TABLE OF CONTENTS One of the common features of a digital asset management system is that the original content is viewed as a proxy at a lower resolution.This means that a compact version of an asset can be stored online on a disk sub-system, whereas the real file is stored in a lower cost archive and retrieved on demand.
Three popular multimedia compression architectures are used for the asset proxies:
Apple QuickTime
RealNetworks
Windows Media
Some asset management vendors offer you the choice of codec, other supports just one. For the viewing of proxies, there is not a lot of difference between the products. Unless you want to squeeze the ultimate quality over a dial-up modem connection, the minor performance differences are not going to matter, after all they are just proxies.The issue is becoming blurred. As an example, Windows Media can support high definition television. Microsoft marketed the format as an alternative to MPEG-2 for the primary asset storage. I guess that in the future we may see more of a continuum with the same formats being used for preview and fulfilment.
There used to be a large number of audio file formats before the drive to standardisation (Table 5.6). Sun, SGI, IRCAM, SoundBlaster, and Amiga all spawned different file formats. Most were developed to support computer-based music creation and editing systems, rather than for general audio sampling. The move now is to limit use to audio interchange file format (AIFF) for Mac and WAV for...
