Detailed Explanation Of MP3 and MP4

MP3 is an acronym derived from MPEG Audio Layer III. It is a digital audio format or, more specifically, a compression format for that type of audio.

To generate an MP3 file, an algorithm is used to reduce the size or weight of the file that stores the sound, although with a certain loss of quality. Said loss, in any case, is not usually significant, which is why MP3 is the most widely used format in computers and portable players.

German sound engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg is singled out as the creator of the MP3. He was among those responsible for the development of the Moving Pictures Experts Group ( MPEG ) and in the 1980s began working on audio compression. Already in 1995, it began to use the .mp3 extension for files with compressed audio under this system.

The MP3 format was a revolution in the way of distributing and consuming digital audio. MP3 files are much lighter (and therefore easier to transfer or download) than files on an audio CD or CDDA. With the advancement of Internet connections, it became easier to download entire discs whose songs are compressed in MP3.

The digital audio player is also known as MP3. These devices can save and play files in MP3 format, although they are generally able to work with other formats as well.

A person, for example, can store two hundred songs in one MP3 and then listen to them wherever and whenever they want. All of this tells us that MP3 was a great invention, that it revolutionized the way we store and listen to our music, facilitating actions such as moving our entire music collection from one country to another to a level that in the past would have been a luxury. few people.

MP3However, everything that surrounds this compression format is not positive. First of all, we must talk about piracy: in its early years, MP3 was synonymous with “stolen music”, since due to the small size of the files it was possible to upload entire discs to the Internet for any user to download them freely. This did not go unnoticed by record companies, much less artists, but it was a phenomenon that generated great losses of money in the music industry.

One of the measures that little by little was bringing out the industry was the sale of music in digital format, both MP3 and AAC (the iTunes format ), among others; We could say that he adopted the saying “if you can’t beat them, join them.” Unlike the pirated discs, the purchased ones come with the digital booklet, whose quality is impeccable and far superior to the scanned version that pirates usually include in their packages, as well as certain themes that are not on the physical disc.

In addition to combating illegal downloading with the sale and inclusion of exclusive material, another determining factor was quality: one of the outstanding characteristics of the MP3 format is that it can offer different degrees of compression, and the differences between very small files (such as be 96 kbps) and large (320 kbps) is appreciated without effort.

Undoubtedly, eventual offers go a long way in convincing people to buy rather than steal. But none of this can change the mentality of those who are absolutely stuck in their ideas, those people who download games, movies, music, and books without paying for them claiming that “the creators already have enough money.”

MP4

MP4 is a type of multimedia file and a compression method for video and audio. It is a document that contains a video and an audio track, which can be encoded in different ways.

The notion of MP4 comes from MPEG-4 Part 14. It can be said that it is a standard that applies to various encoding formats and technologies related to the Moving Picture Experts Group ( MPEG ).

MP4 is used to transmit audiovisual content over the Internet, especially for streaming. It is also used in video conferencing and television applications.

Experts define MP4 as a container format: it stores video and audio data along with the information necessary for its synchronization according to a format set in its technical specifications. The audiovisual tracks, in this framework, are compressed according to various codecs.

It is important not to confuse MP4 with MP3. While MP4 contemplates audio and video, MP3 format is associated with a compressed audio file with signal losses that usually do not significantly affect its quality.

Because MP4 is a container audio and video format that works with different codecs, it can contain MP3 encoded sounds. However, an MP3 file cannot include videos.

Also called MP4, on the other hand, is a portable digital media player. These devices are often incompatible with .mp4 files; anyway, this name is used to present them as an evolution of MP3 players, focused exclusively on audio.