This first video from Xiph.Org presents the technical foundations of modern digital media via a half-hour firehose of information. One community member called it "a Uni lecture I never got but really wanted."

The program offers a brief history of digital media, a quick summary of the sampling theorem, and myriad details of low level audio and video characterization and formatting. It's intended for budding geeks looking to get into video coding, as well as the technically curious who want to know more about the media they wrangle for work or play.

The video moves fast and only glances on a number of rather important topics, so we've set up a Wiki to get more information, ask questions, and debate.

We also want to hear about problems. HTML5 and the <video> tag are brand new so there's bound to be niggles, hiccups and outright gaping wounds. Any problems you report will go to the browser and player coders to make sure the problems get fixed.

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is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) license.

We welcome good, technical translations from the community! Please submit translations in SRT or Ogg Kate format to video@xiph.org.