital data• Mostly inexpensive appliance • Inexpensive cameras –resolutions can be poor

Digital Cameras

• Similar in function to regular cameras – film, its development and processing eliminated.

• Images stored in digital format• Data recognized by computer and added to any

multimedia product

Scanners

• Scanners digitize flat already developed images including photographs, drawings, pages of text

• Page scanners are either gray-scale scanners that work well with black-and-white photographs or color scanners that can record millions of colors.

Microphones

• Microphone are designed to pick up and amplify incoming acoustic waves or harmonics precisely and correctly and convert them to electrical signals. Depending on its sensitivity, the microphone will pick up the sound of someone's voice, sound from a musical instrument, and any other sound that comes to it. Regardless of the quality of the other audio-system components, the true attributes of the original sound are forever lost if the microphone does not capture them

Midi Hardware

• Midi stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface.

• It is a standard agreed by all manufacturers of musical instruments.

• This standard allows musical instruments to be hooked to each other and therefore communicate.

Data Storage Devices

Data Capture Devices include:• Optical Discs– CDs– DVDs

• External Drives– External Hard Discs– Pen Drives

• Computer Network Storage• Cloud

Optical Discs• Optical storage offers much higher storage

capacity than magnetic storage [cassettes].• Two very popular devices with consumers are

the CD-Rom [Compact Disc] and the DVD [digital versatile disc].

• A good medium for storing and distributing multimedia products that are full of graphics, audio, and video files. CD’s can hold up to 650 MB while some DVD’s can hold up to 17Gigabytes.

• Another value to these two devices is the speed at which they transfer data to the computer – from a low 300KB [2x]/sec to higher than 24x/sec.

External Drives

• The USB [Universal Serial Bus - top image] and the External Hard Disc drives [lower image] are designed to interconnect with PCs to keyboards, mice, joysticks, telephones, and low-end scanners daisy chain configuration.

• Speed and storage capacity rather limited.• External hard drives store your valuable data and

add a considerable level of safety and security. This is because external hard drives are located outside the computer and allow you to keep a backup copy of all your important files - your tax records, email archives, photos, and more.

• They connect to computers via a USB cable.

Network Storage• A network-attached storage (NAS) device

is a server that is dedicated to nothing more than file sharing. • NAS does not provide any of the activities

that a server in a server-centric system typically provides, such as e-mail, authentication or file management. • NAS allows more hard disk storage space

to be added to a network that already utilizes servers without shutting them down for maintenance and upgrades. • With a NAS device, storage is not an

integral part of the server. Instead, in this storage-centric design, the server still handles all of the processing of data but a NAS device delivers the data to the user. • A NAS device does not need to be located

within the server but can exist anywhere in a LAN and can be made up of multiple networked NAS devices.

Cloud Computing • Cloud storage is a service model in which data is maintained, managed and backed up remotely and made available to users over a network (typically the Internet).

– There are three main cloud storage models:– Public cloud storage services, such as

Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3), provide a multi-tenant storage environment that’s most suitable for unstructured data.

– Private cloud storage services provide a dedicated environment protected behind an organization’s firewall. Private clouds are appropriate for users who need customization and more control over their data.

– Hybrid cloud storage is a combination of the other two models that includes at least one private cloud and one public cloud infrastructure. An organization might, for example, store actively used and structured data in a private cloud and unstructured and archival data in a public cloud.

Data Display Devices

Data Display Devices include:• Projection Systems• Document Cameras• Monitors• Speakers

Data Projectors

• A device that projects computer output onto a white or silver fabric screen that is wall, ceiling or tripod mounted. It is widely used in classrooms and auditoriums for instruction and slide presentations.

• A data projector has a VGA socket for computer screen input at resolutions such as 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024. Many units also support TV with a composite video input for a VCR, DVD or cable box. Some projectors support all the analog and digital TV interfaces and are used for home theater projection

• These are increasingly getting smaller, lighter and more powerful.

Document Cameras • A visual presenter or document camera is a device that captures visual images by using a video camera mounted vertically on a base. The video image is then converted to an electronic signal that can be transmitted, using a video cable, to a data projector, a video monitor, a computer*, a TV, or to a communications network to be received at a remote location.

• Each visual presenter is designed to meet certain needs; portability, high visual resolution, and multiple audio-visual input and output connections.

• The visual presenter can act as a connection and switching device for a computer generated "Power Point®" presentation, a video tape player, DVD or CD players, digital cameras, printed text and 3 dimensional objects.

• The visual presenter provides a new level of visual communication in education, legal or business presentations. It is an extremely versatile tool for audio and video integration into a presentation.

Monitors

• The monitor displays the video and graphics information generated by the computer through the video card. Monitors are very similar to televisions but usually display information at a much higher resolution.

• A monitor, no matter the type, connects to either a VGA or DVI port on a video card. Before investing in a new monitor, make sure that both devices support the same type of connection.

Speakers • Computer speakers, or multimedia speakers, are speakers external to a computer, that disable the lower fidelity built-in speaker. They often have a low-power internal amplifier. The standard audio connection is a 3.5 mm (approximately 1/8 inch) stereo jack plug often color-coded lime green (following the PC 99 standard) for computer sound cards.

• Computer speakers are typically packaged with computer systems. They are small, plastic, and have mediocre sound quality. Some computer speakers have equalization features such as bass and treble controls.

• High end loudspeaker systems are electromechanical transducers which convert electrical signals into sound. The term Loudspeaker is used to refer to both the device itself, and a complete system consisting of one or more loudspeaker drivers (as the individual units are often called) in an enclosure. The loudspeaker is the most variable element in an audio system, and is responsible for marked audible differences between systems.