SUNScholar/Digitisation/Digital Formats/Open

Back to Digital Formats

Open Codecs

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_codecs

Containers

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats

Text

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Document_Foundation
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Document

Image

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_graphics_file_formats

Audio

 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_coding_formats

Video

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_codecs

Data Sets

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sql
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_management_systems
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_database_tools

Engineering Drawings

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDWG

Comments
Dear Hilton,

I would advise that you adopt open (i.e. non-propriety) standards, as these have the best chance of remaining readable in the long-term future. Propriety formats are dependent on the continuing existence of the firm who markets them, as well as the continued support by this firm, even if they continue to exist. This is in my opinion very risky.

For documents I am aware of an ISO standard that is targeted at archival, known as PDF/A (see www.pdfa.org).

For audio and video the situation is less developed, and there are as far as I know no standards specifically for archival. In both cases I would recommend that data be saved without lossy compression, and again that open standards be sought. Hence mp3 and WMV should be avoided, both because they are based on lossy compression and are are propriety. The audio format FLAC on the other hand is open and does not employ lossy compression.

I hope this is of help, Best regards, Thomas Niesler.

Prof. Thomas Niesler Digital Signal Processing Group Department of Electronic Engineering University of Stellenbosch Private Bag X1, Stellenbosch 7602, South Africa Phone: +27 21 8084118 Fax:  +27 21 8084981 Email: trn@dsp.sun.ac.za