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Introduction
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You will interact and use many different types of files and their formats in your language technology journey.
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Compression is an irreversible method to improve storage and shareability by shrinking the amount of excess data a file contains.
File Extension | File Name | Media | Compressed (Y/N)? | Lossy or Lossless? | Best For |
.wav | Waveform Audio File | Audio | N | Lossless | Archiving/Editing |
.mp3 | Moving Picture Experts Group | Audio | Y | Lossy | Uploading/Sharing |
.mp4 | MPEG-4 Part 14 | Audio/Video | Y | Lossy | Archiving/Editing /Uploading/Sharing |
.tiff or .tif | Tag Image File Format | Image | Y | Lossless | Archiving |
.mov | Quick Time File Format | Audio/Video | N | Lossless | Archiving/Editing (Mac/Apple) |
.avi | Audio Video Interleave | Audio/Video | N | Lossless | Archiving/Editing (PC/Windows) |
.jpeg | Joint Photographic Experts Group | Image | Y | Lossy | Uploading/Sharing |
.png | Portable Network Graphics | Image | Y | Lossless
| Archiving/Editing /Uploading/Sharing |
.aup | Audacity Project File | Software Specific | N | Lossless | Audacity Software Editing |
.eaf | ELAN Annotation Format | Software Specific | N | Lossless | ELAN Software Editing |
.txt | Text | Text | N | Lossless | Basic Text |
.srt | SubRip Text File | Text | N | Lossless | Subtitles |
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Differences in File Use
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Best for Archiving
Audio-files | Audio-Visual files | Image files |
|---|---|---|
WAV | AVI | TIFF |
MP4 (Broadly) | PNG |
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Best for Editing
Audio-files | Audio-Visual files | Image files |
|---|---|---|
WAV | MP4 (Broadly) | PNG |
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Best for FirstVoices/Streaming
Audio-files | Audio-Visual files | Image files |
|---|---|---|
MP3 | MP4 | PNG |
via link (YouTube/Vimeo) | JPEG |
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Software Specific Files
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There are some file-types that are also software specific. You will need to keep track of these files in order to access and edit media in each respective software.
Common software specific project files include:
Software | File extension | Use |
|---|---|---|
Audacity | .aup | Audio-recording & editing |
ELAN | .eaf | Transcription |
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You might also come across .txt files or .srt files.
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