Creative iMedia
R093 – The Media Industry
Block 4 – Distribution of media products
4.2 – Properties and formats of media files
There are different formats of image, audio and video files. You need to know some of them.
There is a lot of detail in this section, but it won't ever be worth that many marks. You probably know quite a bit about the formats anyway, so focus on the key points.
Image file formats
First, image files:
Types of image file – bitmap/raster and vector
Image resolution – dpi and why it matters in a bit more detail
Make sure you know the names of the standard image file formats – JPG, PNG, GIF.
Video and audio file formats
Then you need to know about audio and video files and their formats:
Make sure you know a couple of examples of video file formats (MP4, MOV) and audio file formats (MP3, WAV) so that you can name them in an exam.
File compression
File compression is trying to make the file size of a digital file smaller (not "make the file smaller" – it's file size that's important)
We do this so that the file takes up less storage space and can be transferred (e..g by e-mail or file upload) more quickly.
There are two types. Make sure you know the difference between lossy and lossless compression as that comes up frequently on the exam.
Knowing some examples of file formats which use lossy compression (JPG, MP3) and lossless compression (PNG, AVI) would be helpful. But this is pretty hard to remember. Do try and learn the difference between the two types though.