Archive from February, 2011

Codecs, containers, streams

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February 16, 2011

In continuing our tradition of “in simple words about complex”, and considering we do a lot of work on projects related to video content on the Internet, I want to address some questions about codecs and containers we get from our clients.

We’ll start with the fact that media information (video and audio) must be saved in a digital format, and it would be good if it were saved in a compressed format. Codecs do this (codec, coder-decoder). They convert media information into digital streams and back.

codecs

It shall be said that formally, codecs are the implementation of a coding/decoding standard, or in other words, a program or algorithm. Still, codecs are sometimes referred to as the coding standard.
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Why do we like Balsamiq Mockups

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February 8, 2011

A couple of months ago we started experimenting with Balsamiq Mockups. It’s a compact and very simple program with which to build wire-frame models of user interfaces. By way of example, below is one of the screens that we have drawn using it in Russian.

Sample Balsamiq mock-up

When we started to experiment with Balsamiq I could not have imagined how much this program would affect our development process and how many radical changes it would bring.
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