Design and Evaluation of Multimedia Systems

Rationale:

Multimedia data has become an indispensable part of our daily life. In this course, students will be introduced to principles of multimedia systems, multimedia processing, multimedia standards, and gain hands-on experience in this area. Issues in effectively representing, processing, and retrieving multimedia data such as sound and music, image and video will be addressed.

Aims

This course aims to:

• Introduce students to the different media used in multimedia systems.
• Train students in the application of suitable evaluation techniques for multimedia systems.
• Provide an opportunity for students to apply design, implementation and evaluation concepts and techniques to the development of a small but realistic multimedia system.
• Build a solid background in multimedia for your personal, industrial or academic research.

Objectives

At the end of the course, a student will be able to:

• Identify the media used in multimedia systems and to assess their relative advantages and disadvantages relative to both user and system points of view.
• Explain the interaction problems introduced by multimedia (e.g., compression and synchronisation) and to be able to enumerate and critique the techniques available for ameliorating or removing these problems.
• Describe techniques for developing multimedia information systems
• Describe techniques for developing multimedia information retrieval systems
• Design, implement and evaluate a small multimedia system.

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Content

• Audio and Speech
• Video analysis and processing technology
• Multimedia Information Retrieval
• Multimodal interaction
• Design & Evaluation of multimedia systems

Pre-requisites

Interactive Systems 3 and Network Systems Architecture 3 is recommended but not required. 

Credits

The module is worth 10 credits. 

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Recommended Course Text

(No need to buy them!)

Digital Multimedia by N. Chapman and J Chapman, Wiley, 1st, 2004, ISBN: 0-470-85890-7,

Fundamentals of Multimedia, by Z. Li and Drew, M. Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2004, ISBN: 0-13-127256-X,

Assessment

Assessment is by exam (80%) and coursework (20%). Coursework is on designing a multimedia system for personal digital information. Either you can use your own data or we will give you sample video files from broadcasted material. This is a combined project of 3 people. Alternatively, those who like to do it alone can write an essay on a topic related to multimedia. Talk to the instructor for more details.