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CSCI 3280

Introduction to Multimedia

(2026 Term 2)

Computer Science & Engineering

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Teaching Staff

Lecturer:

Prof. Cheng, Yu (chengyu@cse.cuhk.edu.hk)

Office: SHB 919

Office hour: Wed 2:30-4:30pm (by appointment)

TAs:

Zhang Jihai (jihaizhang@link.cuhk.edu.hk)

Office: SHB 904� Tao Yeyao (yeyaotao@link.cuhk.edu.hk)

Office: SHB 117

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Lectures and Tutorials

Lectures

We 12:30PM - 1:15PM LSB LT2

Th 8:30AM - 10:15AM LSB LT5

Tutorials

We 10:30AM - 11:15AM LHC 104

(No tutorial for the first 3 weeks.)

Homepage: https://majordavidzhang.github.io/CSCI3280/

Newsgroup: Piazza

Language: English

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Course References

Semi-Textbook:

“Fundamentals of Multimedia”�by Ze-Nian Li and Mark S. Drew, Prentice Hall, 2004

References: (In order of importance)

“Multimedia Communication: Applications, Networks, Protocols and Standards” �by Fred Halsall, Addison Wesley

“Digital Compression for Multimedia”, �by Jerry D. Gibson, Tony Berger, David Lindbergh and Richard L. Baker, Morgan Kaufmann, 1998

Technical papers, online document, ...

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Grading

2 x 15% Two programming assignments�

30% Project

40% Final Exam (written exam, close-book, the date will be announced later)

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Course Content

Communication

Storage

Compression

Modeling

Representation

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Not Covered

Storage Media (optional)

- Magnetic media

- RAID, Optical disks

- Block placement and admission control

Network Communications (not covered)

- Recommend you to take a network course�CSCI4430

- Techniques for transferring huge data volume

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Course Outline

Goal: 

   1) Multimedia representation, modeling and compression

    2) How to build a multimedia system

    3) Help your future research and career

Time

Content

Jan.7 - Jan.15

Introduction: 1) course overview; 2) multimedia applications; 3) media types; 4) challenges and research issues

Jan.21 - Feb.5

Text representation: basic representation, embedding and more

Feb. 11 - Mar. 11

Visual representation: image (2D & 3D), video and more

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Course Outline

Time

Content

Mar.12 - Mar.25

Audio representation: digital audio, music, speech, etc.

Mar.26 - Apr.3

Data compression I: Huffman, Arithmetic, LZW, JPEG, etc

Apr.4 - Apr.9

Data compression II: video coding, AI for compression

Apr.15 - Apr.16

Multimedia storage, how to build a multimedia system

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Important Issues

  • Switch off all your phones before lectures & tutorials

  • To respect the rights of your classmates, refrain from talking during the lectures & tutorials

  • No copy (or similar program copies) or cheating is allowed. Otherwise, ….

  • AI can only be used for the final project development with clear declaration of used packages.

  • Basic requirement: probability, linear algebra, basic programming