Customer Reviews

Digital Multimedia (Worldwide Series in Computer Science)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I used this book for Foundations of Multimedia in Fall of 2003. I am teaching this course again this coming Fall. While I was considering textbooks for the coming year, my students urged me to include this book in the booklist for the course. This book provides an excellent overview of multimedia applications which is appropriate for a college level course.

This is an excellent book for instructional use (once you get past the proper British English spellings of everything :-p). After receiving and reading my copy I quickly decided to use it for instruction in one of the classes I teach. Compared to many other books on the market this one is thorough and current, and offers information fit for both beginning and advanced students of multimedia. The one criticism I have of the book is it would have been nice to include a CD with images and samples and / or an online / searchable pdf file of the text. It is, afterall, a "multimedia" textbook. There is a website which goes with the book, but it's a little light on content. All in all though, it's an excellent resource!

Very good book. Well written with good examples and real world applications.

Digital multimedia (third edition) is clear and well-written with excellent illustrations.

The range of topics is impressive, covering vector graphics, video and animation, typography, sound, hypermedia, scripting and more. Each topic is given careful, thorough treatment but presented in an easily digestible format so the reader doesn't get lost in the details. All chapters are illustrated with many helpful examples.

I liked the chapters on visual design, interactivity and accessibility which explain the importance of well-chosen signs, symbols, layout, colours, fonts etc. and how these contribute to understanding (puts me in mind of Edward Tufte).

Each section is usefully summarised by brief "key points" and the book ends with an extensive glossary.

A very readable and informative book. Five stars.

This book is very thorough and does show a diverse descriptive of multimedia. I would recommend it to any student or professional to use as a reference tool. The technical aspects of the book are very detailed and well illustrated.

This is a textbook for a graduate course... at this point any review of the book is a reflection of the instructor and their use of it. It will be handy to have around in the future for personal reference on multimedia projects.

This review has been written by the authors, to explain why it's a bad idea to use old editions of this book. In case you're wondering, we've given it 5 stars only because Amazon won't let us leave the star rating off. Please overlook the stars - the review is intended purely to provide information. We're not asking you to buy a new copy of the book (the only kind of sale which provides us with any royalty). No matter whether you beg, buy or borrow the book, please read the latest edition. Here's why:

Digital Multimedia covers technologies which have developed and advanced considerably over the past 12 years since we first started writing the book. For this reason this textbook has now been published in three different editions, in the years 2000, 2004 and 2009, with substantial changes, expansion and updating in the 2nd and 3rd editions.

Unfortunately, Amazon attach the reviews for any of the editions of a multi-edition book to their pages for ALL the editions. In the case of Digital Multimedia this means that you can read a 2011 review of the 3rd edition on an Amazon page which is actually selling the 1st edition published in March 2000 (and vice versa), and maybe not even realise that the review is discussing a different book which is 12 years out of date!

To take a few examples: in the year 1999 - when we were working on the 1st edition - few people had digital cameras, so analogue video and photography were the norm and the book focussed on the digitization of analogue media. Flash was just a little animation program by Macromedia which only professionals used, so Flash interactivity wasn't covered, and multimedia on the Web barely existed. Dial-up connections and very slow data transfer speeds were usual. Disk sizes and memory were tiny by today's standards. The World Wide Web was still in its infancy and multimedia was distributed on CDs (or even floppy disks). If you read the 1st edition, you will therefore learn about the technological world as it was 12 years ago. Interesting as history, perhaps, but no use for working with digital media today.

Even the 2nd edition is way out of date now. To take just one example, consider Web video. The 2nd edition of Digital Multimedia was published in 2004, but YouTube - the site which made Web video commonplace - wasn't even begun until 2005. The technological world changes very fast.

So please check that you're reading the latest edition, or you will be getting outdated material which is no longer relevant to current technologies - and no use to you. You can still buy the 1st edition from resellers for as little as one penny, but there's a good reason for those low prices - the 1st edition is of very little interest now except as history! Both the 1st and 2nd editions are now officially out of print.

The latest edition is the 3rd edition, published in 2009 - the one with the green and brown cover, ISBN-13: 978-0470512166.

Poorly written by an Ivory Tower Intellectual with a Silicon Chip on his Shoulder. My personal guess is that he was assigned this text, and thinks himself wasted on a mere introductory course, so he has deliberately made this tome as dense and incomprehensible as possible.

My first time in college I was an English Major, and since became a computer technician with fourteen years of field experience under my belt. The Author's technology is dated, but as the new edition is slated to come out in a couple of months, I think I can give him a pass on that one. What I cannot forgive is the obviously deliberate way in which he sought out the most obscure and rarely seen verbiage to describe his common non-technical analogies. My professor dismisses this with the comment that the Authors are British, but I fear it goes deeper then that.

However, in the final analysis, it does not matter. This is not a text that anyone will choose for fun. It will be assigned to you, and you will be stuck with it. You have my sympathies.

I am teaching for Instructional Media course in University. I would like to review this book that could be used on my class.