media.io doesn’t support any and all file types yet. Whenever someone tries to upload something media.io doesn’t know yet, I can find out what it was. That’s good for everyone because I can concentrate on audio formats most people want. Here’s the list so far:
As you see, many people want to convert WMA – Microsoft’s audio format – to other formats. Understood :-) It’s coming soon
From a composer's and sounddesigner's perspective this works really well because the sound is produced as if it was written for a blockbuster movie. The only constraint should be the atmosphere in which the film is set, never the format for which it is produced. And I mean format both in terms of creative formats like commercials, tv-movies, cinema, websites or virals, as well as in terms of technical formats (flv, HD or 35mm).
Social media breaks up formats. You can think cinema but still end up on an iPhone screen. That is a good thing! When I started years ago you could heavily differentiate jingle writers from film- or other media composers. I believe we can get rid of the rules from those days, unless you want to serve specific clichés on purpose. The only thing that counts is the originality of the whole idea. So being able to decline different musical styles and soundscapes is vital. But that is only one part of it. Developing that into an individual design in collaboration with the agency and the director makes all the difference. The film for Canal + is a really nice example.
One week after launching media.io, I’m already expanding the list of audio formats
supported by media.io
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) will be the next format that you can convert audio files from.
All MPEG-4 profiles will be supported, including MPEG-4, MPEG-2 MAIN, LOW, LTP, LD, LC, SBR, PS and ER object type AAC files (thanks to FAAD2). Encoding to AAC will come a little bit later. For audio file conversion to AAC, I’m torn between FAAC and the Nero AAC Encoder. If you have a preference, please post a suggestion, thanks!
When I first began writing perl code in the mid 90's I was amazed at how easy it was to program most tasks in contrast to programming them in C. It was fun to program again. Now, as I come to Ruby and its relevant web frameworks I am again rediscovering the joy of programming I didn't realize I had begun to lose.
One of the tasks I always hated was date comparisons and date formatting. In perl, you grab two dates, change them to UNIX epoch seconds, compare them, and then run some calculations on that comparison to return some value. It's easier now with the DateTime module, but for the longest time, that's how you did it. Date formatting was similar; you had to hand-roll it.
I'm not using perl anymore - well, I am, but only until I can port things to Ruby - but I still find myself doing things the "perl way". Until last week, I'd been using Ruby's implementation of "strftime" to do most of my date formatting. And then I found this little nugget in the Rails API under "ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Date::Conversions" and its sister "ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Time::Conversions"
You can add your own formats to the Date::DATE_FORMATS hash. Use the format name as the hash key and either a strftime string or Proc instance that takes a date argument as the value.
# config/initializers/time_formats.rb
Date::DATE_FORMATS[:month_and_year] = "%B %Y"
Date::DATE_FORMATS[:short_ordinal] = lambda { |date| date.strftime("%B #{date.day.ordinalize}") }
Huh? What it means is that I can add now add my own personal date/time formats and call them with a "to_s" on any Date object in Rails. Here's an example from my "config/initializers/datetime_formats.rb" file:
datetime_formats = {
:standard => "%b %d, %Y"
}
Date::DATE_FORMATS.merge!(
datetime_formats.merge(
:ymd => "%Y%m%d"
)
)
Time::DATE_FORMATS.merge!(
datetime_formats
)
In the above example "datetime_formats" is a list of those formats which are common between "Date::DATE_FORMATS" and "Time::DATE_FORMATS". To bring in "Time" or "Date" specific formats, we just merge them into the "datetime_formats" hash.
Now, when you need to apply a format, say to the created_at field of an ActiveRecord object, just call to_s(:format_name). Here's an example:
x = Foo.find(100)
x.created_at.to_s(:standard) # returns "Sep 08, 2009"
It's these little things that make programming fun again.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you choose the ad formats that you do? What drives your decisions as you plan your campaigns? Strange as it may seem, the factors that most influence media strategists aren't always in their best interests. Things like familiarity, convenience, and availability color our selections, instead of much more appropriate issues like newly available research, knowledge about each individual format, and the ability of those formats to meet our clients' particular needs. In an effort to inform media buyers on this topic, DoubleClick and Dynamic Logic recently released a co-authored a white paper, “The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads” http://www.dynamiclogic.com/na/research/whitepapers/docs/DL_DoubleClick_June09.pdf
The report focuses on branding campaigns, and breaks down several types of advertising formats -- GIF and JPG ads, simple Flash, rich media with video, and rich media without video -- based on their value and strengths, both individually as well as comparatively. Here are a few highlights.
(from http://www.clickz.com/3634263)
Advanced Data Export VCL 4.1.0.7: Advanced Data Export will save your data in the most popular data formats. http://bit.ly/Xy2vd
Advanced Data Export 4.1: Advanced Data Export will save your data in the most popular data formats. http://bit.ly/wFdtJ
Advanced Data Export 4.1: Advanced Data Export will save your data in the most popular data formats. http://bit.ly/wFdtJ
Frequently asked Questions about Creating, publishing and embedding a VUVOX Collage. For additional help, visit our Online Video Tutorials on Lynda.com.
