The Best File Format

By Justin Hibbard

treaming file formats, such as the Advanced Streaming Format, describe how data is organized as it moves across a network, letting users play the file as packets stream in. By contrast, non-streaming video file formats, such as AVI, must be downloaded entirely to a client's hard disk before they can be played.

But unlike other streaming formats, ASF describes how to organize many types of media-including text, graphics, animation, video, and audio-in a synchronized presentation. An ASF file, for example, could contain a video clip synchronized with PowerPoint slides that change at specific points in the video and ActiveX controls that launch on cue.

Synchronization of streamed multimedia is the main feature that Microsoft says makes ASF a better format than MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and QuickTime, which don't define synchronization. But formats such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 can produce highly compressed files, letting users stream more data faster and thus produce near-TV-quality pictures. ASF has yet to prove its mettle in achieving high compression ratios.

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