Components of multimedia system

 The following are the basic components of a multimedia system :

• A Processor, typically a Personal Computer (PC) or workstation that has been enhanced to handle audio and video.
• A variety of methods by which the user can interact with the system such as keyboard, mouse, joystick, touch screen.
• Ascreen that can display high- quality still images and moving video as well as Computer generated text, grapgics and animation.
• Speakers for speach and music output.
• A microphone
• A way to play back pre- recorded source material from some form of optical disk, such as compact disk.

In order to create multimedia application additional supports are required to perform specialised functions such as

• One or more adapter boards to capture, digitise, compress, manipulate and edit audio and video material.
• A software toolkit to develop application, support editing of audio and visual material and supply device drivers for the adapter boards
• Software libraries for basic functions, application program's interfaces and system support.
• Authoring tool for specification application
• Libraries of clip art, music and video. 

The storage requirement in multimedia system is larger than the conventional system because the conventional file typically consists of small blocks of data and the relation between these blocks are generally independant of time. But multimedia data in contrast, usually consists very large files that contain single image or a continuous audio or video sequence.