Unit 43 P1

Sound – Audio files and streams play a major role in some multimedia systems. Audio files appear as part of application content and also to aid interaction. When they appear within Web applications and sites, audio files sometimes need to be deployed using plug-in media players. When developers include audio within a website, they will generally use a compressed format to minimize on download times. Web services can also stream audio, so that users can begin playback before the entire file is downloaded.

Animation - Animated components are common within both Web and desktop multimedia applications. Animations can also include interactive effects, allowing users to engage with the animation action using their mouse and keyboard. The most common tool for creating animations on the Web is Adobe Flash, which also facilitates desktop applications. Using Flash, developers can author FLV files, exporting them as SWF movies for deployment to users. Flash also uses ActionScript code to achieve animated and interactive effects.

Still Images – Digital photographs can display application content or be used to form part of a user interface. Interactive elements such as buttons often use custom images created by the designers and developers involved in an application.  Graphic design software programs such as Photoshop allow developers to create visual effects with digital images.

Moving Images - Digital video appears in many multimedia applications, particularly on the Web. As with audio, websites can stream digital video to increase the speed and availability of playback. Common digital video formats include Flash, MPEG, AVI, WMV and QuickTime. Most digital video requires use of browser plug-ins to play within Web pages, but in many cases the user's browser will already have the required resources installed.

Text – Text is the most common type of media type. Text can express specific information or act as reinforcement for the information another media type presents.

My multimedia product will be a squad page for Manchester United, including videos of highlights, stats for each player and will include sounds in each of the videos. The purpose of the product is to inform people about each of the players in the Manchester United first team and introduce the younger or newer players in the team. This product will probably have a young audience who are more interested in in learning about the team than older fans, I would put the age of the audience at 12-18. The gender of the audience will be predominantly male as they are more likely to be football fans and also more interested in finding out about the players. They would've been brought up in a sporting background and are within the range of lower to middle class. 

It is important to use promotion and advertising in order for the product to become more popular and therefore more successful this can be done in the form of digital posters or adverts on different web pages. The objective of the product is to allow people to become more familiar with the players in the Manchester United team and the different types of multimedia will let this happen. Text will be the most important as this will show the stats of the players, still images will show people what the players look like which is also important. The videos will show each player in action and therefore showing how each member of the team plays. Animation will allow the transition between pages to be easier and make the product more interactive for the user.