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
Files are, at their core just 1s and 0s. Each set of 8 make up a byte which is represented by a 2 character hexadecimal number, 00-FF.
Files consist generally of 2 things, header information which contain a hex code defining its file type known as the magic bytes.
Most of the other data is specific for that file.
There are two types of file converts, one reads the file, converts it to its base values and then rewrites it in the new language.
Think like you speak 3 languages, french, german, and english. In the first method you convert French to english and then the english to german.
The other type of convert is basically the converter knows how to translate directly from French to german so it runs it through just swapping data 1 for 1 without caring about what the data is.
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