MEDIA

MEDIA INFORMATION TABLE

The table below is a breakdown of different media types and what they some sample programs that allow you to save a file with the specified file extension.

MEDIA	FILE EXTENSION	STANDARDS	EXAMPLE PROGRAMS
Text	.html	Web work	FrontPage '98 Netscape Composer Claris Homepage
	.doc	Word files	Office '98 (Mac) Office '97 (Win)
	.txt	Plain text	SimpleText (Mac) NotePad (Win)
Audio	.wav	Windows standard	SoundEdit 16 Sound Recorder
	.au	Internet standard	Sound Edit Sound Recorder
	.mov	Quicktime standard	Any video capture program
	.rpl	RealAudio - streaming	Real audio
Images	.pict .pct	Mac standard for picture format Windows version of .pict	Adobe Photoshop Claris Works ( & other word processing programs) Most graphics program
	.bmp	Windows standard picture format	Adobe Photoshop Corel Draw Most graphics programs
	.tiff (Tagged Image File Format)	Print media - graphic design standard	Adobe Photoshop
	.jpeg (	Internet standard for images with millions of color	Adobe Photoshop Corel Draw Most graphics programs
	.gif	Compuserve Format for images with 256-color	Gif converter Adobe Photoshop
	.eps (Encapsulated Post Script)	Advance for graphic design	Adobe Illustrator
Video	.mov	Quicktime - Mac standard and slowly becoming the Internet standard	Adobe Premiere MoviePlayer
	.avi	Video for Windows	Adobe Premiere
	.mpeg	Broadcast quality standard	Until recently have been hardware dependent, now there are software converters that make it hardware independent
	.vdo (VDOLIVE .vos (VOSAIC) .rpl (RealVideo)	Streaming	Software dependent

Emedding images into your documents:

For word processing & presentation programs (like Microsoft PowerPoint):

make sure you have the right file extension (Mac vs. Win)
use the insert function to embed the image

For the Internet:

use the insert image icon to embed an image into your Web page OR
use hard coding <embed img src = "name of file.jpeg"> (or you could have a .gif extension)

Embedding video or sound:

For word processing & presentation programs (like Microsoft PowerPoint):

make sure you have the right file extension
use the Insert function to insert the sound or video files
set the sound or video preferences

For the Internet:

you must hard code the file in - there are many ways to do this, my suggestion is to visit the quicktime site to see their examples.

Some tips:

Before you begin working with any kind of media, see what type of file extension your end-program requires. For example, if you are going to use Microsoft PowerPoint for the Macintosh, you can insert images with a .pict or .eps extension, but not a .bmp. This changes, however, if you are using Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. I recommend checking with the user manual before saving any files.
Give yourself time to practice with the software. Don't expect to learn a piece of software while trying to produce a major project.
If you are wanting to decrease file size of an image, try reducing the number of color or the image size.

Consider the quality vs. transfer issues -- can you sacrifice quality so that an image will load faster? Sometimes you can reduce an image to 256-color from millions of color (.jpeg to .gif) and not even notice the change BUT, sometimes the change is very noticeable.
Do not use gradient fills. Although they look good, they require thousand or millions of colors and that will increase file size.

Remember a computer screen is 640X480 pixels. You image should be less than this dimension
If you are wanting to decrease file size of an audio or video file, check out all your compression options. I'd recommend Cinepak, that comes with most commercial software or Sorenson, that is built into the new QuickTime 3.0. Movie Cleaner Pro for the Mac (retail ~$400) is another good final compression program.

Back to Vanna's Video Web Site

esp, 05/19/98

produced for HECA-FSI at the College of Education