Topic Area 4: Distribution considerations
Topic Area 4: Distribution considerations
Online
Physical platforms
Physical media
Online
Apps, Multimedia, Web
Allows content to be streamed on demand.
Users can download or access many different services.
Accessible anywhere with an internet connection. However if you don’t have a connection you don’t have service!
Physical platforms
computer, interactive tv, kiosks, mobile devices.
Each has a unique benefit to how the user interacts with the hardware.
Kiosk - large touch screen device.
Mobile device - small screen personal device.
Interactive TV - choose content and watch with a group of people.
Physical media
CD/DVD, memory stick, paper based
Large files are easily distributed with physical media. It takes longer than online as it has to be moved from location to location however it does not require an internet connection.
The properties of digital static image files
Static image file formats
DPI - Dots per Inch. PPI - Pixels Per Inch.
300 DPI is for printing
72DPI is on screen resolution
Vector images are made from lines and are drawn. As they are drawn rather than taken they are photorealistic.They can be resized to any size without loss of quality.
Bitmap or Raster images are photorealistic and are made from pixels. They are not be expanded past their size without becoming pixelated. They are life-like.
Image Formats
SVG - Lossless. Vector Graphics. Can be animated.
PNG - Lossless. Web Graphics. Transparent supported.
JPG - Lossy. Photographs. Widely used.
TIFF - No Compression. High Quality Printing
The properties of digital audio files
Audio files formats
Sample Rate - How often the height of the sound wave is taken. Measured in Hz.
Bit depth - How many bits are used to store the height of the wave.
Increasing either of both of the sample rate or bit depth will make the recording sound more like the original.
Using lossy compression will remove data and therefore reduce the quality of the audio. It will sound less like the original but it will be faster to send as the file size is smaller.
MP3 - Lossy. Most common format for audio. Portable devices and mobile phones.
AAC - Lossy. Higher quality than MP3.
FLAC - Lossless. Very high quality.
WAV - No Compression. Studio Recordings
The properties of digital moving image files
Moving image files formats
Moving Image
Frame rate - higher frame rate the smoother the video.
SD HD UHD 4k 8K
MP4 - Lossy. Most common format used on the web. Supports audio
AVI - Lossless. Suitable for high quality video editing. Supports audio
MPEG-2- Lossy. Television broadcast. Supports audio
MOV - Lossy. Apple format. Supports audio
SVG - Web animation format. No audio .
Lossy compression
Lossless compression
Lossy compression removes data from the digital artefact to make it smaller. This process can cause pixelation and a reduction in quality.
Videos MP4, MPEG4, MPEG 2
Audio MP3, OGG
images JPG
Lossless - no data loss meaning it is suitable for software and when the file needs to be of a high quality.
Videos H.264 lossless
Audio WAV
images PNG SVG TIFF
Software or documentation can be zipped in a compressed folder.