How do programs convert a file from one format to another?
The answer probably extremely varied so I’m sorry if im asking too broad a question.
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Converting an file from OGG, which i honestly didnt really know existed, into MP3 takes seconds, but somehow in that time it changes the data around, and now it’s in MP3 format my editing program can use it.
There’s got to be more going on than just changing the suffix!
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How does this work?
In: 1
The sentences “Yesterday I ate a banana” and “ontem comi uma banana” both convey exactly the same information but some people understand both sentences, some people only understand one and some people understand neither.
File formats are like languages for computer programs. MP3 is like the English of music. Everyone speaks it but there’s some things that are much easier to convey in a different language, so for some specific applications other languages are used instead.
You can also use units of measurement in the analogy. You can make the plans for a house using metric or imperial, but if the house is going to be built on the us you’re better off changing all the measurements to imperial.
Audio and video formats are too complex to ELI5, but using .xlsx and .csv as an example, they are in fact a .zip and a .txt file respectively (just change their extensions and you’ll see you can open them normally). That’s one of the reasons why with xlsx you can use images (the image just goes inside the zip) but with csv you can not. So when converting from xlsx to csv one of the things that is going on behind the scenes is the zip file is being extracted, the images, text formatting, formulas, multiple sheets, and a million other things are being stripped off and just the raw data is being stored on a txt file.
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