I'm going to focus on a few video formats and their main characteristics.
QuickTime: It is a video and animation system created by Apple. Therefore, it is mostly used by Apple or Macintosh applications. However, other computers, which are not Macintosh can use Quicktime, by downloading a QuickTime driver.
- QuickTime offers various formats, such as: JPEG, AVI and MPEG.
- It includes mostly every encoding format.
- Another characteristic is that it can be used at any PC.
- It includes Cinepak, which is a data compression technique.
AVI: It is the abreviation for Audio Video, and was created by Microsoft's Video for Windows.
- It stores audio and video information.
- This format has a high resolution from 320 x 240.
- It is widely used since many producers use it because it allows
to sell products to the largest base of users.
- It also contains data compression techniques, such as: RLE,
Indeo and Cinepak.
MPEG-1: This format allows a video resolution of 352 x 240.
MPEG-2: It has a higher resolution than MPEG-1. It offers either 720 x 480, or 1280 x 720. It has high audio quality and it is mostly used for TV standards. Such format can compress a video into a small amount of gigabytes.
MPEG-3: It was designed for HDTV, but then it was replaced again by MPEG-2.
MPEG-4: It compresses graphics and video, and it is based on both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. They are used to transmit images and video to a lighter weight and to be mixed with text, 2-D and 3-D animations.
DivX: It is the abreviation for Digital Video Express. It was promoted by great film companies, such as the known Disney, Dreamworks, Paramount and Universal.
- A movie with DivX can be played during an amount of time.
- DivX movies are linked to outside servers to exchange billing
data.
- DivX replace video tapes.
- These are recommended for rent, since there aren't any fees.
- It isn't available to all DVD readers, so it is necessary a
DivX player to watch any movie with such format.
- It is based on MPEG-4.
- DivX format files can be quickly downloaded, at a high quality.
DVD: It is the abreviation for Digital Video Disc. It is a type of CD-ROM, which hold a minimum of 4.7 gigabytes.
- Mostly used as multimedia presentations of a mixture of sound
with graphics, or as movies.
- These are compatible with CD-ROMs, CDs, CD-I, etc, so they can
play CD-ROMs.
- It has the capacity of 4.7GB to 17GB.
