Multimedia english

Graphics

Visionaire supports the following graphic formats: PNG, JPEG, GIF, PCX. The recommended format for Visionaire is PNG.

PNG (Portable Network Grahpics): This graphic format supports a good lossless compression, 16 million colors and an alpha channel. With the alpha channel it is possible to create half transparent images which can overlap the background with a given opacity. Due to this features PNG is the graphic format of first choice.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group): This graphic format supports a good lossy compression and 16 million colors. The compression is especially visible on drawn images. Thus this format should only be used for photorealistic background images where the artefacts (from the compression) don't matter.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format): This is a graphic format with a good lossless compression but only supoorts 256 colors. Multiple images can be included as well but this feature is not supported by Visionaire. Visionaire uses Animations for image sequences.

PCX (PiCture eXchange): This graphic format uses a simple lossless compression and supports up to 16 million colors (the number of colors depends on the format version). This format has a worse compression and no advantages compared to the other formats. Thus it should not be used.

Currently Visionaire supports the following sound file formats: MP3 and WAV (the goal is to support further formats in the future).

MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3): It provides a very good data compression and should be used especially for background music and bigger music files. It has to be noted that the use of the format requires to purchase a licence, which depends on many factors. We recommend to investigate this concerning the specific application before deciding to use it, so that no license problems arise.
See also www.mp3licensing.com.
WAV: This is a container format for audio data and provides a good sound quality. The format is most appropriate for noises and sounds and speech.