AVT Seminar: File types and Compression

We were asked to list a number of file types we might use, how we might use that format, and what software we may use to convert the files to other formats, below is what I found:

List of file types I might use:
.avi, .fla, .wav, .ogg, .mp3, .swf, .mpg, .pdf, .psd, .ai, .raw, .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .mov, .mpeg, .qt, .max, .3ds, .txt, .exe, .iso, .udf, .tiff, .wmv, .aiff, .nrg, .abl, .rtf

List of how I might use these files:
Adobe Premiere Pro makes use of a number of different file formats, not just in video but also in images and audio, most of Adobe’s software file extensions from there other software packages can be used in conjunction with Adobe Premiere Pro to gain the highest of quality in your work, such as .psd and .ai from Photoshop and Illustrator.

A small list of file extensions Premiere Pro can use:

.avi
.jpg .jpeg
.ai
.psd
.gif
.flv
.mpg .mpeg
.wmv .wma
.aif
.mp3
.wav
.ac3

List of what I might use to convert these file types:
I searched into google: “converter software” and the list was endless, there’s a variety of freeware tools to use but these offered limited file use and did not convert many different extensions. A decent one I came across is the one below, Blaze Media Pro.

http://www.blazemp.com/ - an extract from there website:

Audio Capabilities:

Audio Editing converter (mp3, wma, wav, ogg), and more.

Video Capabilities:

Batch video converter for .AVI, .MPG, .WMV, .MOV and more.
Convert, AVI, MPG, WMV to Flash.
All in one MPEG software solution, MPEG encoder, decoder, editor and converter.

The use of a converter is important in order to get your work onto different multimedia mediums, such as the web, for instance .FLV and .SWF files would be used for movies/animation on the web, or promotional videos need to be compressed down in quality to be shown on cd/dvd, it is important to use the highest quality setting when creating your work, you cannot convert a file from lower quality to higher quality!

An important thing to take into consideration as Danny noted is the use of codecs, an extract from wiki:

A codec is a device or program capable of performing encoding and decoding on a digital data stream or signal. The word codec may be a combination of any of the following: 'compressor-decompressor', 'coder-decoder', or 'compression/decompression algorithm'.

A particular video may not work because the codecs may not be installed, popular codecs for video include, M-PEG part 1, M-PEG part 2 (higher resolution and bitrate, commonly used for SVCDs and sometimes DVDs.), M-PEG 4 part 2, M-PEG 4 part 10 (the latest, commonly used on the Xbox 360, HD/Blu Ray, iPod, and Playstation Portable.) DivX, Xvid and many more. For instance if a video file such as .avi was compressed using DIVX, you will need the DIVX codec installed in order to view the video.