Media Formats Decoded

Different MP3 players as well as other technology are programmed to work with specific file types, but not all the same ones. Before trying to load audio, video or image files onto your portable device you will need to think about what file types are compatible with your player. If a file type is not compatible, you will need to convert it before it can be loaded onto your player. If you don't want to spend time converting, look for a player that will work with the download site of your preference.

Here is a run down of the most common file types:

Audio Formats

AAC Advanced Audio Coding, based on the MPEG-4 audio standard owned by Dolby. A copy-protected version of this format has been developed by Apple for use in music downloaded from iTunes. iTunes also offers an Apple Lossless format that uses only half the amount of space as AAC.

AIFF (AIFC) Audio Interchange File Format, a standard audio file format used by Apple that has larger file sizes than AAC.

FLAC Free Lossless Audio Coder, an open source lossless compression codec. Compression ratio is not the best but the quality is good.

M4A Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-4 Audio (MPEG-4 Audio)

MP3 Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-3 (MPEG-3), this format is the most popular format for downloading and storing music. MP3 files are compressed files and therefore are good for storage.

OGG A free, open source container format supporting a variety of codecs, the most popular is the audio codec Vorbis.

WAV Audio file format used in Windows often used for storing uncompressed PCMs so they can be large in size but offer CD-quality sound files.

WMA Windows Media Audio, format owned by Microsoft, designed with Digital Rights Management (DRM) ability for copy protection.

Video Formats

MP4 Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-4 (MPEG-4), may contain video and/or audio components.

M4V Moving Picture Experts Group Layer-4 (MPEG-4 Video), contains video files.

OGG Patent free and open source, video codec is called Theora.

MOV QuickTime video format.

WMV Windows Media Video format.

AVI Audio Video Interleave, a video file format for Microsoft Windows.

XVID Free, open source MPEG-4 video codec.

DIVX and DivX Digital Video Express (DIVX), a DVD-ROM format designed for limited play. DivXNetworks (DivX) is a digital video compression format based on the MPEG-4 technology. DivX files can be downloaded quickly through high-speed lines.

ASF Advanced Systems Format (ASF), a Windows Media file format.

Image Formats

JPG Joint Photographic Expert Groups, extremely popular and the default image format for most technology.

BMP (DIB) A Bitmapped graphics format compatible with Microsoft Windows.

GIF Graphic Interchange Format, can be animated images.

TIFF Tagged Image File Format, often used in professional computer graphics and in GIS.

PNG Portable Network Graphics

PSD Photoshop Document

If you need to convert files there are numerous programs available that can do that for you. These programs can also edit, mix, record and more. Check out TopTenREVIEWS' of Audio Converter Software and Video Conversion Software to find programs that can do this for you.