MacPaint
MacOS black and white graphics data-format standardized by
the MacPaint application (which was distributed free with
the original MACs). Typically, documents are 576 (h) by 720
(v) pixels and 72 dpi (dots per inch). The
PNTG file Type Code is used by
other similar applications, such as FullPaint and
SuperPaint.
MAE
Apple's MacOS Application Environment runs the complete MacOS Finder and Desktop in a Unix X Window. With it, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems workstations will be able to run MAC applications.
MAPI
Microsoft Application Programing Interface, as with VIM (Vendor Independent Messaging), support the transfer of Microsoft Word and Excel documents by electronic mail (e-mail) applications while inside the Microsoft application.
.MBD
mBED file format which can be multimedia front ends for databases and CGI scripts. The files are referenceable in HTML Web documents.
MCF
MetaContent Format is a text file format, created by Apple with code that describes how various items in information collections are related. It is the basis for the HotSauce World Wide Web browser plugin and other 3-D viewer products that are MacOS and Windows compatible. With Hot Sauce, an X space can be embedded in a Web page. It graphically displays a hierarchy of information in various ways to let a user float around on the surface, fly through, or tunnel deep into any area.
MEG
Microsoft Exchange Gateway file format. It can be used to automatically synchronize addressbooks so there is a seamless mail system whether the user is remote or on a LAN.
Metafile
Windows graphics format for screen and print representations of images. If you are moving a document with Metafile images in it to a MacOS platform permanently or for final output, translate both the "printing and viewing" aspects of the Metafiles to PICTs graphic-image format. If the screen representation is not translated, images will display as gray boxes. If the print representation is not translated, the graphic will not print at high resolution. When transferring documents from MacOS to Windows and then back to MacO, it is best to place the original PICT once again if "PICT to Metafile" translation has been used. This will prevent degradation of the image quality, as well as minimize conflicts between print and viewing versions of the image.
MHS
Novell's Message Handling Service which can link E-mail to NetWare.
MIDI
Musical Instrument Digital Interface and data format which is used widely in the music industry. A MIDI file includes musical notes, tempos, instruments and other parameters. "Profiles" of individual MIDI-compliant devices provide specific instructions which let computers and/or editing units reconfigure MIDI devices, unpack data stored in them, transfer the data to the computer and/or editing unit, then return it to the MIDI device for storage and/or playback. Editor/librarian application programs, such as Opcode's MusicShop require device profiles to work with specific MIDI devices.
Profiles are usually provided by the device manufacturer, and are stored in the application's library. First there were Device-specific editor/librarians; more recently, Device-generic editor/librarians which can be configured to work with the system exclusive ("sysex") messages sent by any type of MIDI device. While these "universal" editor/librarians can work with any device, they often lack the sophistication of the Device-specific editor/librarians. If running under DOS, driver compatibility with Roland's MPU-401 may be useful; under Windows, the Windows MIDI driver should be sufficient.
MIDI files can be played back by QuickTime. For MacOS 7.5.x systems, the QuickTime Musical Instruments file must be inside the System Folder's Extensions folder and QuickTime inside the Control Panels foldser. General MIDI ("GM") addendum to MIDI specifications insures that a MIDI file recorded, for example on a synthesizer with an organ sound does not play back as a horn on another sound board. It does this by assigning Note numbers to percussion sounds and Program Change numbers to instrumea8 sounds. New specifications should support a greater volume of instruments, the number of simultaneous notes a synthesizer can handle (polyphony) and the attack and decay time (envelope) of sounds. Other audio standards: AIFF, CD-Audio, snd, and .WAV.
MIF
Maker Interchange Format a wordprocessing file format developed by Framemaker for DOS/Windows and MacOS. Files may have a filename extension of: .MIF.
MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions encryption algorythm used (by a sender) to encode a non-ASCII document for E-mail transmission; then (by the receiver) to identify and decode the document back into its original format. E-mail utilities must support MIME messaging: InterCon's TCP/Connect II, Claris Emailer, and Qualcomm's Eudora Pro. For more information contact: MIME FAQ at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/text/faq/usenet/mail/mime-faq/top.html
Mixing
For a sound, the creation of its track&emdash;by software and/or hardware&emdash;using all or part of two or more other sound tracks.
MOD
Music file format, developed for Amiga OS systems, which uses a variation of Law data compression. Compatible with some MacOS sound editors.
MotiVE
Media Vision's compression/decompression (codec) format for storing video and audio on digital media. It is based on a VQ (vector quantization) algorithm and supports a playback up to 12 frames per second in a 160 (h) by 120 (v) pixel window. MotiVE is the native code in Microsoft's Video-1 "video for Windows" format.
.MOV, MooV
The QuickTime full-motion video and sound file format developed by Apple for MacOS and Windows systems. If QuickTime is present, perhaps as a browser plugin, it will be used to decompress the image, otherwise code from the independent JPEG Group will be used.
MPC1, MPC2, MPC3
The Multimedia PC Working Group of the Software Publishing Association (SPA) approved three specifications: Multimedia PC1, PC2 and PC3 (MPC1, MPC2, and MPC3). MPC1 was developed for Windows 3.00a; it and MPC2 were succeeded by MPC3 which supports MPEG-1.
MPC3 requires compliant systems to provide, in hardware or software, MPEG-1 video playback of 30 frames per second (fps), at a 352-by-240 playback resolution, with 15 bits per pixel (without frame drops) and 65,000 colors.
The minimum system requirements are 8MB of RAM, a 75-MHz Pentium (or equivalent), a 540MB hard drive, and a CD-ROM drive capable of 600K/second transfers and a 250ms avarage seek time. The minimum for audio is support for 16-bit digital sound and recommends wavetable MIDI playback.
MPEG
"Em-peg" Motion Picture Experts Group, compression/decompression (codec) format for storing video and audio on digital media. It was adopted by International Standards Organization as ISO 11172 standard. It is based on a DCT (discrete cosine transform) algorithm. Supported by Apple (MacOS), Microsoft (Windows), Digital Equipment Corp's Alpha PCs, IBM (OS/2), and others.
Unlike Cinpak or Indeo, MPEG is a more than just a codec. It is a complete file format which specifies the arrangement of video and audio that is also different from the audio-video interleave schemes of QuickTime and Video for Windows.
Primarily it compresses the redundant information between frames, such as a background that does not change into one I-frame (compressed intraframe)&emdash;plus any changes to the background. Because of this, MPEG images are difficult to edit. One solution is to decompress the MPEG video; then compress it into Motion-JPEG for editing after which it can be recompressed under MPEG. (MPEG supports higher quality images than Motion-JPEG.) Player utility: Xing MPEG (Windows).
MPEG-1 defines how bit streams of compressed video and audio are optimized for CD-ROM playback. Compression ratio up to 180 bytes to 1 (180:1) are supported to play TV-quality video. Full-motion video runs at 27MB/second which is 180 times as fast as a single-speed CD-ROM player which has a data transfer rate of 150KB per second. At this speed it can display 30 frames per second (fps) in a window of 320 (h) by 240 (v) pixels (with 16-bit sound). (Note, an audio CD stores about 74 minutes of music, with MPEG, a CD can store 74 minutes of music and video.)
QuickTime 2.0 supports MPEG semantics (it can start playback at an arbitrary frame). MPEG video chips are required. Software-based schemes include CompCore's SoftPEG and Maynard Handley's Sparkle (a WWW freeware). Sparkle will be included in versions of MacOS; Mediamatic's playback software will be in versions of Windows 95.
MPEG-2 supports CD-ROM players with a data transfer rate of 1.5MB per second, and increases the window to 704 by 480 pixels at 30 fps. Playback speed and display windows up to full screen may result from triple-speed (or faster) CD-ROMs, faster CPUs, faster system bus implementations (e.g., PCI) and supporting multimedia video chipsets.
MPEG is useful for applications that require the digital video stream to be transferred over narrow bandwidth systems such as CD-ROM, video network, videoconferencing, future Cable TV video-on-demand, and direct satellite broadcasts--while retaining images of high quality. This still-evolving standard provides rules for synchronizing audio and video at four different levels to support the advances in multimedia technology.
MPEG-3 and MPEG-4 algorithms are still being defined. MPEG-4, is expected to provide the compression necessary for such multimedia applications as interactive mobile communications. Developed by JVC ("with a little help from Phillips"), the new VideoCD format uses an MPEG chipset, such as the one from C-Cube Microsystems, The chipset is part of the FMV video cartridges in most CD-I players. With it, they can automatically accept and play VideoCDs. MPEG chipset adapterboards for CD-ROMs and adapters for AudioCD players, let them use VideoCDs. (Current video capacity is 72 minutes on a CD.
Competing formats: Intel's Indeo, SuperMac's Cinpak, and Motion-JPEG. To play MPEG-compressed audio files while they are being downloaded from a Web site, use a streaming utility like Xing Technology's StreamWorks, or Kauai Medi's MPEG/CDE.
.MPG
The file extension for MPEG full-motion video.
.MSP Type-1
Black and White Microsoft Paint data-format for DOS/Windows. Files may have a filename extension of: .MSP.
References are samples only. Each one is presented in greater detail in the
Technical Research Assistant for 2001
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