Media formats have come a long way since the early days of computing. Once upon a time, the very idea of even playing live audio was considered a lofty goal, with home computers instead making do with simple synthesizer chips instead. Eventually, though, real audio became possible, and in turn, video as well.
But what of the formats in which we store this media? Today, there are so many—from MP3s to MP4s, old-school AVIs to modern *.h264s. Senior software engineer Ben Combee came down to the 2023 Hackaday Supercon to give us all a run down of modern audio and video formats, and how they’re best employed these days.
Vaguely Ironic
Thanks to vectrexer, who raised the alarm that the stream’s sound needed to be kicked into gear.
Before we dive into the meat of the talk, it’s important we acknowledge the elephant in the room. Yes, the audio on Ben’s talk was completely absent until seven minutes and ten seconds in. The fact that this happened on a talk about audio/visual matters has not escaped us. In any case, Ben’s talk is still very much worth watching—most of it has perfectly fine audio and you can quite easily follow what he’s saying from his slides. Ben, you have our apologies in this regard.
Choose Carefully
You know the great thing about MP3? The patents expired in 2018!
Ben’s talk starts with fundamentals. He notes you need to understand your situation in exquisite detail to ensure you’re picking the corre ..
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