Corporate Video Production Sydney: Video File Formats I

Corporate Video Production Sydney File Formats: Film has retained its format for well over a hundred years…but…the Digital file formats… well…that’s a whole different story…!
They are changing all the time…!
First… Let’s Take a Look at Some Basic Definitions…

Corporate Video Production Sydney: What Is a Computer File?

“A collection of data or information on a computer that has a specific name and location and is encoded in a specific format”.

Corporate Video Production Sydney: What Is a File Format?

“The specific arrangement or organization of digital data in a computer file. This data corresponds to specific byte positions and data element length and can be read by a program that reads that arrangement (format).
File Formatting Is…
“The action of preparing (encoding) a file on your computer for reading and writing according to a pre-established arrangement or organization of the data”.
Encoding a Digital File…
The data in a computer file is encoded into a format that is established by whatever software application created the file.
The definition of Encoding…
In computer technology… Encoding is the process of putting a sequence of characters into a special format for transmission or storage purposes.

The data then needs to be read by the same or a similar software program that can interpret that format and present the data to the user on his or her…

  • Computer monitor
  • TV screen
  • Viewfinder, etc.

One example of how formats can differ would be the file size they produce.
For instance… although a photographic image may look exactly the same when displayed in two different file formats on the same screen.
One file may be 100k in size and another may be 1 MB… The difference in file size is caused by how the data is formatted and saved.
The particular file format used…through its process of encoding… determines the way and how much of the image data is saved and stored and how it will be…Read, Transmitted and Replayed.
Continued in the next blog…
Corporate Video Production Sydney