Understanding Digital Media Files
| In the world of computers, all data has always been stored in digital format. (In a digital file, information is assembled from a series of 0 and 1 bits.) Digital is better than its counterpart (called analog) in that noise and distortion aren't introduced into the process. A digital copy, if recorded properly, can be an exact copy. It's impossible to make an exact copy using analog methods. In the audio and video world, music and movies used to be stored non-digitally. (Vinyl records and VHS videotapes are both analog formats.) However, with the advent of compact discs (CDs) and digital video discs (DVDs), music and movies began to be stored digitally. When music and movies are digital, it's easy to incorporate them into the computer environment. To a computer, one digital file is pretty much the same as another especially when it comes to storage. So if you can store digital music and movies on your PC, why not use your PC for playback, too? Well, you can if you have the right media player software. There are many different file formats for storing digital audio and video, and different media players are compatible with different formats. The Windows Media Player included with Windows XP can read and write the majority of today's most popular digital media files. To find out if your format of choice is compatible with WMP, check out Table 14.1. As you can see, there are only a handful of popular formats (chief among them Apple's AAC and QuickTime files, as well as RealNetwork's RealMedia files) that can't be viewed with the Windows Media Player.
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EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 270