File format question

can anyone explain the differences in a swf file, a gif file, and a svg file? when would you use one over the other and which is smallest? I get confused about these. Will all of these take transparencies? Thanx for any help.
red

Well, this question cannot be answered easily. It all depends on specific use cases. Let's see:
GIF - Bitmap format. Limited to max. 256 colors. One of those colors may be tagged to be interpreted as transparent by browsers and image viewers. May contain animation by ways of separate, discrete frames. The color palette is distributed to the animation, hence the more differnt colors are used, the more dithering will occur and the uglier it looks. als file size increases considerably, the longer the animation.
SWF - Flash container file. Objects embedded are treated "as is", meaning they are animated procedurally while the file plays. The objects themselves can be pixel images, movie clips, vector art or Flash-internal parametric items. No limitations in color palette or duration, file size only increases the more objects are used. Since the animation must be calculated in realtime during playback, variations in speed may occur, depending on the machine performance.
SVG - Vector based. May contain animation. Rendered on the target device, hence simialr rules as with SWF apply. Support in browsers however is very limited, so it is not widely used. Primarily used on mobile phones for icons and graphic elements (SVG tiny)
Mylenium

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.AVI file format question

Upgrading from CS2 to Photoshop CS5
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So, I then went and returned regular and upgraded to Photoshop CS5 extended.
(See my other thread for details, but installing the 12.01 patch is not an option at this time.)
Try to use file open to open a .AVI file from one of my cameras and get a message of "unrecognized file format".
Was able to import the 7 second video into layers.
Checked support issues, and installed Quicktime 7.6.8
Also, due to 12.01 issues, reinstalled Photoshop CS5 Extended AFTER upgraded Quicktime to 7.6.8
Machine specs: Toshiba Satellite P30 Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.60 GHZ (Hyperthreading Dual Core) 2GB RAM ATI Mobility Radeon X600 Win XP Professional SP3 About 12 GB disk space available at install time.
Note that Quicktime will open the .AVI file in question with no problems, as well as Roxio software (trying to get rid of that with CS5)

I talked to support via phone and it appears the the problem is in installation. The install of CS5 extended did not take over the regular install. So, I need to start by completely uninstalling AGAIN and installed extended from scratch AGAIN.
I did try the program mention GSPOT as well. It says AVI codecs are installed on the machine inquestion. I will get more informaiton tonight afte rI do the re-install and see what happens.

File format question h264 /Blurry MPEG 4 output

"The codec with the best quality to size ratio is H264" was suggested for me to use when making web movies. This may be a stupid question, but is tehre any other file format (other then MPEG 4) that will play on an iPod and other digital media players. My Mpeg4 looks blurry and I really don't know why. I input h264 video into iMovie/ FC Express and the edit. When I export to MPEG 4 the video is blurry. I am only going down in physical size so pixelation is not the issue..(i think).

You see aac and h.264 are not editing formats in the FCP world. Easiest is to convert them first. It's very easy. Go get a copy of MPEGStreamclip and convert them to something useable, like ProRes LT. Then just import them, and drop one into a timeline and let the timeline adjust to the footage. You do not have to setup one of the easy settings in order to work.

Mac OSX file format questions

I am using Quicken 2005 and these days I backup my accounts to my USB flash drive. In the past i backed up to zip disk or floppy. backing up to a floppy would be problematic since the Mac version has never supported multiple disk backup which the PC version even to this day still supports. And besides floppy disk access has always been slower and more problematic on the Mac for some reason.
Okay here is my question.
My quicken files end with a Backup-file.qdfm extension.
But whenever I upload these files (sadly they have to be dragged an dropped with Fetch) they appear as a folder on my FTP server. So I have been using the classic version of Transmit instead of the native OSX version of Fetch to upload my Quicken backup accounts.
My question if I ever had a major disaster (this has happened before) would the folder (what it appears to be) on my FTP server save me or should I be zipping this quicken file before I upload? I have been using Quicken since 1998 for the Mac and PC, and have thousands of bank transactions that are valuable and that I do not want to lose.
Encase you cannot understand what I mean here is a screen shot. The file above is the Quicken 2006 file, and the one below is a older Quicken 2001 file that I uploaded when I had my Performa.
http://johnw.freeshell.org/voicemails/screenshot.png
Thank you,
John

One way to know for sure would be to download the file (folder) and open it in Quicken. Of course I would make and keep a backup on your local drive before doing this.
Like you I have been using Quicken for many years but I back mine up to another hard drive, then I back everything on it up on a regular basis to a CD. I also use .Mac and the backup program included with it to back up my Quicken files off site. The .Mac solution is automatic, and takes place daily which is nice.
"But whenever I upload these files (sadly they have to be dragged an dropped with Fetch)'
Do you want to automate the process? If so, that is what Automator and Applescript are for. Surely you could write a simple script to do it for you.

Write to text file formatting questions

Apologies if I am touching on a subject discussed elsewhere. I have two issues, which I believe to be related, that I am having difficulty overcoming. I am collecting voltage date, converting it to a temperature, and then writing the time stamp, temperature, excitation voltage, and original voltage to file. Currently, when I write these values to file the date and time appear on one line, the temperature and voltages appear on the following line, and then there is a space before the pattern repeats. Furthermore, before data is collected I write information to a header, and if you look at the attached .csv file, you'll see that the data is all offset one column to the left. Any ideas how I can solve this problem? My code probably speaks for itself, but I am very much a novice so any general insight in non-jargon terminology will be humbly accepted. Cheers, Peter.
Solved!
Go to Solution.
Attachments:
NI-DAQ_TempString_02b.vi ‏121 KB
test16.txt ‏2 KB

Your problem is where you are building your data line. Why are you using Build Array and then Inster into Array? You don't want arrays when writing to the text file. Each element of an array will be a different line. What you really want is Concatinate String. Use the Concatinate String to build a string with your timestamp, a comma, and your "spreadsheet string" that contains your data.
There are only two ways to tell somebody thanks: Kudos and Marked Solutions
Unofficial Forum Rules and Guidelines

CAP File format questions !!!

I've been trying to parse CAP files, but having trouble figuring out these values...
In Method component: what is the number of elements in "method_info methods[]" array???
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in type_descriptor_info: what is the number of elements in type_desc[] array???
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See the JCVM Specifications, the size of the structure arrays u have mentioned is not specified. If you parse these files u can do it with the help of Reference location component. If you use the pointers in C it will be easy as compared to Java.

Question about TIFF file format

None of the forums seems to be right for my question, this one seems the best suited...
Why does Mac still use the TIFF file format for things like Grab, etc.? JPG is a more commonly used format, but I do understand why the TIFF file format is better from a quality perspective.
I'm just curious at my end, that's all. I don't mind using TIFF.

But, if I understand things correctly, if you now select a JPG of zero compression, it's evolved into a potentially lossless file.
Close, but not quite. If you start with a TIFF and save it as a maximum quality JPEG (level 12), then lay one on top of the other in Photoshop and zoom way in, you can find a fair amount of pixels that have changed values. Not anywhere near enough to notice any difference in a printout or visual color. They still do take up less space than the original TIFF.
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Two questions about the PSD file format specicaition

I'm a programmer dealing with a project to parse PSD files. When reading the official file format specification, I found that some fields of the file are not clarified:
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2. The PSD file contains a color mode section. But if the color mode is RGB, the color mode section contians no data but a 4-byte length field whose value is set to 0. This is true for files in RGB mode 8-bit channel. But after convert the files to RGB mode 32-bit channel using photoshop, the whole color mode section is no long exist.
These two questions may be somehow technical, I would be thankful if someone can give me a hand.

1) was covered in the documentation at one time. Yes, many of them can be negative, that's why they're signed values. Valid rectangles will have the bottom greater than the top, and the right greater than the left. But you can also have empty rectangles, and sometimes invalid rectangles (because the values don't matter).
2) Not sure what you're asking... color mode is just a single enumeration for RGB, CMYK, etc.

Can you import gift file format as pretest questions?

I am trying to take a bank of questions that I have in gift format and get them into cp8 on windows.
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Is cp8 just not able to import gift formatted questions for pre-tests?

Not possible AFAIK. You can create your own pretest slides (the default pretest has a lot of strict design rules like being all together at the beginning, all navigation is eliminated etc), by not adding the score of those pretest slides to the Total score. It is perfectly possible to calculate the result of the pretest, showing it, and decide based on that result.
Intermediate Score Slides - Captivate blog

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Can Audiobooks be in .mp3 format or are they in other file format? I am using iTunes 6.01.4.2
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The following information on audiobooks is from ilounge.com. I believe there may be some useful information for you at the bottom of the page. Hope this helps!

REPEAT Question: ILLEGAL FILE FORMAT cannot open file. what is the reason for this?

every day, GB crashes,or locks up when i am saving...i use IK Multimedia plug ins...and i save fequently..
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its been going on for a year...i need it to stop...or for someone to tell me its a third party plugin issue with GB...something for me to chew on...
i have sent in error reports, talked to some folks...no avail.
HELP. i hate this.
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I have an imac11...using the os right prior to mav...I don't want to install that yet.
The last MacOS X before Mavericks would be Mt. Lion, MacOS X 10.8.5. Is that, what you are using? You can see that, if you click the -menu if the upper left corner of your screen, and select "About this Mac".
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Where are you saving your projects? On an external drive? How is the drive formatted (file system, and how is the drive connected?

Standardize a flat file format w.r.t OWB

Hi Pat,
or anyone,
Can u help me to standardize a flat file format with respect to OWB?
I have 15 financial source systems. The client agreed in giving the data in csv format. Now I need to standardize the feed file so that it would be easy for me handle it in OWB. Please note depending on my standardization the client would give me the data and in turn it would be easy for me to handle it OWB External Tables. The records size for a single feed file is 1 million. So my questions are
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Regards,
rem.

Good afternoon Rem,
It's all very theoretical indeed, talking about standards and all. I'll try to answer some of your questions according to my experiences.
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@2, I don't think there's a real standard for that, it should simply meet YOUR needs, so when loading EXT into STG simply perform a transformation concatenating those 3 fields to form one.
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Regards, Patrick

How do I use m2ts movie file format from my old pc with FCP on my mac?

I have recently moved from a PC to a iMac. I have a large number of Sony AVCHD movie files, which were imported to my PC and are in the m2ts file format on my PC. The original files on my Sony camera were deleted so these files are now all I have. Also, for each movie clip on my PC there are 3 files....a very large m2ts file along..... with two very small file....one is a .modd file and the other a .moff file.
I now want to use these m2ts files (and if needed possibly these other two smaller files) on my Mac make movies with either iMovie or Final Cut Pro. and don't know how to import them or convert them for use on my Mac. Can anyone help?
One final question. Can FCP author DVD's or is separate software required. Apple has discontinued iDVD for iMovie (which I find rediculous) and so I'm worried they don't support making DVD's with FCP.
Thanks

Although I don't use Toast I know lots of people who do and like it for a variety of purposes; for example, many people author in DVDSP and burn disks using Toast. But there are a lot of versions and they have differing features and capability. Do a search in these (or iDVD) forums you'll find plenty of info. Don't know about the other app. Again, if you ask Apple, they may come through with iDVD…they have for others.
Clipwrap quality limitations? Try the trial and test the results for yourself. As far as I know the trial is fully freatured but there is a one minute clip limitation (which doesn't apply to the paid version).
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Russ

File Export question and ID3 Tags

First question, have tried using Apple's recommended method of using QT Pro to export movies as "iPod" but when attempting to sync to an iPod get an incompatible file format. What is the "right" export option?
Secondly, on one file I've imported it into iTunes then set all the ID3 fields to my liking, then uploaded into iTunes U but the fields are incorrect. I've tried deleting the file from iTunes U several times and re-imported the file into iTunes and set the ID3 fields and still nothing. Any suggestions on how to get my file up and hold the ID3 fields info?
thanks
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http://www.oit.duke.edu/dms/resources/fileformats.html
http://www.oit.duke.edu/dms/itunesu/itunes_tagging.html
If you've been having ID3 issues with MP3s, that was recently corrected (well, just the album art thing, everything else worked as far as I know). I've had bad luck with third party ID3 tag editors, so we are recommending people do it through iTunes.app
Since you are already doing that, I'd be worried that my site was set to overwrite the tags (this is an option). If you're the admin, you can check it, otherwise you can ask them.

File Recovery Question

Hi there, before I ask my question, let me explain my situation:
I lost all of my data off my hard drive partition, and used the program "Stellar Phoenix Macintosh 4.0". It is a recovery program that allowed me to view and retrieve my lost files from my deleted partition.
It managed to recover EVERY file in its original file structure.
Now, when I try to view pictures, play songs, or do ANYTHING with these files, they don't work, however the FILE SIZE makes sense: Pictures are 1mb-5mb. Songs are 2mb-15mb, etc.
For example: I get this error when trying to view jpgs:
The file filename.jpg could not be opened.
It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize.
I changed the permissions on the file so everyone can "read & write" but that still didn't help. I tried copying the files to another drive, but still no luck.
If someone could help me either with making the files readable, or a different setting on the recovery program, that would be great.
Is it possible that the files were viewed in 10.6.2 and I recovered them in 10.6.0?
Any suggestions would be appreciated!

30 day trial, no money spent.
So why would anyone buy this Keith, if they could get full use out of it for up to 30 days, when just 30 hours would probably do ? Excuse the rhetorical question.
What is noticeable about the various file recovery programs is they let you sample them but mostly require payment if you want to seriously use them.
It is remarkable in the software universe of freeware, and OpenSource ware, that software recovery are the exception and give no free lunches, or at least none that I know.
*I suspect you will have to pay for this app to facilitate your file recovery*.
I'm not sure which one, but there is one that lets you restore one file, just to prove itself, but to get the rest you have to buy the software. Can't remember which one that is but see if you can find it, at least to prove something is recoverable before you fork out the money.
On the matter of creating a backup image using Disk Utility, did you do it according to these procedures?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553
Still, if it has no mountable file system, I doubt if it can be created after the fact.
Sorry to be unable to throw some sunshine on your problems, but gee you are gonna have a great backup strategy in place after this. ...a little ray there.
P.S. You need to contact the providers of these software to clarify things - your expectations, payment, whatever.
Message was edited by: roam

File format question

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