TERMS & DEFINITIONS
Lossy & Lossless File Formats
Images: RAW, BMP, and PNG are all lossless image formats. JPEG and GIF are lossy image formats.
Audio: WAV, FLAC, and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec, used by iTunes) are all lossless audio formats. MP3, MP4, and OGG are lossy audio formats.
Video: Few lossless video formats are in common consumer use, as they would result in video files taking up a huge amount of space. Common formats like H.264, MKV, and WMV are all lossy. H.264 can provide smaller files with higher qualities than previous generations of video codecs because it has a “smarter” algorithm that’s better at choosing the data to throw out.
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