Lossless format - what is it? High quality music in Lossless format. Audio file formats

Compressed using special lossless audio codecs, it can be restored with absolute fidelity if desired.

If you take an ordinary Audio CD with analog sound, burn it in WAV format for sound without compression, then compress WAV using the lossless codec, then decompress the resulting audio file to WAV and burn the result to a blank CD, you can get two completely identical Audio CD.

The advantage of lossless audio collection storage is that the quality of the recordings is much higher than that of lossy codecs, and they take up less space than uncompressed audio. True, lossy files are smaller in size than lossless music files. Most modern player programs understand the lossless format. Those programs that are not able to play it can easily learn it using the lossless plugin. What are lossless audio formats?

Lossless audio formats

A true music lover is unlikely to be satisfied with the sound of music recorded in Ogg Vorbis or MP3 compressed formats. Of course, if you listen to audio recordings on consumer audio equipment, the sound flaws cannot be heard by ear, but if you try to play a compressed file on high quality equipment Hi-Fi class, sound flaws will immediately be detected. Of course, it is not easy to create a collection of quality music on CD or vinyl records. There is a reasonable alternative to this path for amateurs quality sound- lossless music. It can be stored on the PC in a way that makes it possible to retain the original music settings even if compression is applied. This path simultaneously solves the problems of high quality music and its compact storage, because audio equipment for listening (headphones, speakers, amplifiers) has a very affordable price.

Uncompressed lossless audio formats:

• CDDA is an audio CD standard;
• WAV - Microsoft Wave;
• IFF-8SVX;
• IFF-16SV;
• AIFF;

Compressed formats:

• FLAC;
• APE - Monkey's Audio;
• M4A - Apple Lossless - quality music format from Apple;
• WV - WavPack;
• WMA- Windows Media Audio 9;
• TTA-True Audio.
• LPAC;
• OFR - OptimFROG;
• RKA-RKAU;
• SHN - Shorten.

FLAC format

The most common format is the format It differs from lossy audio codecs in that no data is removed from the audio stream when it is used. This makes it possible to successfully use it to play music on Hi-Fi and Hi-End equipment, as well as to create an archive of a collection of audio recordings.

The great advantage of the format is its free distribution. This is important for musicians who record their own music. The format has recently gained great popularity, due to which its support is included in the vast majority of media players.

APE format

Unlike FLAC, for the APE format there are only codecs and plug-ins designed for the Windows platform. For other platforms, there are expensive solutions from third-party software vendors. The algorithm is able to achieve compression sound information without loss by about 1.5-2 times. It includes three main encoding steps, of which only one is based on the use of properties inherent in audio for compression. The rest are similar to ordinary archivers. Despite the fact that the compression algorithm is distributed free of charge, the license restrictions are such that it is practically inaccessible to amateur musicians.

Apple Lossless Format

High quality lossless music can be listened to using Apple's audio compression codec without sacrificing quality. This format was developed by Apple for use in its own devices. The format is compatible with iPods with special dock connectors and latest firmware. The format does not implement specific rights management (DRM) tools, but the container format does. It is also supported by QuickTime and is included as a feature in iTunes.

The format is part of the libraries that are freely available, which makes it possible to organize listening to files in Windows applications. In 2011 Apple company made public source codes format, which opens up broad prospects for the codec. In the future, it can seriously compete with other formats. The tests showed good results. Compressed files are 40-60% the size of the originals. The decoding speed is also impressive, which justifies its use for mobile devices, whose performance is low.

One of the disadvantages of the codec is the extension match sound files with audio codec This is confusing because AAC is not a high quality music format. Therefore, it was decided to store the data in an MP4 container with the .m4a extension.

Of the other formats, it is worth mentioning Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless, which is part of Windows applications media. It works with Windows and Mac OS X. True, users speak of it not very favorably. Often there are problems with codec compatibility, and the number of supported channels is limited to six.

wavpack format

WavPack is another freely distributed audio codec that compresses audio information without quality loss. WavPack has an exclusive combined mode that allows you to create two files. One of the files in this mode is created by a relatively low-quality lossy .wv, which can be played on its own. The second ".wvc" file corrects the previous ".wv" and, in combination with it, makes it possible to restore the original in full. For some users, this approach may seem promising, because there is no need to choose between two types of compression - both will always be implemented.

Also noteworthy is a video codec with high quality sound - lagarith lossless codec. He works quickly and efficiently.

Software for listening to lossless audio

Software players did not immediately learn how to work with specific lossless codecs that can reproduce sound without loss.

WinAmp Player

Able to cope with almost all lossless music playback formats. What's happened good player lossless, can be understood by his example. It is able to correctly handle the processing of individual tracks in lossless format. This is a typical problem with FLAC or APE codecs. It consists in the fact that the entire sound disc is digitized at once and recorded as one file without division into tracks. The problem of division into tracks is intended to be solved by an additional file with the .cue extension. It contains a description of access options for each track in the album. An ordinary player plays the entire lossless file in its entirety. The AIMP lossless player plays most audio formats remarkably well and recognizes tracks in a lossless format file.

lossless digital players

Users speak well of digital players jetAudio, Foobar2000, Spider Player. There are no cardinal differences between them. The choice of any device is based on the subjective opinion of the music lover about the convenience of the interface for lossless playback. What is a lossless format, you can find out by testing these players.

The Apple Lossless format is played using iTunes. In addition, this codec is supported by the popular VLC video player.

Owners of computers compatible with Apple can use two interesting programs: Vox and Cog.

They support the following lossless formats:

• Apple Loss;
• FLAC;
• Monkey's Audio;
• wavpack.

In addition to this, there are many useful features, for example, Last.fm services are supported.

Windows PC owners can use any application that is compatible with lossless music codecs: Foobar2000 or WinAmp. Winamp requires special plugins. Lossless music plays well on iTunes and KMPlayer. The advantage of iTunes, which is not found in other players, is the ability to support tags.

lossless compatible devices

It is unlikely that the owner of the music library will want to spend time converting files from the FLAC format to MP3 in order to be able to listen to the recordings on his gadget. A smartphone or tablet has limited capabilities that are incomparable to a computer, but nevertheless, many of the mobile devices play lossless formats.

For example, device owners Android control can use the andLess player. It is capable of playing FLAC, APE, uncompressed WAV and other formats supported by Android.

Things are worse for owners of devices on the Blackberry platform. Only owners of the Bold 9000 and 8900 and later models can listen to the lossless format.

Owners Apple devices can use the ALAC codec without any problems. It is supported by iPod player (except shuffle), iPhone And iPad tablet. For FLAC format, you can download FLAC Player from the App Store.

FLAC codec supported by devices samsung galaxy, some Sony smartphones Ericsson and iriver players.

FLAC has also been supported by stationary devices from many manufacturers. Media players and media centers allow you to do without a personal computer when listening to songs without losing quality.

It is still far from full support of absolutely all formats, but it is quite enough that the media player understands the FLAC codec - the most common codec for quality lossless music. What is lossless playback equipment?

Listening equipment

To get real pleasure from the sound quality, you need special equipment: headphones, amplifiers, speakers. The easiest way, of course, with headphones. If you intend to enjoy music while sitting at your computer, they are the best fit. Users speak well of Koss and Sennheiser products. Particular attention should be paid to the size of the membrane. The bigger it is, the better sound. It is important not to be deceived. Some manufacturers put a small membrane in large ear pads - these headphones look solid, and the sound is suitable only for listening to mp3.

It is difficult for admirers of high-quality sound equipment (Hi-Fi or Hi-End) to recommend anything. The choice in this area is limited only by budget and tastes. Equalizer, amplifier, acoustics - the choice of these devices has many options. For PC owners who choose a quality one, it is better to stop at budget monitor speakers of any famous brand. Users speak well of the Microlab acoustics of the SOLO series. In order for music in lossless quality to sound good, it is important to purchase acoustics with a subwoofer. unable to cope with the reproduction of the lower frequency band.

Results

New digital sound formats have made it possible for lovers of quality music to acquire their own libraries on high-capacity storage media and listen to their favorite compositions in high quality, saving quite a lot of money and quite a lot of space. The ideal option, of course, is a complete set of Hi-End equipment, but budget options will also bring great pleasure to music lovers. After all, the feeling of listening to music is incomparable with MP3 on plastic speakers.

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Music audio formats.

In the world of music, there are a huge number of musical formats of their modifications and versions, created by the giants of the music industry and small companies that have received public recognition in the electronic world.

For this purpose, various physical methods for storing audio data have been developed, for example: vinyl records, magnetic tape, CDs, DAT, MD (minidisc), DVD, or converting notes to musical formats (MIDI), in the same way many different computer methods audio data storage - digital: OGG, Mp3, Flac, Wav formats.
It is impossible to consider and discuss all sound formats, codecs, their advantages and disadvantages, so in this article we will try to talk about the most popular audio file extensions that you may have to work with.

Why can't we use any one universal audio file encoding format?

Because the implementation of various functions requires its own format. For example: to play a CD in the CD drive, to record music, or sound effects in video games, to record a track of a movie or video clip, to play in mobile phones or transfer files over the Internet, in addition, there are a number of operating systems that are most widely used in the world. These include: Amiga, Macintosh, NEXT and personal computers with Windows operating system. In addition, the work of a dj, sound engineer, cj, video engineer or a simple music lover is quite different in nature. This may require that your audio data be stored in its own way. For example, audio for a CD must be stored using 16 bits and a sample rate of 44.1 kHz. However, for downloading audio over the Internet, we'd better use a different bit depth and sample rate, since each minute of 16-bit, 44 kHz audio takes up approximately 10 MB, i.e. the average track lasting 5 minutes will be 50 "meters" - this is too much data for the average user. This article presents brief information about the most popular music formats.

AA (Audible Audio Book File)

AA (Audible Audio Book File) - the format is closed, developed by Audible. It is used to record audiobooks that are sold through the Audible and iTunes services. It is possible to slow down or speed up the speed of listening to files - digital pitch, the ability to leave bookmarks when listening to audio books, file protection, when delivering audio recordings via the internet.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is an audio file format with less loss encoding quality than Mp3 at the same size. Lossless encoding of original quality music using the ALAC profile. AAC is a family of MPEG4 audio coding algorithms. Unlike the hybrid mp3 filter bank, AAC uses MDST (modified cosine transform) technology, which means that the listener gets better sound quality than MP3 encoding at the same or lower bitrate. Possible AAC file extensions: .m4a . m4b .m4p.

AIFF

AIFF - This is an audio data format for the platform. Apple Macintosh. The .aiff format supports 8bit and 16bit mono and stereo. If files of this format contain the Mac-Binary header (texts, photos, copyright information, single number etc.), in which case the file will have the .snd extension. An audio file with the .snd extension can be listened to using Sound Forge. "Forge" of course will open such a file, but it will recognize it as a Macintosh Resource format, it will not affect the sound quality.

APE (Monkey's Audio)

APE - (Monkey's Audio), developer Matthew T. Ashland - lossless digital audio format. Monkey's Audio codec is released only for the platform Microsoft Windows, although there are a number of unofficial codecs for MacOS, Linux, BeOS. Monkey's Audio files use the following extensions: .ape - for storing audio and .apl - for storing metadata. This format is not free, because the license for it seriously restricts the distribution of .ape files.

DTS

DTS - Digital Theater System, in fact, is Dolby Digital, or rather its competitor. The DTS format uses a lower level of compression than Dolby, so it actually sounds better, which is proven in practice. DVD discs on which tracks are recorded in DTS or DD format. DTS in home theaters uses a maximum bitrate of 1,536 kbps (full bitrate), which is better than Dolby Digital's AC-3 format. DTS - uses 6 free audio tracks and supports the 7.1 sound distribution system, with this bitrate DTS 4.0 - will sound as spacious as Dolby 5.1.

FLAC

FLAC - (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Unlike lossy codecs - Mp3, Ogg and AAC, it does not remove any information from the audio stream and is intended for listening to music on high-quality Hi-Fi, Hi-End equipment and for archiving a professional audio collection. Currently, the FLAC format is supported by many audio players and music applications. The core decoder uses ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags to store the main types of metadata, so they can be freely added and edited.

MIDI

MIDI - (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), unlike other formats, MIDI does not store digital sound, and command sets: played notes, links to instruments, sound parameters. The convenience of the MIDI format lies in the use of a device that arranges according to the indicated chords. MIDI files tend to have several orders of magnitude smaller size than digitized audio of the same quality. The MIDI format is universal and is designed so that any sequencer can read and write lossless data. At the same time, incomprehensible to others software applications MIDI information - does not lead to misunderstandings, but simply ignored. The mid-backing track format allows you to save information about the instrument used, tempo, time signature, information about musical keys, track name and patterns and their number.

MP3

MP3 - (MPEG Layer version 3) On this moment, MP3 is the most popular digital music encoding format. MP3 is a lossy compression format, that is, part of the audio information, according to the psychoacoustic model, the human ear can hardly perceive is removed from source file- irrevocably. Until now, disputes about the quality of Mp3 have not subsided ... Firstly, the quality of the received MP3 depends not only on the bitrate of the compressed file, but also on the version of the encoding program used - the codec. Many music gourmets prefer to compress music with "maximum quality" - 320kbps, or switch to other formats, such as FLAC, where the average bitrate is ~1000 kbps. At the moment, MP3 is the leader in terms of recognition, but it is not a professional format in terms of technical parameters. Professional musicians and djs have not used tracks with a bitrate less than 320kbps for a long time.

MOD

MOD is a format developed for the Amiga platform. Each MOD file contains digitized recordings of the real sounds of the instruments, the so-called samples, somewhat similar to the MIDI structure. Cj or a composer writing in MOD format uses a program called a tracker, in which it indicates which instrument, at what time, what note and octave should sound - this sequence of notes is recorded in a list - a track, and several parallel-sounding tracks form a block , called a pattern. The set of patterns forms a module - a file in the MOD format, with the .mod extension. One tracker bar corresponds to one real channel in which cj can play or edit numbered notes. Notes can be assigned various "ornaments" - for example: tremolo, glissando, etc.

OGG

OGG - Vorbis was developed in 2002 by the Xiphophorus team as an alternative to all paid licensed audio formats. Ogg Vorbis is compatible with all popular platforms. The format does not limit the user to only two audio channels (left and right), it supports up to 255 individual channels with sampling rates up to 192 kHz and bit depth up to 32 bits, so Vorbis is great for encoding 6-channel DVD-Audio audio for home theater.

TTA

TTA - True Audio - is a free audio codec that compresses lossless music files in real time. The codec is based on adaptive predictive filters and has all the improved features, like most modern encoders. The compressed file size will be 30% - 70% smaller than the original music file. TTA format supports ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags. Using the True Audio codec, you can fit up to 20 audio CDs on one DVD-R disc.

VQF

VQF - (Interleave Vector Quanization) - developed in Japan and based on TwinVQ technology. If we compare VQF and MP3, then the first format will be 30-50% "more compact", with the same sound quality. This gives VQF a significant advantage over the MP3 format. But the process of encoding, decoding (decoder) VQF, takes about 30% more CPU resources of PC than Mp3 audio.

WAV

WAV - (Microsoft Wave) - No less popular than MP3, but wave files are not compressed. Audio is stored in mono or stereo at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, 8 or 16 bits.

WMA - (Windows Media Audio) developed by Microsoft as an alternative to mp3. Many music lovers dislike the WMA format for a large number of errors of various kinds, the WMA format is constantly evolving and improving. For example, in new versions of this extension, complex algorithms for lossless audio coding (lossless) have been added, multi-channel surround sound coding is a very promising feature for WMA. files may also contain video data. The files are denoted by the extension .wma and .asf.
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Sound is a physical natural phenomenon that propagates through air vibrations and, therefore, we can say that we are dealing only with wave characteristics. The task of converting sound into electronic form is to repeat all of its very wave characteristics. But the electronic signal is not analog, and can be recorded with short discrete values. Let them have a small interval between themselves and are practically imperceptible, at first glance, for the human ear, but we must always keep in mind that we are only dealing with an emulation of a natural phenomenon called sound.

Such a record is called pulse code modulation and is a sequential record of discrete values. The bit depth of the device, calculated in bits, indicates how many values ​​\u200b\u200bof the sound is taken at the same time in one recorded sample. The higher the bit depth, the more the sound matches the original.

Any sound file can be represented in the most understandable way as a database. It has its own structure, the parameters of which are usually indicated at the beginning of the file. Then comes a structured list of values ​​for certain fields. Sometimes, instead of values, there are formulas that allow you to reduce the file size. In order to make it completely clear to you, I will say that writing a file to HDD is similar to how you fill tables in Microsoft Excel. Naturally, these files can be read only by specialized programs that contain a reading block.

PCM stands for pulse code modulation, which is translated as pulse code modulation. Files with this extension are quite rare (I only met in the 3D Audio program). But PCM is fundamental to all sound files. I would not say that this is a very economical method for storing data on a disk, but I think that you will definitely never get away from this, and the volumes of modern hard drives already allow you to ignore a couple of tens of megabytes.

Research on economical storage of audio data on disk. If you meet this abbreviation, then know that you are dealing with a differential PCM. At the core this method there is a perfectly justified idea that the calculations are much more cumbersome compared to the fact that one can simply indicate the values ​​​​of the difference.

Adaptive DPCM. Agree that when specifying just the difference values, there may be a problem with the fact that there are very small and very large values. As a result, no matter how super-accurate measurements are, there is still a distortion of reality. Therefore, a scalability factor has been added in the adaptive method.

The simplest discrete data storage. I would say straight. One of the file types of the RIFF family. In addition to the usual discrete values, bit depth, number of channels and volume levels, wav can contain many more parameters that you most likely did not know about - these are: position marks for synchronization, the total number of discrete values, the playback order of various parts of the sound file, and there is also a place so that you can place text information there.

Resource Interchange File Format. A unique storage system for any structured data.

This storage technology stems from Amiga systems. Interchange File Format. Almost the same as RIFF, only there are some nuances. To begin with, the Amiga system is one of the first in which they began to think about software-sampler emulation of musical instruments. As a result, in given file the sound is divided into two parts: what should sound at the beginning and an element of what comes after the beginning. As a result, the beginning sounds once, then the second piece is repeated as many times as you need and the note can sound indefinitely.

The file stores a short sound sample that can then be used as a template for the instrument. Simply put, a sample stitched into the synthesizer.

AIF or AIFF

Audio Interchange File Format. This format is common in Apple systems Macintosh and Silicon Graphics. Includes a combination of MOD and WAV.

AIFC or AIFF-C

The same AIFF, only with the given compression parameters (compression).

Again, the same race to save space. The file structure is much simpler than in wav, but the data encoding method is specified there. Files are very small "weigh", due to which they have become quite widespread on the Internet. Most often you can find m-Law 8 kHz - mono. But there are also 16-bit stereo files with frequencies of 22050 and 44100 Hz. This audio format is designed to work with audio on SUN, Linux, and FreeBCD production systems.

A file that stores messages to a MIDI system installed on your computer or device.

The most scandalous format in recent times. Many compare it to jpeg for images to explain the compression options it uses. There are a lot of bells and whistles in the calculations, which you can’t list, but the compression ratio of 10-12 times was said about themselves. If they say that there is quality there, then I can say that there is not much of it. Experts talk about sound contouring as the biggest drawback this format. Indeed, if we compare the music with the image, then the meaning remains, and the small nuances are gone. The quality of MP3 still causes a lot of controversy, but for "ordinary non-musical" people, the loss is not clearly noticeable.

A good alternative to MP3, perhaps less common. There are also disadvantages. Encoding a file in VQF is a much longer process. Moreover, very few free programs, allowing you to work with this file format, which, in fact, affected its distribution.

Eight-bit mono format from the SoundBlaster family. Can be found in in large numbers old programs that use sound (not music).

NSOM

Same as VOC (Eight Bit Mono) but only for Apple Macintosh.

Standard U-Law format. 8 kHz, 8 bit, mono.

Real Audio or audio streaming. A fairly common system for real-time audio transmission over the Internet. The transfer speed is about 1 Kb per second. The received sound has the following parameters: 8 or 16 bits and 8 or 11 kHz.

There are two kinds. One is the same AU for SUN and NeXT. The other is an 8-bit mono file for PCs and Macs with different sample rates.

There are many different audio formats. You can't even imagine how many audio formats there are. Now we will consider only the most popular of them, and if you need comprehensive information, then you can find it on Wikipedia.

Audio formats

The sound itself is an analog phenomenon. To be written to a computer, it must be digitized. Digitized sound takes up a lot of space. Therefore, special algorithms for encoding and data compression are used - codecs. Codecs provide encoding / decoding of audio / video data, as well as compression / decompression of such data. Download a set of codecs for Windows:

The type of media file format (audio or video - it doesn't matter) is determined by its extension. For example, MP3 files have the extension .mp3. The codec for this format is always the same - MPEG Layer-3. But for the MP4 format, codecs can be different.

Some formats, such as MP4 and FLV, can contain both video and audio streams. Therefore, if you see a file with the .mp4 extension, then you definitely cannot say that it contains only music or only video, or a movie - audio and video. After all, initially in such formats the possibility of transmitting both audio and video was laid.

We all know that since information is compressed, it can be lost. Therefore, all codecs can be divided into two groups: with loss of quality and without loss of quality. Don't let the word "lossy" scare you - as a rule, codecs cut off "extra" information that is indistinguishable for our eyes and ears (almost indistinguishable).

Codecs that provide lossless compression include:

• FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec);
• APE (Monkey's Audio);
• ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec).

And here are the lossy codecs:

If you are a fan of sound, then it makes sense to look for music in FLAG format. For ordinary household listening, the most common MP3 format is quite enough. In addition, to feel the difference between MP3 and FLAC formats, you need professional audio playback equipment, unfortunately, a tablet does not belong to such equipment. Therefore, I see no reason to download music in FLAC format to the tablet.

Now let's take a quick look at the audio formats themselves:

• WAV is the very first (or one of the first) audio formats. Used to store uncompressed audio recordings. One minute of recording in WAV format takes 10 MB. Usually, Audio CDs are copied into this format, and then the resulting WAV files are compressed with an MP3 codec to save space.
• MP3 (MPEG Layer-3) is the most common audio format. It cuts the sound with loss of quality, but cuts out only the sound that is not audible to the human ear. As a result, a person does not hear the difference, and the sound takes up less space. The main characteristic of this format is the bitrate. The higher the bitrate, the better the sound quality. An uncompressed Audio CD has a bit rate of 1411.2 Kbps. Maximum quality sound in the case of the MP3 format is achieved at a bit rate of 320 kbps. Anything below 320 Kbps is worse in quality. The difference between 128 Kbps and 320 Kbps is already audible, so if you can download recordings with a higher bit rate, do it.
• WMA (Windows Media Audio) is a format developed by Microsoft for Windows. Microsoft tried to create a replacement for MP3, but, as time has shown, nothing came of it.
• ogg- open format, which supports audio encoding with various codecs. The most commonly used codec in OGG is the Vorbis codec. In terms of compression quality, the format is comparable to MP3, but it is less common in terms of support in audio players and players. If you can download MP3 and OGG music, you should choose MP3 because your audio player may not support OGG format.
• AAC is a proprietary audio format that provides better sound quality than MP3. It is currently the best lossy audio coding algorithm. A file of this format can have the extensions aac, mp4, m4a, m4b, t4p, t4g.
• FLAC is a lossless compression format. It does not make any changes to the audio stream, so the audio encoded with it is identical to the original. Used to listen to sound on high-level sound systems.

Video formats

There are as many different formats and standards of video content as there are audio formats. Let's start with international standards that define the encoding and storage format of media file data:

• MPEG-1 (Moving Picture Experts Group 1) is a video and audio compression standard. For video, the Video CD format is used, and for audio, the MPEG audio layer 3 format, or the well-known MP3 format for short, is used.
• MPEG-2 (Moving Picture Experts Group 2) - this standard is used in DVD and digital television DBV. Videos are shot in this format. various devices to shoot video.
• MPEG-3 (Moving Picture Experts Group 3) - this standard was developed for high-quality television HDTV definition, has now become part of the MPEG-2 standard.
• MPEG-4 (Moving Picture Experts Group 4) - This standard is used to compress digital video and audio. Consists of several standards, includes many features of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. This standard uses various codecs: DivX, Xvid, H.264 (AVC) and others. The MP4 format is one of the specifications of this standard.

A media file (more correctly, a media file, not a video file, since a file that we used to consider a video file contains audio and video streams) has two key characteristics: a codec and a container type. The codec, as we already know, defines the algorithm for encoding and data compression. The container type determines the record format using various information: video and audio data, subtitles and other information placed in the container. Examples of video codecs are DivX, Xvid, H.264, Theora. Examples of containers are AVI, QuickTime, 3GP, Ogg, MKV (Matroska).

The most popular media file formats:

• 3GP - designed for use on mobile phones, in AP networks. Guarantees powerful compression, which allows you to use the format on weak mobile phones.
• AVI (Audio/Video Interleaved) - developed by Microsoft, one of the most common formats in the world. This format can use different codecs.
• FLV (Flash Video) - designed to transmit video over the Internet. The most common format on the Internet, often used on various video hosting sites designed to store videos. Provides good quality pictures at low bitrate.
• M2TS is a Blu-Ray format video file.
• MKV (Matroska) is a container that can contain video, audio, subtitles, and more. This format may contain Various types subtitles and supports adding multiple audio tracks to a video file.
• OGG is a free, open format designed to store media content encoded with different codecs.
• ReadMedia is a format created by RealNetworks. It is mainly used for broadcasting television and streaming video on the Internet. low bitrate and low quality Pictures.
• MOV is a container developed by Apple for QuickTime. This is the format operating system MacOS X.
• MP4 is one of the specifications of the MPEG-4 standard. It can contain several video and audio streams, subtitles, animation, panoramic images.
• swf( Shockwave Flash or Small Web Format) - video format for flash animation, vector graphics, video and audio on the Internet.
• WMV (Windows Media Video) - developed by Microsoft. An attempt to create an analogue of MP4, which also failed.
• WebM is an open format proposed by Google as a replacement for the H.264/MPEG4 standard.

We'll take a look at the different audio file formats:

WAVE (.wav)- the most widely used audio format. Used in OC Windows to store sound files. It is based on the RIFF (Resource Interchange File Format) format, which allows you to save arbitrary data in a structured form. Various compression methods are used to record audio because audio files are large. The simplest compression method is Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), but it does not provide good enough compression.

AU (.au, .snd) is a sound file format used by Sun workstations (.au) and the NeXT operating system (.snd). It became widespread on the Internet, at an early stage of development of which it played a role standard format for sound information.

MPEG-3 (.mp3)- a sound file format, one of the most popular today. It was designed to preserve sounds other than human speech. Used to digitize music recordings. Previous versions of the format: MP1 and MP2. When encoding, psychoacoustic compression is used, in which sounds that are poorly perceived by the human ear are removed from the melody. Early versions provide worse compression, but are less demanding on computer resources during playback. The characteristics of the processor directly affect the sound quality - the weaker the processor, the greater the sound distortion.

MIDI (.mid)- digital interface of musical instruments (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). This standard was developed in the early 80s for electronic musical instruments and computers. MIDI defines the exchange of data between music and sound synthesizers from different manufacturers. The MIDI interface is a protocol for transmitting musical notes and melodies. But MIDI data is not digital audio - it is a shortened form of recording music in numerical form. A MIDI file is a sequence of commands that record actions, such as pressing a key on a piano or turning a knob. These commands sent to the playback device of MIDI files control the sound, a small MIDI message can cause a sound or sequence of sounds to be played on a musical instrument or synthesizer, so MIDI files take up less space (a sound unit per second) than the equivalent files of a digitized sound.

MOD (.mod)- a musical format, it stores samples of digitized sound, which can then be used as templates for individual notes. Files in this format begin with a set of sound samples, followed by notes and duration information. Each note is played using one of the sound patterns listed at the beginning. Such a file is relatively small and has a structure based on notes. This makes it easier to edit with programs that mimic traditional music recording. It, unlike a MIDI file, completely sets the sound, which allows it to be played on any computer platform.

IFF (.iff)- Interchange File Format - a format originally developed for the Amiga computer platform. Now also used on compact discs in CD-I form. Its structure is very similar to that of the RIFF format.

AIFF (.aiff) - Audio Interchange File Format - a format for the exchange of audio data, used on computer platforms Silicon Graphics and Mac. In many ways, it resembles the Wave format, but unlike it, it allows the use of digitized sound and templates. Many programs are capable of opening files in this format.

RealAudio (.ra, .ram)- a format designed to play sound on the Internet in real time. Developed by Real Networks (www.real.com). The resulting quality corresponds to a mediocre audio cassette at best; for high-quality recording of musical works, the use of the mp3 format is more preferable.