This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

• The state-of-the-art in multimedia content analysis, media foundations, and compression

• Covers digital audio, images, video, graphics, and animation

• Includes real-world project sets that help you build and test your expertise

• By two of the world's leading experts in advanced multimedia systems development

The practical, example-rich guide to media coding and content processing for every multimedia developer.

From DVDs to the Internet, media coding and content processing are central to the effective delivery of high-quality multimedia. In this book, two of the field's leading experts introduce today's state-of-the-art, presenting realistic examples and projects designed to help implementers create multimedia systems with unprecedented performance. Ralf Steinmetz and Klara Nahrstedt introduce the fundamental characteristics of digital audio, images, video, graphics, and animation; demonstrate powerful new approaches to content analysis and compression; and share expert insights into system and end-user issues every advanced multimedia professional must understand. Coverage includes:

• Generic characteristics of multimedia and data streams, and their impact on multimedia system design

• Essential audio concepts and representation techniques: sound perception, psychoacoustics, music, MIDI, Speech signals, and related I/O and transmission issues

• Graphics and image characteristics: image formats, analysis, synthesis, reconstruction, and output

• Video signals, television formats, digitization, and computer-based animation issues

• Fundamental compression methods: run-length, Huffman, and subband coding

• Multimedia compression standards: JPEG, H.232, and various MPEG techniques

• Optical storage technologies and techniques: CD-DA, CD-ROM, DVD, and beyond

• Content processing techniques: Image analysis, video processing, cut detection, and audio analysis

First in an authoritative 3-volume set on tomorrow's robust multimedia desktop: real-time audio, video, and streaming media.

Multimedia Fundamentals offers a single, authoritative source for the knowledge and techniques you need to succeed with any advanced multimedia development project. Look for Volume 2 focusing on networking and operating system-related issues, and Volume 3 focusing on service and application issues.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 5 Ratings

Badly written, hard to follow. - 2004-05-11
Reviewer Rating:
This book just lists up most of the topics related to multimedia, and it's really hard to follow the authors' writing. The organization is bad, so I got frequently lost while reading the book. Too much errta, and wrong figures. The ugliest scientic and/or engineering book I've ever read!!!

Horrible Book to read!!! - 2005-07-09
Reviewer Rating:
This is the worst engineering book I have read! The authors do not care to explain any concepts properly. The book is written very badly, no structure and it is hard to comprehend what they are saying. Im sure there are better books to learn about multimedia fundamentals. As far as Iam concerned, Im making a bonfire out of this book once Im done with my semester. Do not buy this book...ever.

Good content but rather poorly written - 2000-01-23
Reviewer Rating:
This book is pretty good in that it has everything you need to know about multimedia systems. However as a text book it isn't very good. The authors could improve their style by taking tips from books by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.

Good book for an introduction - 2002-12-04
Reviewer Rating:
This is a good book for providing an introductory overview of data compression (image, video, audio)... The chapters are well written and easily understood.

. - 2000-10-13
Reviewer Rating:
Ditto, Dr. T is the best CS Professor Ever!

Live Long and Prosper MINIX!

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Top Level Categories:
Multimedia

Sub-Categories:
Multimedia > Animation
Multimedia > Audio
Multimedia > Video