File Formats

Audio Formats

Uncompressed

Uncompressed

WAVAIFF

Lossless

• FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) 50%• ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding)

developed by Sony• WMA Lossless (Windows Media Audio

Lossless)• .m4a - Apple Lossless

Lossy

• MPEG Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3

• WMA (Windows Media Audio)• Ogg - Free Open Source

All images are microsoft clipart

Graphic Formats

JPG• used for images that are photographic, art, or natural • uses 24 bit colour depth – 16.7 million colours • a lossy compression scheme that gives very high

compression ratios • compression is cumulative. If the same file is

compressed and saved a number of times then image information is lost. Each compression removes data and reduces the quality of the image.

GIF

• can be interlaced and animated • can have a colour set to be transparent • Have a limited colour depth of 8 bits (256

colours)

TIFF

• TIFF images are lossless and use the same compression scheme as GIF formats – LZW. This lossless compression means that a computer can always read back the exact data saved, bit-by-bit, without data corruption.

PNG

• Portable Network Graphic used for displaying colour image files on the web. PNG files support transparency like GIF but offer twice the colour depth at 32 bits. Along with improved image compression this format allows special image information to be saved with the file.

Vector Vs Raster (or bitmap)

Raster

• In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a dot matrix data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of colour

Vector

• Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics.

SVG

• Short for Scalable Vector Graphics, a vector graphics file format that enables two-dimensional images (with support for interactivity and animation) to be displayed in XML pages on the Web.

Metafile

• Metafile is a generic term for a file format that can store multiple types of data. This commonly includes graphics file formats. These graphics files can contain raster, vector, and type data. A common use for these files is to provide support for an operating system's computer graphics

WMF

• Windows Metafiles are intended to be portable between applications and may contain both vector graphics and bitmap components.

CGM

• Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is a free and open international standard file format for 2D vector graphics, raster graphics, and text

TrueType

• An outline font technology developed jointly by Microsoft and Apple. Because TrueType support is built into all Windows and Macintosh operating systems, anyone using these operating systems can create documents using TrueType fonts.

Video Formats

Moving Picture Experts Group

a working group of experts that was formed by ISO and IEC to set standards for audio and video compression and transmission

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Mpeg.gif

MPEG

The MPEG compression methodology is considered asymmetric as the encoder is more complex than the decoder. The encoder can be adaptive whereas the decoder is 'dumb' and carries out fixed actions

http://adrproductions.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/video-production.jpg

MPEG-1

Designed to allow moving pictures and sound to be encoded into the bitrate of a Compact Disc. It is used on Video CD, SVCD and can be used for low-quality video on DVD Video. It was used in digital satellite/cable TV services before MPEG-2 became widespread

MPEG-2

Broader in scope and of wider appeal supporting interlacing and high definition. MPEG-2 is considered important because it has been chosen as the compression scheme for over-the-air digital television, digital satellite TV, digital cable television and DVD Video. It is also used on Blu-ray Discs, but these normally use MPEG-4 for high-definition content.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MYwQlV-zazA/TURCgf1FrlI/AAAAAAAAAyY/hEVGtNSonCw/s1600/DVD_Logo.jpg

MPEG-3

Not to be confused with MP3s. There was going to be one but… there isn’t.

MPEG-4

Additional complexity to achieve higher compression factors than MPEG-2. In more complex profiles, the MPEG-4 decoder effectively becomes a rendering processor and the compressed bitstream describes three-dimensional shapes and surface texture.

The MPEG-4 Family

• MP4• Div X• H.264• AVCHD

Container Formats

Container formats contain various types of data compressed by standardized codecs. Container formats are essentially wrappers in that they don't specify what codec the container format uses, but rather it defines how the video, audio and other data is stored within the container.

MOV and AVI files are container formats

Document Formats

Document Formats

• XML• PostScript PDF• Plain Text– ASCII– UTF-8

• Doc• HTML