Video Converter 2005   - User Guide and FAQ

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Frequently Asked Questions - Video Converter 2005

1. What are audio and video codecs?
   A video or audio Codec (COmpression/DECompression) is a software component allowing to encode data to be stored on a media (CD, DVD, etc...) and/ to decode it to be visualized or heard. There are also so-called "hard" codecs usually embedded to camcorders or digital video players or professional and semi-professional video cards for video editing and composing.
   
   
2. What video formats are supported by Video Converter 2005?
   AVI
   is short for "Audio Video Interleave", the original Microsoft file format for Microsoft's Video for Windows standard. It is an audio video standard designed by Microsoft and is apparently proprietary and Microsoft Windows specific. It is a format developed for storing video and audio information. Files in this format have an .AVI extension. However, Video for Windows does not require any special hardware, making it the lowest common denominator for multimedia applications.
   
   MPEG
   Gives excellent compression with little loss in quality of the video. MPEG support three types of data - video, audio and streaming. There are a number of standards: among them there are two flavors of MPEG available today. MPEG-1 was designed to provide VHS video quality and CD audio quality at a combined data rate of 150 kilobytes per second. MPEG-1 is displayed at 30 frames per second in a frame that is 352x240 (horizontal x vertical) pixels in size. This allows relatively high quality video images to be stored in relatively small file sizes for playback across computer networks or CD-ROM delivery. MPEG-2 is the other side of the compression coin. It is a broadcast standard specifying a playback size of 720 x 480 pixels at 60 fields per second. Data rates can range from 2 to 10 megabits per second. This means large file sizes and data rates that require specialized hardware for playback. MPEG-2 is one of the core compression technologies for DVD. See the MPEG site for more information.
   
   MOV
   MOV is a file extension for QuickTime Video Clip. QuickTime is a video and animation system developed by Apple Computer. QuickTime is built into the Macintosh operating system and is used by most Mac applications that include video or animation. PCs can also run files in QuickTime format, but they require a special QuickTime driver. QuickTime supports most encoding formats, including Cinepak, JPEG, and MPEG. QuickTime is competing with a number of other standards, including AVI and ActiveMovie. For more information see the Apple site and their Support page.
   
   
3. What is frame rate?
   In basic terms, a video can be thought of as being made up of numerous snapshots, called frames. Frame Rate defines how many pictures eg. frames one second of video or audio contains, normally used acronym for framerate is fps - frames per second. Human eye can't see picture changes after the framerate is more than ~24fps.
   
   Video files with higher frame rates show motion better but have larger file sizes.Typical frame rates are 29.97 for NTSC video (in American TV system), 25 for PAL (European system) video, and 24 for film. When exporting low-bandwidth versions, select a frame rate that is 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 of the original frame rate. Setting a frame rate higher than the original frame rate will make the file larger but will not improve the quality.
   Note that MPEG format only supports 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30 frame rates.