State-of-the-art on multimedia

A survey on multimedia is presented with four specific goals: -to clarify what is understood by multimedia and what differentiates it from other science fields; -to seperate the different aspects of multimedia and to show the main problems; -to show what has been done in each of these aspects and explain the solutions that have been given to each of these main problems. What kind of applications exist, what kind of systems exist and which are the perspectives for the future; -expose the connections of multimedia with other computer science fields. First of all we try to define multimedia and we write some lines about its history. Several examples of multimedia uses are given. They are classified by application fields, namely: computer-based learning, information systems (authoring systems and demonstration systems), living documents (sound processing , video processing and text processing), simulation (non-interactive simulation, virtual reality), communications, data bases. After this , the available products used to make multimedia a reality are described.The descriptions of these products'features is devided in software and hardware products. Because multimedia is an interdisciplinary computer science field , follows a section especially devoted to the other science fields that are usually most connected with multimedia. These are: artificial intelligence; data bases technologies; information edition; distributed systems/networks technologies; user interfaces and standardization. Finally some open questions are exposed mainly concerning storage formalization, integration and standardization.