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Music Editing Master
Ideal and efficient music editing and audio production tool for home users
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| Audio
Formats |
Description |
| PCM |
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Standard Windows WAV format for
non-compressed audio files. Pulse Code Modulation
(PCM) is the standard method of digitally encoding
audio. It is the basic uncompressed data format
used in file types such as Windows .wav. |
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| ADPCM |
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Compressed WAV format. ADPCM (Adaptive
Differential Pulse Code Modulation) is an audio
compression scheme which compresses from 16-bit
to 4-bit for a 4:1 compression ratio. |
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| A-LAW |
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Compressed WAV format. A-Law (or
CCITT standard G.711) is an audio compression
scheme common in telephony applications. It
is a slight variation of the u-Law compression
format, and is found in European systems. This
encoding format compresses original 16-bit audio
down to 8 bits (for a 2:1 compression ratio)
with a dynamic range of about 13-bits. Thus,
a-law encoded waveforms have a higher s/n ratio
than 8-bit PCM, but at the price of a bit more
distortion than the original 16-bit audio. The
quality is higher than you would get with 4-bit
ADPCM formats. Encoding and decoding is rather
fast and generally, widely supported. |
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| U-LAW |
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Compressed WAV format. u-Law (or
CCITT standard G.711) is an audio compression
scheme and international standard in telephony
applications. u-Law is very similar to A-Law,
a variation of u-Law found in European systems.
This encoding format compresses original 16-bit
audio down to 8 bits (for a 2:1 compression
ratio) with a dynamic range of about 13-bits.
Thus, u-Law encoded waveforms have a higher
s/n ratio than 8-bit PCM, but at the price of
a bit more distortion than the original 16-bit
audio. The quality is higher than you would
get with 4-bit ADPCM formats. Encoding and decoding
is rather fast and generally, widely supported. |
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| CCIT
U-LAM |
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| DSP |
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Compressed WAV format. DSP Group
True Speech (TM) format. |
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| GSM |
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Compressed WAV format. Good for
keeping of human speech. |
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| MP3 |
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MPEG Layer-3 format. Very popular
format for keeping of music. |
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MP2 |
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| Ogg
Vorbis |
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Ogg Vorbis format. Ogg Vorbis
is an audio compression format. It is roughly
comparable to other formats used to store and
play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and
other digital audio formats. It is different
from these other formats because it is completely
free, open, and unpatented. |
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| WMA |
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Windows Media Audio format. A
special type of advanced streaming format file
for use with audio content encoded with the
Windows Media Audio codec. The .wma extension
indicates a file format and how the content
is encoded. |
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| CDA |
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Audio CD tracks
(Read Only) |
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AVI |
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Audio stream format (Read Only) |
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AIFF |
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Apple audio file format
(Read Only) |
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AU |
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Unix audio file format
(Read Only) |
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| G.726 |
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Used for computer telephony. Good
for keeping of human speech. |
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| VOX |
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Dialogic ADPCM format. The Dialogic
ADPCM format is commonly found in telephony
applications, and has been optimized for low
sample rate voice. It will only save mono 16-bit
audio, and like other ADPCM formats, it compresses
to 4-bits/sample (for a 4:1 ratio). This format
has no header, so any file format with the extension
.VOX will be assumed to be in this format. |
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| RAW |
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Raw format of audio files. Doesn't
contain header of an audio file. |
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MPC |
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The AMR file format is best known for applications and other features integrated in modern cellular phones. These programs range from simple audio player/recorders to programs linked to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology. (Read Only) |
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Files in .M4A format are actually the audio layer of (non-video) MPEG 4 movies. This format is also known as Apple Lossless, Apple Lossless Encoder, or ALE. It is a new codec designed to provide lossless encoding in less storage space. (Read Only) |
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| Video
Formats
(Extract Audio From) |
Description |
| AVI |
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AVI stands for Audio Video Interleave.
It is a special case of the RIFF (Resource Interchange
File format). AVI is defined by Microsoft. AVI
is the most common format for audio/video data
on the PC. AVI is an example of a de facto (by
fact) standard.
AVI Files are a special case of RIFF files. RIFF
is the Resource Interchange File format. This
is a general purpose format for exchanging multimedia
data types that was defined by Microsoft and IBM
during their long forgotten alliance. |
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| MPEG
(MPEG-1, MPEG-2 Video) |
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MPEG is both a file format and a
codec for digital video. There are actually three
forms of MPEG: MPEG video, for picture only; MPEG
audio, which is discussed in the previous section;
and MPEG systems, which includes both audio and
video tracks.
MPEG files provide excellent picture quality but
can be very slow to decompress. for this reason,
many MPEG decoding systems are hardware-assisted,
meaning that you need a board to play MPEG files
reliably without dropping a lot of frames. Although
software decoders definitely exist (and there
are some very good ones out there), they tend
to require a lot of processor power on your system
and also usually support MPEG video only (they
have no soundtrack).
A third drawback of MPEG video as a standard for
the Web is that MPEG movies are very expensive
to encode. You need a hardware encoder to do so,
and the price ranges for encoders are in the thousands
of dollars. As MPEG becomes more popular, those
prices are likely to drop. But for now, unless
you already have access to the encoding equipment
or you're really serious about your digital video,
a software-based format is probably the better
way to go. |
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| WMV |
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Windows Media Video.
formerly known as .ASF file format from Microsoft.
A .WMV file includes a video stream (compressed
using MS MPEG4 or WMV1 codec) combined with WMA
encoded audio stream. The file format is proprietary
and backward incompatible. Currently, dedicated
to slow dialup connections, this media format
does not allow even sub-VHS video quality due
to blurred picture. WMA audio quality, compared
to MPEG Layer3 of the same bitrate, isn't better
either.
You may wish to use Windows Media format to create
smallest files that are suitable to send by e-mail,
however you must keep in mind that .WMV file works
like "one way ticket" - once created,
it can't be edited anymore, without horrific quality
loss. As opposite, AVI files compressed with MPEG4
video codec are still editable and often it is
possible to retain source video quality. |
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MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC standard developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group), the committee that also developed the Emmy Award winning standards known as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. These standards made interactive video on CD-ROM, DVD and Digital Television possible. MPEG-4 is the result of another international effort involving hundreds of researchers and engineers from all over the world. MPEG-4, with formal as its ISO/IEC designation 'ISO/IEC 14496', was finalized in October 1998 and became an International Standard in the first months of 1999. The fully backward compatible extensions under the title of MPEG-4 Version 2 were frozen at the end of 1999, to acquire the formal International Standard Status early in 2000. Several extensions were added since and work on some specific work-items work is still in progress. |
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3GP is a multimedia container format defined by 3GPP for use on 3G mobile phones. It is a simplified version of MPEG-4 Part 14 (MP4). 3GP files have the filename extension .3gp or .3g2.
3GP stores video streams as MPEG-4 or H.263, and audio streams as AMR-NB or AAC-LC formats. 3GP files are always big-endian. 3GP also describes image sizes and bandwidth, so content is correctly sized for mobile display screens. |
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Although QuickTime was developed by Apple for the Macintosh, QuickTime files are the closest thing the Web has to a standard cross-platform movie format (with MPEG a close second). The Apple system software includes QuickTime and a simple player (called MoviePlayer or SimplePlayer). For PCs, QuickTime files can be played through the QuickTime for Windows (QTfW) package, and the freely available Xanim program will play them under the X Window System and UNIX. QuickTime movies have the extension .qt or .mov. |
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Flash Video is the name of a file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 or newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. Until version 9 update 3 of the Flash Player, Flash Video referred to a proprietary file format, having the extension .FLV. |
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| Disc
Media Type
(Burn To) |
Description |
| CD-R |
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| CD-RW |
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| DVD-R |
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| DVD-RW |
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| DVD+R |
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DVD+ Recordable media (Support Double
Layer DVD9-8.5 GB) |
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| DVD+RW |
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