MPG is commonly associated with video and audio compressions MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. This is designed to compress audio and video to formats that can be downloaded. Movies with this extension are of lower sizes and greater quality, but quality differs from original VCR videos. This file format can run on Mac, Windows and other portable devices.
MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality RAW digital video and CD audio down to 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting (DAB) possible. Today, MPEG-1 has become the most widely compatible lossy audio/video format in the world, and is used in a large number of products and technologies. Perhaps the best-known part of the MPEG-1 standard is the MP3 audio format it introduced.
Using Zamzar it is possible to convert MPG files to a variety of other formats:
mpg to 3gp (3GPP Multimedia File) mpg to 3g2 (3GPP2 Multimedia File) mpg to aac (Advanced Audio Coding File) mpg to ac3 (AC3 Audio File) mpg to avi (Windows video file) mpg to flac (Free Lossless Audio Codec) mpg to flv (Flash video) mpg to gif (Compuserve graphics interchange) mpg to ipad (MPEG-4 (H264) Video File) mpg to iphone (MPEG-4 (H264) Video File) mpg to ipod (MPEG-4 Video File) mpg to mov (Apple QuickTime Movie) mpg to mp3 (Compressed audio file) mpg to mp4 (MPEG-4 Video File) mpg to ogg (Ogg Vorbis Compressed Audio File) mpg to wav (Windows audio file) mpg to webm (Multimedia Container Format) mpg to wmv (Windows Media Video)
The GIF file format is a type of bitmap image and has become popular due to the growth of the internet. This file format supports up to 8 bits per pixel therefore giving an image the ability to contain 256 distinct colours chosen from the 24-bit RGB colour space. It also supports animations and whenever you see a logo or other sharp edged line art then you are probably dealing with the GIF format. It uses the lossless data compression technique which reduces the file size without any impact on the quality.
The GIF file format was invented by Compuserve for their online service, but they made the specifications publicly available. GIFs are able to hold multiple bitmaps of up to 256 colors each, using LZW (Lempel Zev Welch - a simple form of file compression that removes inefficiencies in the data storage without losing data or distorting the image) compressed raster data to minimize file sizes. The idea is to lessen the amount of colours in a GIF image to the minimum number necessary and to therefore remove stray colors that are not required to represent the image. A GIF graphic is unable to have more than 256 colors but it can have fewer colors, down to the minimum of two (black and white). Images with fewer colors will compress more efficiently under LZW compression.
Associated programs
Adobe Photoshop Apple Preview Corel Paint Shop Pro Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery Viewer
