Media Formats

In today’s world of media dissemination there are a number of formats used to store data. So, when you want to download a video or music, you need to have capability to work with that format. Most new digital media players will work with multiple formats to cover this potential problem. Here is a list of some of the more common formats that you will run into.

For still pictures:

JPEG: JPEG is a format of storing still photos. JPEG is used to compress the image to minimize storage use. The compression can be adjusted to maximize storage but at some point you will lose picture quality. At a 10:1 compression you will find little difference in picture quality. The most common format for digital camera use is JPEG/Exif. Also JPEG/JFIF is widely used for storing and sending images on the internet. There is no distinction made between these formats, they are both known as JPEG.

Video Formats:

RealVideo: The RealVideo format was designed by Real Media for internet uses. RealVideo has the ability to allow online streaming. This can be streaming such as internet television or online videos. It uses low bandwidths so the protocol often creates a fairly low quality picture. The extensions for RealVideo are either .rm or .ram.

Shockwave: The Shockwave format is more commonly known as flash. The flash format was designed by Macromedia. This format is installed directly into the latest versions of most browsers now. File extensions for the Shockwave format is .swf.

MPEG: The Movie Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) format is the number one most popular format used online. This format is supported by all of the popular browsers. When you store a video in MPEG the file extension will be .mpg, or .mpeg.

AVI: AVI stands for Audio Video Interactive, and is a format developed by Microsoft. The AVI format is widely used on the internet, but might not work won non Windows computers. Any video stored in the AVI format will show as extension .avi.

Windows Media: The Window Media format is another Microsoft format. This format is primarily designed to show videos and you use the Windows Media Player that comes with PCs to use the format. If you don’t have this player you can install it for free. The videos stored in Windows Media extension is .wmv.

QuickTime Format: The QuickTime format is a format designed by apple, so it works on all Apple designs, PC users will need a free component installed to use QuickTime. All video stored with this format shows as .mov.

Music Formats:

The MP3 format is one of the easiest formats for putting music onto your website. The sound might not be as god as others, but for the purpose it works very well. A couple of new open download formats are FLAC and Vorbis. FLAC produces music with no quality loss but the compression is only 50%. With Vorbis you can compress to 10% but you will lose some sound quality (still better that MP3 however).  There are many proprietary formats, coming from Real, Apple, Acc, Sony ATRAC, Macromedia and Windows Media. Many of these audio formats are also video capable.