Part III: Adding Frills and Fancy Stuff in Java

Making Code39 in Java Part III: Adding Frills and Fancy Stuff

Table 11-3

Microsoft s Audio Video Interleave format can be problematic Although it achieves good quality, various factors can yield a large file size, and it can t support full-screen movies Flash video is the standard format on YouTube and is also used by such providers as Google Video It uses the Adobe Flash Player The Apple movie format for QuickTime is excellent and has great file compression The Motion Picture Experts Group format is as popular for video as its MP3 cousin is for audio With both high file compression and excellent reproduction quality, this is the vehicle of choice for many Webmasters The Real Audio Movie format was the most common form of streaming video, but it lost popularity because it requires the use of a proprietary program, RealPlayer, which is often criticized for carrying too much advertising and being somewhat difficult to use Windows Media Video tends to produce small files of good quality

Table 11-4

These files are mainly used on Macintosh systems Because the majority of computer users don t own Macs, think twice before committing to it because your other visitors may or may not be able to use it File sizes tend to be large in these formats

File Extension midi Description The Musical Instrument Digital Interface is a venerable old music format So many MIDI files are online that it is impossible to count them, and this format is supported by the vast majority of all music-creation programs Nonetheless, it s mainly biased toward nonvocal music; thus, it may have only limited utility for Webmasters despite its small file size This is the king of the audio files Everybody has heard of and probably has songs in MP3 format Although people may argue that other formats have technical advantages, MP3s are widely supported and are probably instantly playable on almost all your visitors systems The Real Audio format (from the same folks who brought you streaming video) can create smaller files than many of the others, but at a serious cost in sound quality Waveform Audio files are good in that any computer with sound capabilities can play them, but they re notorious for their large file sizes Windows Media Audio files are often smaller than MP3s and have very good quality Streamable No

Windows Movie Maker is a quick and painless way to familiarize yourself with the various factors that affect file size and the ways these factors can create a good or bad Web experience for your visitors A full exploration of video preparation is outside the scope of this book, so if you re interested in delving more deeply into working with Web video, check out Digital Video For Dummies, 4th Edition, by Keith Underdahl (Wiley Publishing)

To experiment with various settings and see how they affect file size, follow these steps: 1 In Windows Movie Maker, select a movie by clicking its icon (See Figure 11-2) 2 Click the Save to My Computer link on the left side of the screen The Save Movie Wizard appears, shown in Figure 11-3 3 Enter a filename for your movie in the first text box 4 If you don t want to save your videos in the My Videos folder, the default setting in the second text box, click the Browse button and choose a different location 5 Click the Next button On the next page, the default setting Best Quality for Playback on My Computer is selected, as shown in Figure 11-4 6 Before checking out the other options, take a moment to look over the values in Setting Details and note the estimated file sizes those settings generate