Tech Jargon V
Today, let's have some entertainment. We'll take a look at certain aspects of multimedia, you know, audio, video, etc. Codec: Ever been in a situation where you've tried to play a movie on the computer and the darn video player kept saying " Unknown format. Cannot play video file"? Well, if you did, then it may not necessarily be a problem with the CD. It may be because your video was probably compressed using a codec (Compressor / Decompressor). A codec is a small program that compresses your video files so that they take less amount of disk space. They can also tell the computer how to decode the information in the file. An example of a codec is "The Playa", which codes and decodes video files in the "DivX" format. So if your video player won't play a particular format, you can easily download and install a codec from the internet where it is widely available. AVI: Full form for this is Audio-Video Interleaved. It can contain both audio and video data and allows synchronous audio with video playback. Although widely used, AVI is considered by some to be an outdated format, increasing file size more than necessary. A good replacement for the AVI format is MPEG, which stands for "Motion Picture Experts Group". This format has a set of standards for compressing video and audio files, allowing for comparatively lesser use of disk space. MP3: Stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. Ever wonder how come all these music shops fit so many music albums into one CD? A thing that was almost impossible before the introduction of mp3s, mainly because of the huge amount of disk space that a song can take. Today, the mp3 is a very popular standard for compressing audio and particularly music files down to a very reasonable size with little or no perceptible loss of quality. The files created using MP3 compression are also called "MP3s". But beware, both selling and buying of these many-in-one audio CDs is actually illegal and incurs a great loss to the music industry. In Bangladesh, however, these CDs are so widespread and easily available, one would think "Everyone's doing it! Then what's wrong if I do it?" Burn: I particularly included this word as it sounds quite misleading to many. A friend of mine once asked me to show her how to create a CD by saving a few of her files onto a re-writable CD. I used the software that was provided with her CD writer and after completing all the formalities, when I was finally about to click on the "Burn CD" button, she just screamed out "Don't do that! That's a brand new CD! Why on earth would you want to burn it?" That's when I explained to her that he word "Burn", when it comes to creating CDs or DVDs actually means "To start saving the files on the CD, not to destroy it!". So readers, remember not to embarrass yourself by making a comment like this to anyone. WAV: A wav file is a computer sound recording. Not a very suitable format to save your favourite songs in, since wav files tend to be very large in size and take up a lot of disk space. Therefore, sound recordings are often compressed into MP3s so that they can be played on the internet. Although quality may be slightly lower, the file in the MP3 format will be much smaller in size. Nahid Akhter
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