Managing Multimedia Devices and Mass Storage on PCs: A+ Guide (6e) - Prof. Angelo J. Gero, Study notes of Electrical and Electronics Engineering

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A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e Chapter 10 Multimedia Devices and Mass Storage (v1.0) A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 2 Multimedia on a PC • Goal: generate output that emulates reality • Differences between cyberspace and real space – Sights and sounds in reality are continuous (analog) – Computer data is binary (discrete and digital) • Challenge: bridge world of cyberspace with reality A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 5 Streaming Data • Flow and/or the processing of data cannot be interrupted without affected the quality • Examples: – audio & video A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 6 CPU Technologies for Multimedia • Three early CPU improvements: – MMX (Multimedia Extensions) – SSE (Streaming SIMD Extension), – SSE2, SSE3, and Hyper-Threading (HT) A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 7 CPU Technologies for Multimedia • Operations a CPU can perform – MMX and SSE help with repetitive looping – SSE improves 3D graphics • Pentium 4 can use MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, HT • AMD uses 3DNow!, HyperTransport!, PowerNow! A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 10 Sampling Rate • How often an analog signal (video or audio) is sampled. • Measured in hertz • Higher sampling rates = better fidelity but generate more data (larger files) A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 11 Sampling Rates A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 12 Resolution • How many bits are used to describe the amplitude of the signal at a particular time • Higher the number of bits = better signal fidelity but generate more data (larger files) A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 15 Data Compression A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 16 Why is it needed? • Multimedia files are very large • Need to conserve disk space and network bandwidth • The multimedia features on the Internet rely on data compression – Video streaming (You Tube) – Digital Audio (iTunes, Napster) A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 17 Example #1: Bit Mapped Graphics • Example: 1024 x 768 x 24 bit color depth image – 1024 x 768 x 24 / 8 = 2,359,296 bytes A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 20 Compression Ratio • How much is a file compressed • Expressed as ratio – Uncompressed size is 100K – Compressed size is 25K – Compression ratio is 4:1 or 1:4 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 21 Compression Ratio Factors • Type of file being compressed – A plain text file vs a .ZIP file – A BMP graphics file vs a JPG graphics file • Compression method – Lossy compression ratios are much higher A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 22 Examples of Lossless Compression • ZIP file format • RAR file format • CAB format – Used by Microsoft A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 25 Lossy Compression Quality • As the data compression increases, the quality of the file contents (music, video, movies, etc. ) decreases A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 26 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 27 Sound Adapters A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 30 Sound Cards and Onboard Sound • Surround Sound: supports eight separate channels • Sound Blaster card: standard for PC sound cards • Use CD/DVD drive or TV tuner card to bypass CPU A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 31 Figure 10-1 This motherboard with onboard sound has eight sound ports A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 32 Sound Cards and Onboard Sound • Three stages of computerizing sound: – Sound is digitized (converted from analog to digital) – Digital data is stored in a compressed data file – Sound is synthesized (digital to analog or digital out) A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 35 Integrated Audio Problems • Noise from other motherboard components • CPU intensive • Variable driver quality (codec chips) A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 36 Add on Sound Cards • 24-bit Creative Labs Sound Blaster card – Has a universal PCI connector – Works under Windows and DOS – Four color-coded ports – Two internal connections to component in case A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 37 Figure 10-2 The Sound Blaster PCI 24-bit sound card has two internal connections and four ports A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 40 Digital Cameras A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 41 Digital Cameras • A digital camera works like a scanner – Scans the field of image set by the picture taker – Translates the light signals into digital values – Digital values can be stored, viewed, edited, printed • TWAIN: format for transferring images to a PC – Connections may be cabled or wireless A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 42 Flash Memory Devices • Solid state device (SSD): memory based on a chip – Examples: thumb drives and flash memory cards • Flash memory cards are used in digital cameras A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 45 Digital Camera File Formats • Picture file formats: – JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format – TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) – RAW • Connect camera to TV using the video- out port – AVI – MPEG A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 46 Web Cams A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 47 Web Cameras and Microphones • Web camera: captures digital video for use on Web • Two meanings of Web cam: – Digital video camera – Web site providing live or prerecorded video broadcast • Setting up a personal Web cam for a chat session – Use setup CD to install software – Plug in Web camera into a USB port – If sound is needed, plug in speakers and microphones – Use chat software to create a live video session A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 50 MP3 Players • MP3 player: device that plays MP3 (.mp3) or other sound files • Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) – Standard for data compression (MPEG-1 to MPEG-4) – Stores data that changes from one frame to the next – Yields compression ratio of up to 100:1 for full- motion video A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 51 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 52 MP3 Formats • MP3 files are downloaded from PC to MP3 player • Streaming audio: playing MP3 files directly from Web • Music files on CDs can be converted to MP3 format A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 55 Figure 10-19 MIDI ports on an electronic drum set A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 56 TV Tuner and Video Capture Cards • TV tuner card: interfaces a PC with a TV • Video capture card: saves video input to hard drive • TV tuner/video capture card may also be a video card • Three ways to incorporate tuner and capture features – Embed TV tuners and TV captures in motherboard – Fit card to fit into a PCI, PCI Express x16, or AGP slot – Connect external device to a USB port • NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) – Sets standards for TV tuners and video capture cards A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 57 Figure 10-22 This notebook computer has embedded TV tuner and video capture abilities A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 60 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 61 File Formats • CDFS (Compact Disc File System) – Original file system (still used by CDs) • UDF (Universal Disk Format) file system – New file system (used by DVDs and CDs) • Windows supports CDFS and UDF A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 62 How CD’s Work • CD drives are read-only or read/writable • CD surface – Continuous spiral of sectors of equal length – Data stored as patterns of pits and lands A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 65 Figure 10-26 The spiral layout of sectors on a CD surface A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 66 Types of CD Technologies • Types of CD drives (also identifies disk) – CD-ROM drive: read only memory – CD-R drive: recordable CD – CD-RW: rewritable CD • How an optical drive interfaces with motherboard – Using PATA – Using external drive that plugs into port, such as USB • Installing a CD drive – Installed drive identified in directory by letter; e.g., D A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 67 Figure 10-30 Rear view of an EIDE CD drive A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 70 Figure 10-37 A DVD can hold data in double layers on both the top and bottom of the disc yielding a maximum capacity of 17 GB A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 71 DVD’s • Various standards used for reading and writing • Selection criteria for a DVD drive – The standards supported by the drive – Ability of drive to burn CDs – Write-once and rewritable speeds • Latest DVD formats: HD-DVD and Blu-ray • Installing a DVD drive – Follow the same procedure used for CD drives – Cabling: power cord, EDEI data cable, audio cord – 4-pin connector for analog sound, 2-pin for digital sound A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 72 Blu-ray Laser Characteristics A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 75 Table 10-7 DVD standards A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 76 Caring for Optical Drives and Discs • Causes of problems: – Dust, fingerprints, scratches, defects, electrical noise – Drive is standing vertically • Some precautions to follow: – Hold the disc by the edge – Use a soft, dry cloth to remove dust and fingerprints – Don’t paste paper on the surface of a CD – Don’t subject a disc to heat or leave it in direct sunlight – Don’t make the center hole larger – Don’t bend a disc A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 77 Hardware used for Backups and Fault Tolerance • Frequent backups help preserve valuable data – Backup data after four to ten hours of data entry • Backup media: disc, file server, tape drives • Providing backup for an organization – Consider the nature of data and organization’s policy – One solution: backup data to another PC on network • Providing backup for a small office – One options: backup data to a second hard drive – Utilize an online backup service A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 80 Tape Drives (continued) • The tapes used by a tape drive – Full-sized data cartridges 4 x 6 x 5/8 inches – Smaller minicartridges 3 1/4 x 2 1/2 x 3/5 inches • Writing to tapes is similar to writing to floppy drives – FAT at start of the tape tracks data and bad sectors – The tape must be formatted before use • When purchasing tapes, match tape to tape drives • Some tips for cleaning and care – Keep tapes away from magnetic fields, heat, cold – Clean drive heads as recommended by manufacturer A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 81 Removable Drives • Advantages – Increases the overall storage capacity of a system – Simplifies transfer of large files from one PC to another – Makes it easy to backup and secure important files • Drop height: height device can fall and still be usable • Half-life: time for magnetic strength to weaken by half – Example: writable CDs have half-life of 30 years • Examples: external hard drives & thumb drives • Internal removable drive installed like a hard drive A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 82 Figure 10-47 The Microdrive CF inserts into a PC Card adapter, which fits into a notebook PC Card slot A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 85 Problems when Burning a CD • Make sure the disk capacity has not been exceeded • Ensure hard drive has at least 1 GB of free space • Close other programs before you begin • Try a different brand of CDs • Try using a slower burn rate A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 86 Figure 10-54 Slow down the CD-RW write speed to account for a slow Windows system A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining your PC, 6e 87 Troubleshooting Sound Problems • Some questions to ask: – Are the speakers turned on? – Is the speaker volume turned up? – Is the volume control for Windows turned up? • Some troubleshooting tasks for installation problems – Download new or updated drivers – Uninstall and reinstall the sound card • Some ways to resolve issue of games without sounds – Update and install new drivers – Reduce sound acceleration