September 2009

Interested in creating video project for a wedding, life tribute, memorial or life event?Go to multimedia memoirs here.

Hello Dear Reader. Hope you are having a great summer and enjoyed the two months we had away from each other. Like it or not, I am back. Here to torture you with needless information you desperately need to know. So put down the daiquiri, get away from the pool and start reading.

Warning: this month's issue may cause drowsiness and put you right to sleep, so please don't read while driving or operating heavy machine (or while drinking a daiquiri - actually, make that daiquiri a double).

Intrigued? Bored already? Read on...

Dave

-------------------------------------------------------

Digital Formats, Extensions, Formats and other Cocktail Party Topics There is an old Russian proverb that says: "Tell me slowly so that I can understand quickly". If I was in Russia, I would be using that phrase a lot. For some of us speaking in techno-ese, it's all er, uh...Greek to the outside world. Acronyms, file formats, extensions, applications, hardware, software...Um...English please? Don't ya wish someone would someone would just put it all out there and (slowly) explain all you need to know in just five minutes or less? Start your timer. In this article, I am going to break down, by category, some of the more common need-to-know unknowns in the digital world. Let's start with Digital Music There are only a few common music formats that you should know about. MP3: stands for MPEG - 1 Layer 3: while MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group - nonsense, I know, but bear with me hear (sic). This is the universal digital music format that can play all media players (iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc.). It was invented in order to compress music files that were originally too big for a computer coming from a CD - while still retaining quality. Speaking of MP3 - see last section for a good deal on an iPod... WMA: Stands for Windows Media Audio. This is a music format developed by Microsoft for the same purpose as an MP3 - to compress music files. Since this is a Microsoft proprietary technology, it will most likely not play on iTunes or Real Player or other non-Microsoft programs, and may need to be converted to something universal like an MP3. MP4/AAC: stands for Advanced Audio Coding. The next generation of MP3 technology that allows for better quality sound without increasing the size of your audio file. Should be able to be played on most up-to-date players. M4P - If you have iTunes and you've purchased music from the iTunes store, then your music is in this format. The "P" in this case means protected, meaning you cannot share this music outside of your computer iTunes player. Nor can you play it on any other program outside of iTunes. Video MOV - a video format created by Apple to play on their QuickTime software program, however most other applications like Real Player and Windows Media Player will run an .MOV file. Most (Windows) computers do not come with QuickTime installed, so you would need to download it (free) from the Apple Website WMV - Stands for Windows Media Video. Similar to WMA, it is Microsoft's video compression format to create videos that are not too big, but retain quality. Will most likely only play on Windows Media Player and not Quicktime/Real Player; however, some new versions might. If you run on an Apple computer, you can still play WMV's by downloading the software here. Good to have just in case. AVI - Audio Visual Interleave. Also invented by Microsoft but a much more widely accepted format for other programs. File sizes tend to be bigger while quality is also much better. MPEG-4 - is the global multimedia standard, delivering professional-quality audio and video streams over a wide range of bandwidths, from cell phone to broadband and beyond. It delivers DVD quality video without creating huge file sizes. This technology was invented by Apple. Want to download videos from YouTube on to your own computer? Wait till next month's newsletter! Photographs and images JPEG - Stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group (yeah, I know...rididulous). You've likely seen .jpg or .jpeg at the end of your digital photos. This is the standard for digital photographic images. Why? Because it can hold millions (literally) of colors, maintain the original quality while still compressing the size of the file. Compressing is important for emailing and putting up on the web (we've all received those HUGE pictures that clog up our inbox or with a close up of someone's eyeball). Please compress your photos before emailing. See next month's newsletter on how to do this and what standards you should use. GIF - Stands for Graphic Interchange Format. Digital image format developed by CompuServe in 1987. Instead of millions of colors, GIF's are good for no more than 256 colors. Many logos and solid colors are created in GIF. Not good for photos that tend to have millions of colors. PNG - Stands for Portable Network Graphics. A new image format that is similar to JPEG that it compresses photos without losing quality. The difference in my experience is if you have a transparent background, a JPEG will show it as white, while a PNG will show it as transparent (good for graphic designers). Not had enough of acronyms? Next month we'll be covering Office application formats and more. You've been warned. Got a question about ones you've seen? Send 'em my way! Term of the Month Hardware Common examples of hardware are printers and keyboard and a mouse. They are physical (or hard!) and you physically see and use them. What other hardware examples can you think of? Look around you right now and see if you can find any! Software Software examples are Internet Explorer, Safari or Microsoft Word. Another term used interchangeably is Program or Application. You can't really "see" it, it is digital. In order to operate hardware, it needs to have software to function - the software contains the instructions for the hardware to operate properly - this software is called "driver". What other software programs can you think of? This should be easy as there are dozens you have installed on your computer right now!