Any user of computer systems, mobile devices or the Internet almost every day encounters multimedia files. What is a media file? Further it is proposed to consider this issue in more detail. However, there is nothing particularly complicated in understanding the whole concept of multimedia.
What is a general media file?
Let's start with the most basic. As a rule, everything related to video, audio and graphics files or their combination, including even the content of texts, is referred to multimedia. By and large, even presentations created in Power Point that contain one or more of the above objects can also be attributed to some kind of multimedia, although it is believed that this is a presentation, and not multimedia just for the simple reason that such files are programmatic or "iron" players do not play.
It is these three large groups that represent the main directions of the entire multimedia category. However, for all three classes, one can also give an additional classification, dividing them by format or content. For example, in the video category, in terms of content, there may be films, cartoons, clips, video cards, advertising materials, etc.
And if in each class also digging into a variety of formats, there is not enough time to describe them all, because today in the computer world they can count not even dozens - hundreds. But speaking of what a media file is, it is worth considering each category separately.
Audio
Audio or sound files are one of the largest categories, which combines a huge number of various formats.
At the dawn of their appearance and creation, the PCM WAVE format, which was developed by Microsoft, was originally used. But files of this type were very large in size and storing them on small hard drives or removable media in the form of the same diskettes was quite problematic.
Everything changed when the special Fraunhofer MP3 Encoder codec was developed, which made it possible to compress audio information with a decrease in the size of the original WAV file. True, with a slight loss of quality at the level of lowering sound characteristics (sampling frequency, sound depth, etc.). However, today the MP3 format is so advanced that not only the difference in sound is not noticeable, but sometimes files of this standard, for example, with a bit rate of 320 kbps sound much better than any other format.
Speaking about what is a media file of the audio category, it can be noted that recently quite common and popular formats are such as:
- MP3
- OGG;
- WMA
- AIFF;
- FLAC
- CDDA;
- AC3;
- AAC;
- DTS
- DVD Audio and many others.
Some of these formats are independent and can be played by any players. Others are audio tracks that are embedded in the video. If we take also highly specialized formats of music programs (for example, the FLP format for the FL Studio sequencer), the number of formats increases simply incredibly.
Video
Another big class is video. In this case, the videos may contain audio, video, graphics, text (for example, subtitles), etc. In this category of formats you can also count a lot.
The following are considered the most common:
- AVI
- ASF;
- MP4;
- DivX
- Xvid;
- MOV;
- MPG;
- MPEG;
- RealVideo
- SWF
- WMV;
- 3GP etc.
All that is today in this category cannot be listed. However, there is one caveat. It happens that the player does not play media files of this type. Why? Yes, only because each standard must use special programs called codecs and decoders (this will be discussed separately).
Graphics
Finally, another big class of multimedia is graphics. Here, perhaps, all kinds of formats can be counted the most. In addition, you can separate stationary images and animation, which, although it relates to graphics in format, but in content is closer to video, or raster and vector images. The simplest example is a GIF file. By the way, they can equally be attributed to the so-called mixed files.
As for the graphic files themselves, the matter is not limited to standard image formats. If we take into account engineering, design or drawing software packages like AutoCAD, their "native" formats can also be safely attributed to a variety of graphic objects.
Mixed Media
What is a mixed media file? The easiest way to explain this is with the example of PDF documents, which can contain both graphics and text.
Despite the fact that special programs like Adobe Reader are provided for viewing or editing them, and not the standard tools used for graphic images, they also, in a sense, are one of the varieties of multimedia.
Media Creation
As for the creation or editing of multimedia, for each category there are special tools in the form of narrowly targeted editors or programs that combine several features.
Sound files can be created (recorded) or edited not only in specialized applications such as Adobe Audition, Sound Forge or ACID, but also with the use of video programs, in which, in addition to video processing, there are tools for editing audio. One of the most powerful is the Sony Vegas Pro program. But in reality today there are quite a lot of such applications of different levels. Naturally, they all differ in their capabilities and professionalism of the result.
Well, if you look at the utilities for creating and processing graphics, there are so many things that an inexperienced user will simply get lost in this huge list when choosing the necessary utility.
Codecs and Decoders
Separately, it is worth stopping at codecs and decoders, which are necessary not only for the correct playback of certain types of multimedia, but also for format conversion. At the same time, the same video codec can be used in some converter to convert video to audio and vice versa.
The most popular and most common packages with a full set of necessary tools are K-Lite, which, depending on the modification, may contain a different number of codecs and decoders. The K-Lie Mega Codec Pack is considered the most complete, in which there are absolutely all decoders and codecs known today. After installation, any video codec or audio decoder is embedded in the operating system, programs for playing or processing multimedia automatically, so there should be no problems with their use. Only at the installation stage is it necessary to note everything that needs to be installed.