Format and compression basics

[sundialsvc4]

Everything you need to know you should be able to find in Google.

Bear in mind that all of your intermediate files should be uncompressed ... highly detailed ... and large. (If you need a bigger hard drive, go down to the office-supply and pick up a nice USB terabyte drive. Or two. Or three.)

When you're ready for your "final mix-down," you're always working with these big files and you're always creating new ones... never replacing anything. (If you have to "re-do the mix," make a snapshot of the old version and then do it again.) The final mix is exactly as detailed as every source file that went into it.

After you have finished your final (uncompressed and large) "production print," now is the time to put it through whatever codecs, compression and what-have-you to generate the output files necessary for the various target media. Each of these steps, obviously, will throw away information and introduce some noise. But (a) they're always going down from a larger and more-detailed source; and (b) they're always one single step... you're never applying these operations in-series.

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