Smart Computing Article - AAC, MP3, M-O-U-S-E

July 2006 • Vol.10 Issue 4 Page(s) 18-19 in print issue Add To My Personal Library iPod Video & Audio Formats iPods store songs and video clips as files. The of a file describes the way the music or movie was converted from its original form ( ), and also tells an iPod or iTunes how to play it back ( it). You can tell a file’s format by its description in iTunes, and also by its part of the song file I’ll_Be_Your_Mirror File formats have so many alphabet-soup acronyms that we decided to devote most of this article to a glossary (check there for definitions for bolded terms). Still, we’ll talk about the basics here. Some formats are better than others, but in general, higher quality settings for mean better audio and video (unless you surpass your iPod’s or computer screen’s limitations). Higher quality files also take up more space on your iPod or hard drive. iTunes tends to hide the formats of song files on a computer. In fact, on our system it wasn’t until we imported some files into the Library that iTunes gave us the option to display format information in columns. To do this, click the Edit menu and View Options. Under Show Columns, select